Where Victors Are Victims: Santorum and Republican 'Dissent'
by Jules Boykoff
Recently, while cavorting with a solemn band of pastors in McKinney, Texas, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum lashed out at the “secular left” as an atheist plague distilled into the human form of President Obama and his boosters. In doing so Santorum anted up what we might call a frothy mixture of religion and politics that is the byproduct of election-year hyperbole and Republican “dissent.”
While hobnobbing in the friendly company of religious conservatives in the Lone Star State—and doing his fair share of ostentatious praying for the cameras, too—Santorum found his groove: “The intolerance of the left, the intolerance of the secular ideology, it is a religion unto itself, it is just not a biblical based religion, and it is the most intolerant.”
He then went old-school, linking the US left to sickle-wielding Commies while putting forth religious conservatives as dissident citizens: “Just like we saw from the days of the atheists of the Soviet Union, it is completely intolerant of dissent. They fear dissent. Why? Because the dissent comes from folks who use reason, common sense, and divine revelation and they want no part of any of those things.” He went on to assert secular lefties “want their world view to be imposed without question, and if you question them, you’re haters, you’re bigots, and you should be as a result of that ostracized from the public square.”
Such aggrieved avowals are more than hyperbolic electioneering chatter. They chime with a longstanding trend among powerful social conservatives to reposition themselves as a persecuted minority.
Turns out Santorum was channeling his inner Himmelfarb. Gertrude Himmelfarb is a conservative icon who blended the seemingly incompatible “common sense” and “divine intervention” into a deafening specter of political persecution. Paul Krugman recently noted Himmelfarb’s penchant to decry the erosion of Victorian values and virtues. But her influence extends even further, to her skillful sleight-of-rhetoric inversions that make the powerful appear powerless and the exalted religious authorities appear to be victimized political marginalia.
In Himmelfarb’s book One Nation, Two Cultures, first published in 1999—spouse of neoconservative granaddaddy Irving Kristol and mother of right-wing powerhouse William Kristol—put forth many of the arguments Republican presidential candidates are proffering today: culture, rather than class, divides America; people in the US are transforming into European-style, moral zombies; academia is a perilous pit of liberal relativism where we’re discouraged from taking firm stands rooted in faith.
She also argued there is a “dissident culture” that eschews pre-marital sex, home-schools their kids, turns off their smut-laden televisions, and engages politics based on these principles and practices. This is all dog-whistle music for the Christian Right, and Santorum is now blowing that whistle with all the power in his lungs. So when he yammers about Obama’s “phony ideology,” as he did recently, he’s doggedly dog-whistling to the “dissident culture.”
For many, such a conception of dissent is compelling, and it may galvanize more social conservatives to head to the voting booth singing Santorum. In fact, the word “dissent” has religious roots, entering English in the late 16th century as both a general expression meaning disagreement in outlook and as a specific word meaning difference of opinion in regard to religious doctrine or worship. Dissent with a capital D refers to those who actively opposed the hegemony of the Church of England in the Seventeenth Century. These Dissenters were members of Protestant denominations—primarily the Baptists Presbyterians, Quakers, and the Independents—who eventually combined to overthrow King Charles I and organized the English Commonwealth.
When read through this historical frame where religion is in the foreground, Himmelfarb and Santorum’s vision of dissent has some merit. However, it also circumvents a central dimension of political dissent: contesting power. After all, these people have political and institutional power as well as privileged access to immense resources. And thus the victors are cloaked as victims.
Santorum is more interested in converting issues of fact into articles of faith. Thus, climate change is something you either believe in or don’t, not a phenomenon that can be detected and measured. Recently, Santorum has taken to habitually imitating the infamous global-warming denier Sen. James Inhofe, dismissing climate change as a “hoax.” While on the campaign trail in Colorado, Santorum attacked Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, essentially for taking physics and chemistry seriously, at least in previous political lives. He said his Republican rivals had “bought into the science of man-made global warming, and they bought into the remedy, both of which are bogus.” He declared, “I’ve never supported even the hoax of global warming.” Gulp.
This is how the slippery politicos take matters of scientific fact and contort them into political opinion. By channeling their precooked ‘beliefs’ through the filter of dissent, they can claim underdog status on the road to electoral shenaniganizing. Voters beware of pseudo-dissident citizenship designed to cull their political sympathy.
Jules Boykoff teaches political science at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. He is the author of "The Suppression of Dissent: How the State and Mass Media Squelch US American Social Movements" (Routledge, 2006), and "Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States" (AK Press, 2007). Boykoff is a former professional soccer player who represented the US Olympic Team in international competition.
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A Compendium of The Goofiest Things That Rick Santorum Has Said
And why they make him unelectable
by Richard Schiffman
If a recent poll is accurate, Rick Santorum is now the top dog of the Republican pack with 38% approval amongst GOP voters nationwide in contrast to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul. Whether Santorum can maintain this lead is another matter. Until now, the former Pennsylvania senator has not endured the kind of media scrutiny that Romney and Gingrich have received, although this is beginning to change.
The grandson of an immigrant coal-miner, Santorum employs the somewhat dorky appeal of his sweater vests and earnest man-of-the-people manner to attract blue-collar Republicans, who are put off by Romney’s patrician stiffness. But Santorum’s Mister Rogers looks belie a demagogic social message which makes even Newt appear like a pillar of reasonableness and moderation."Everybody is guilty of some transgression somewhere against conservatism,” Rush Limbaugh has observed, “except Santorum."
But the views that make Santorum a favorite of the controversial radio host may not endear him to the majority of voters. In playing to the fears and resentments of some Americans, the candidate has felt free to routinely offend most of the rest... women for example.
Responding earlier this month to a Pentagon announcement relaxing the ban on women serving in combat, Rick Santorum said that he was concerned because “of other types of emotions that are involved.” Wait a second, does he mean that women are too emotional, or who knows tenderhearted, to be trusted with guns and other emblems of macho power?
No, that’s not what he was saying, Santorum clarified in an interview with ABC News. It isn’t woman’s emotions that he’s worried about, but men’s: “My concern is that being in combat in that situation, instead of being focused on the mission, they might be more concerned about protecting a woman in a vulnerable position.”
Right, the protective instinct that soldiers don’t feel for other guys in their unit, God forbid, but only for members of the weaker sex-- got ya! But wait, Santorum felt impelled to stick the proverbial foot still further in mouth with an assurance to Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin that, “It’s not a matter of not putting women in dangerous roles.” For example, women are “fully capable of flying small planes.”
Wow, that’s a relief, small planes are OK. What about helicopters, Rick? The B-1B bomber?
On the environmental front, Santorum called anti-fracking activists, (the people who don’t want methane gas to explode from your tap every time you turn it on) a “reign of environmental terror.” Ouch! What he neglected to mention is that-- as Salon reported on Monday-- senator Santorum was one of the top recipients of drilling company largesse, and he continues to rake in the big oil bucks in his campaign for the Republican nomination.
Flying in the face of the nearly unanimous scientific consensus on the manmade causes of climate change, Santorum has repeatedly dismissed global warming as a “liberal myth,” “bogus,” and “a hoax.”
“One of the favorite things of the left is to use your sentimentality, and your proper understanding and belief that we are stewards of this earth and we have a responsibility to hand off a beautiful earth to the next generation.” Santorum opined. “They use that and they have used it in the past to try to scare you into supporting radical ideas on the environment. They tried it with this idea, this politicization of science called man-made global warming... I stood up and fought against those things. Why? because they will destroy the very foundation of prosperity in our country.”
Well, that certainly sets the record straight! Those Bible verses advocating stewardship in the Book of Genesis and elsewhere were anti-capitalist agitprop all along. No doubt Santorum’s evangelical supporters will be relieved to learn that God never really intended for us to love and care for the world, but only to maximize corporate profits.
And while we’re on the subject of religion, Rick Santorum made an odd comment about the Crusades during a campaign stop in South Carolina: "The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom... What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers. What we're talking about are core American values."
Now there’s something we haven’t heard from a politician in a while-- a forthright defense of the Crusades, those bloody and ultimately quixotic campaigns of medieval armies to take back the Holy Land from the “infidels” (read Moslems and Jews.) Any thoughts on the Inquisition Rick?
Santorum prides himself on being a defender of religious values. Commenting on president Obama’s idea that insurers should cover the costs of contraception, the candidate predicted ominously: “What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”
Whether Obama will “crush religion,” as Santorum darkly warns, and push for the decapitation of opponents of contraception is yet to be seen. But there are some folks that the Republican hopeful himself might wish to behead (or maybe castrate is more to the point.) That’s right gay people, whose sexuality Rick Santorum has famously compared to bestiality, “You know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”
Not that Santorum has anything against homosexuals, mind you. "Is anyone saying same-sex couples can't love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?"
Well, heck no Rick-- not unless you have been having a kinkier relationship with your mother-in-law than you’ve been letting on.
Gays are not the only minority group that Santorum has got a beef with. "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money,” the candidate declared. “I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money." Strange that he should single out blacks when poor whites far outnumber people of color on the Welfare and Food Stamp rolls. But, hey, let’s not confuse ourselves with facts.
And it is not just blacks and their predilection for mooching off white people to achieve better lives that irritate Rick Santorum, it’s the whole disorderly mess of American cultural diversity. “Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict.”
But wait-- isn’t diversity what America is all about-- you know, land of immigrants, religious liberty, the melting pot, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free? But apparently not. Rick Santorum’s America is tribe comprised of white, heterosexual, Christian (but not Mormon) males, whose bigotries he skillfully exploits.
That exclusivity might present a problem for him at the polls. If you add up all of the non-Christians, the 99% of woman who use contraceptives, the blacks, the browns, the poor, the recent immigrants, the gays, the tree huggers-- all of the assorted Americans who Rick Santorum does not approve of-- that is one heck of a lot of folks who likely wouldn’t vote for him, even if Rush Limbaugh’s man succeeds in winning the Republican presidential nomination in August.
http://www.commondreams.org/author/richard-schiffman
Richard Schiffman is the author of two books and a former journalist whose work has appeared in, amongst other outlets, the New York Times and on a variety of National Public Radio shows including Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
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