I'm Rick Santorum and I'm running for president because I'm deeply concerned about our country's future, which I believe is deeply tied up with our sexual values. When people think of a cultural conservative like me, especially one who's Roman Catholic, they tend to think about abortion, but that's only part of the story. Sure, I've had plenty to say about why I think Roe v. Wade should be overturned and why, at the very least, the abortion issue should be turned back to the states. Obviously this issue got plenty of attention in the last few weeks in the controversy about the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation and its relationship with Planned Parenthood.
But -- and this puzzles a lot of people -- I can't stop talking about contraception and my worries about family planning. It's not only about the moral value of the human embryo, which is a concern that a lot of people have even if they're pro-choice. What I can't talk about in detail is why I'm deeply opposed to birth control, not just abortion. Though I've referred vaguely to "the whole sexual libertine idea" and the way that contraception aids and abets those misguided societal values, I've also had to add that this is a personal opinion and that I'm not opposed to people having access to birth control as a matter of public policy.
However, if I'm president I will do everything I can to discourage the threat to our very social fabric that contraception represents. I can't say this too explicitly because over the last 50 years so many Americans have come to expect sex without responsibility, and though a pro-life candidate can be elected (Reagan and both Bush's did), I'm afraid an anti-contraception candidate can't. So I have to conceal my true concerns that are starkly reflected in recent data: More American couples than ever are living together out of wedlock, and the birth rate without benefit of marriage is soaring. No society can long continue to prosper without a strong basis in the traditional family. It's blindingly clear to me what's happening, and the cultural radicals like Barack Obama have chosen to ignore it for reasons of political convenience.
Making it even harder for me to accomplish my goal, the recent work of Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute shows that it is working class whites whose values have deteriorated the most in recent years, with fewer nuclear families, declining church attendance and a poor work ethic. Yet these are exactly the voters I'm supposed to be able to appeal to better than Obama or that phony Mitt Romney, (who's not a real conservative but subscribes to a religion that believes its followers will become gods and godesses after they die; it really annoys me how he is trying to get away with this but I'm pleased that true conservatives see through him). So I need to save these white working class folks from themselves in order to save the country, but they've gotten used to the opiate of birth control, too, which is one of the big reasons I can't give this speech.
Now that I'm getting serious media attention, it helps that people can see I'm a nice guy who's the real deal about this, like my obvious love for my wife and my kids. I even left the campaign trail for days when our disabled little girl was very ill, and I didn't make a hypocritical show of it. Over the next few weeks my wife will be more visible, a great way of reminding people what kind of person I am. In the White House our whole family will lead by example.
Of course, I'd like to use the power of the presidency to get our nation back on the right moral track in more direct ways as well, like Supreme Court appointments. I expect there will be at least one in the next few years and that will rectify the remnants of a court that is still too tilted toward the cultural left. There will probably be other things I can do as well, like using the presidential bully pulpit to support state laws that find ways to undermine access to contraceptive measures that I believe are often abortifacients, like IUDs.
So I haven't said yet exactly why I think the issue of sexual values is so critical for our future, but I really do think we could go down a path that leads to some form of fascism or socialism in which the government uses its power to align itself with forces that discourage people from having children unless they meet certain imposed requirements, in effect a new kind of eugenics.
Just think of George Orwell's novel 1984. You might think I'm crazy but Orwell didn't just describe the Stalinist Soviet Union. Years before that in his other writings he expressed frank disdain for free love, family planning and abortion. Even though he wasn't a religious person, Orwell understood that there's a deep connection between true freedom and humanity and enough confidence in the future to allow destiny to shape our children, and how important it is just to allow ourselves to have children and not to be slaves to materialism and the easy pleasures of new technology, what he called "machine progress."
That's what I can't talk about, saving America from the genuine threat of descent into an Orwellian nightmare. I'm Rick Santorum, and that's really why I'm running for president.