Santorum on women in combat

Rick Santorum has argued against the idea of women in combat, remarks which were mischaracterized as arguing that women were unfit for combat because they were too emotional, a remark which elicited an emotional response from women's groups and a few men who claim not to be women.

Rick Santorum and the liberal's Stochastic view of natural law

I have always said that knowing Latin is useful, but I never guessed it would prove helpful in discerning the meaning of the names of presidential candidates. In the present case, I'll simply note that Rick Santorum's last name means "of the holy ones." Not a bad qualification to have for the nation's highest office.

I also observe that the Greek word telos has now officially entered the nation's political lexicon through an article in the New York Times. The article is, of course, snooty (I almost typed "snotty," and that too would have been true) and condescending, as we have come to expect from the Times, not the mention much of the rest of the media.

Molly Worthen, the author of the article, discusses the basis for Santorum's views on marriage:

Santorum appeals to natural law, what he calls the Catholic Church’s “operating instructions for human beings.” 

“Human beings have a purpose, or ‘end,’ a telos,” Santorum writes in his book. According to the tradition of natural law, every part of our bodies has a telos too. In the case of our genitalia, that natural end is heterosexual sex for the purpose of procreation. It follows that marriage between a man and a woman “is fundamentally natural,” Santorum writes. “The promise of natural law is that we will be the happiest, and freest, when we follow the law built into our nature as men and women. For liberals, however, nature is too confining, and thus is the enemy of freedom.” Later on, he elaborates on his jaundiced view of freedom with a quotation from Edmund Burke: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their appetites.”

Santorum's views here shouldn't be new to readers of this blog, since I have articulated the same position many times. It is simply the scholastic natural law tradition. The Times also correctly points out the true nature of Santorum's views on all social issues.

Santorum attacks gay rights and abortion not by spouting biblical verses or goading his audiences’ gut feelings, but by playing the medieval scholastic theologian and reasoning from first principles. There is no need to quote St. Paul to prove that homosexual sex is an affront to the natural order and same-sex marriage a detriment to civilization ...

Of course, a homosexual being an "affront to the natural order" is the Times' way of caricaturing this position. It is rather the homosexual's actions which are an affront to the natural order--and, since his own nature is a part of the natural order, his actions are just as much an affront to the homosexual himself.

The Times acknowledges that Santorum's case is logical:

Santorum is not a fundamentalist frothing at the mouth, screeching out biblical commands (he cites “Divine Providence” often in his writing, but rarely turns to scripture). When liberal students booed after he expressed his views on same-sex marriage at an event in New Hampshire, he did not shout them down, but tried to engage them in a philosophical discussion.

Each point that Santorum makes follows logically from the preceding premise. Along with Catholic public intellectuals like Robert George, a political theorist at Princeton, and the political commentator and the Lutheran minister-turned-Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus, Santorum embodies the renaissance of Catholic natural law in American political life—and the apotheosis of its seductive effect on conservative Protestant evangelicals.

But although is case is logical, it is premised on first principles. In other words, his world view is based on fundamental assumptions about reality, and this, says Worthen, is the problem:, and what makes Santorum so dangerous:

Natural law is a noble tradition that has shaped Western jurisprudence, but in the hands of conservative activists like Santorum it has become a dangerous cult of first principles. Santorum’s positions are perfectly logical if you accept his founding presuppositions — but, in his view, those presuppositions are not open to question. The genius of this emphasis on foundational assumptions is that if you can dismiss your opponent’s first principles, if you can accuse him of denying humanity’s “natural purpose,” you can claim to win the debate without ever considering the content of his argument. 

This tactic destroys the possibility for real political dialogue, since one need only engage with those who share one’s own presuppositions.

Having first principles--in other words, assumptions upon which your thinking is based--is a tactic? This is the first time I've ever heard anyone actually come out and say this. Is Worthen really saying you shouldn't have basic assumptions behind your view of the world? She doesn't have any herself?

If Santorum's view of the world is Scholastic, Worthen's is Stochastic. How can you have any belief about anything unless is is logical? And how can that logic have any effect unless it is based on premises which ultimately lead to assumptions that you take as self-evident? You might as well say that there can be chain hanging in the air not attached to anything.

This is just one indication of the bankruptcy of the modern world view: it attacks the self-evident assumptions of traditional thought and pretends it does not have assumptions of its own that it considers self-evident. Everyone else's assumptions are considered fair game but its own preposterous ones.

Santorum is one of the few Catholic politicians who actually seem to know what Catholic ethics actually teaches--and who is able to articulate it competently. Many of the others not only don't know what Catholic ethics teaches, but oppose it in practice.

The Times story gets Santorum right, even though its evaluation of him is entirely wrong. It condemns him for all the right reasons. The kind of liberals we have today--liberals whose political philosophy is premised on a denial of human nature--have every reason to fear someone like Santorum. Romney and Gingrich are both scandals to the establishment in their own way, although Romney redirects liberal premises to his own ends and Gingrich is still in the process, I think of internalizing the Catholic positions that have been percolating in Santorum's thought since he was young.

It is Santorum who stands for everything they oppose.