If Rick Santorum gets re-elected for his Senate seat in 2006, I will be astounded. I guess what this will mean is that PA has more INSANE voters than I realized.
Go to Crooks and Liars and check out the video of Santorum appearing on "News Night" with Aaron Brown at CNN.
Here is a snippet from the interview:
BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?
SANTORUM: No -- well, not the right to privacy as created under Roe v. Wade and all...
BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?
SANTORUM: I think there's a right to unreasonable -- to unreasonable search and seizure...
BROWN: For example, if you'd been a Supreme Court judge in Griswold versus Connecticut, the famous birth control case came up, which centered around whether there was a right to privacy. Do you believe that was correctly decided?
SANTORUM: No, I don't. I write about it in the book. I don't.
BROWN: The state of Connecticut had the right to ban birth control for a married couple.
SANTORUM: I think they were wrong. It was a bad law.
BROWN: But they had the right.
SANTORUM: They had the right. They had the right...
BROWN: Why would a conservative argue that government should interfere with that most personal decision?
SANTORUM: I didn't. I said it was a bad law. And...
BROWN: But they had the right to make.
SANTORUM: They had the right to make it. Look, legislatures have the right to make mistakes and do really stupid things...
If you elect Santorum he will crusade to ensure that states get to pass laws banning contraception people, even married people! Griswold vs. Conneticut appealed to the 4th and 5th Amendments. Here is a sample of Justice Douglas' opinion, which argued in favor of Griswold:
The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a "governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms." NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 307. Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.
I want to hear MORE from Santorum, what, exactly is problematic about this reasoning? Right-Wing Religious Conservatives, like Santorum, are anti-liberalism (in the classical sense!). Denying a right to privacy--especially in their own homes--sounds a great deal more like fascism than liberal democracy! Why, on earth, do you want to let the government--local, state or federal, interfere in how you raise your children, for example? Isn't Santorum, of all people, taking advantage of the freedom by home-schooling his children in Virginia (while using State dollars!)
I also find this strategy for attacking Roe, and now, Griswold, to be curious since a lot of Christian wack-o groups and cultural conservatives are opposing the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) (S 1197). A prevailing argument is that it destroys families. Here is a tasty bit from a 1999 treatie, "The Father's Manifesto":
What is shows is that Conservatives like Santorum might use the rhetoric of "procedure," i.e. state legislatures have the right to make bad laws and the Supreme Court shouldn't interefere, but they are really pushing their "substantive views." This above quotation from the father's manifesto shows a deep concern with federal or state involvement in "families." And, yet Santorum and his friends would be all too happy to let federal and/or state legislatures: "allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives . . ."
VAWA was fabricated completely from whole cloth. Its sponsor’s purpose is to permanently separate men and women and destroy their families.
The least I could ask for is that Santorum and his supporters stop dressing up their arguments in concerns over procedure and fess up to their real agenda.
The problem with giving the Federales the power to force a state to allow contraception or abortion is that it also gives them the foot in the door to interfere in the Terry Schiavo case. The book, A Pattern Language, argues that countries should be no larger than 2-10 million people so that the people in power are not so remote from the average person. If everything is a Federal issue and a Federal law then realistically none of us is going to have any input on issues or laws. The U.S. population is predicted to grow, mostly through immigration, to 450 million within this century. Those of us in the non-swing states already know that our vote doesn't count. We are inhabitants rather than citizens. This will only get worse as the population grows and more issues are decided on the national level.
ReplyDeletePhilip--
ReplyDeleteI don't see how it follows that upholding Roe and Griswold explain the Schiavo crap. After all, Roe and Griswold uphold "privacy," which is what was interfered with in the Schiavo case.
I also believe that some rights are so important that they should be protected by the Federales. If you don't allow women to have control over their fertility, then you are basically stripping women of all their other rights! If a woman gets pregnant every year, she is not likely to get an education, a profession, or an identity (for that matter).
Why assume that your vote doesn't count in your state? People influence local government and state governments all the time.
SCOTUS striking down a state law against contraception as unconstitutional is in no way the same as the fed legislative branch penning a law that bans states from creating their own. And I also fail to see how there is a connection to the Schiavo case... You're point on nations of 2-10 million is very interesting, though.
ReplyDeleteWell put Tom!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing after I posted. There is a big difference between finding a state law unconstitutional and writing a federal law that bans state practices. Nicely put!
The bigger problem exemplified here is the problem of democracy. After all if Santorum is re-elected, it will be presumably because the majority of people voted for him. If the majority of people (registered voters) support this legislation (irregardless of morality) then there is not much anyone else can do. We have all agreed to live under this democratic form of government, which means doing what the masses decide is best, for better or worse.
ReplyDeleteAll that being said I agree that it is stupid to disallow access to contraception, but I hate to say it, we as individuals are at the mercy of the masses. If the majority of people decide that personal privacy is not worth having, what are the rest of to do?
Oh dear Soul Searcher!
ReplyDeleteYou're not anti-democracy? Did you read too much Plato. You want philosopher kings.
But, your raise a good point about Santorum. Nonetheless, for a democracy to do well, it needs GOOD information. I just watched Santorum's visit on the Daily Show and I was a bit bummed that Stewart was so kind to him.
Santorum is using the language of "virtue" these days to sell his view that only in a society with heterosexual marriage protected and nurtured will citizens grow up to be virtuous. While Santorum relies heavily on the work of MacIntyre and Bill Bennett, I don't think virtue ethics--by any stretch of the imagination-says we should limit the family to a heterosexual arrangement. I wonder what Martha Nussbaum thinks of Santorum's work. Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll write an op-ed about this!
Anyway, my point is, the "masses" need to be better educated about the implications of various positions, which, the media does a crappy job doing these days. Comedy programs seem to do a better job.
we are not beholden to the masses, at least we're not suppossed to be. the founders made it clear that we need checks (e.g. courts) to ensure that the masses do not run over minorities or when the masses declare a law that is unconstitutional. philip, ever since john marshall's court - we have found the federal gov't ensuring basic rights, since the warren court we have found that states are not allowed to discriminate against a group, etc.... under your reasoning, a state could pass a law allowing segregation... etc, etc, etc.... my advice is for all of you to read the constitution and the bill of rights, or take a constitutional law class, read the federalist papers, blah, blah, blah!!
ReplyDeletei hate you all!!
hate heals the heart.
Diomed--
ReplyDeleteI am impressed that you keep reading my blog, given that we differ. I think that shows you are being rather fair minded. Perhaps you are also doing me a service by pointing out when you think I've crossed the line from argument to rhetoric.
You criticize this statement, for example as rhetoric:
"If you elect Santorum he will crusade to ensure that states get to pass laws banning contraception people, even married people!"
Now, let's grant your point and suggest that I have appealed more to sympathetic readers hearts rather than their minds. But, nonetheless, the substance of what I said is true. Even your explanation of federalism leads to the conclusion I arrived at in this sentence.
(1) Santorum believes there is no guarantee the the right to privacy
(2) Santorum actively campaigns to persuade others of his views (hence writing his book and appearing on talk shows)
(3) Santorum is committed to the conservative government philosophy, which (as your post points out) would like to undo the "excesses of liberal judicial activism" such as Griswold v. Conneticut.
If you accept these three points, then I don't see why its unreasonablle to assume that he is "crusading" to allow states to pass "dumb" laws like the one in Conneticut that denied birth control to married people.
Am I wrong to make this conclusion? Your post only confirms my view.
In this quotation of mine that you call rhetoric:
"And, yet Santorum and his friends would be all too happy to let federal and/or state legislatures: "allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives . . .""
I take the second half of the sentence from Justice Douglas' opinion, hence its his "rhetoric." And yet, I am not so certain its rhetoric.
If you make something illegal (i.e. contracepion), then its logical to assume that there will be penalties for violating that law. Otherwise, why else would you make it illegal? If police suspected contraception use, when it was illegal, then they could get a warrant to search the marital bed for evidence that contraception was used, right?
Again, thanks for reading. And, thanks for trying to keep me "rational." However, I won't promise to be calm in the face of outrageous claims. And, I see Santorum's claims to be outrageous.