Rick Santorum, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, was recently on “News and Notes with Ed Gordon” on NPR, where he discussed his new book on American values and the need for the nuclear family to be brought back into our culture, and also made a statement that was not only false, but seems to bring sense to why he is so wrong about what he believes. Before I get to that fictitious statement and why it makes Republicans who are concerned with everyone else’s values pretty much wrong, here is why Santorum is wrong about the American family.

In Santorum’s opinion, American culture is rotting from within because families are now broken. They consist of a single mother raising her children, or, in his worst case scenario, a homosexual couple rearing kids. Without a structured family with a mother and father at the head, children will be led astray and lack the components model citizens should have. In his own bigoted universe, Santorum may find support for such an aloof concept, but he fails to understand his ideas are based on the myth that the ideal family ever existed. He appears to look back in fondness to a time when a man and a woman married for love, and bestowed upon their children the positive affects of that love. Sadly, Mr. Santorum, this time is a figment of your imagination.

I’m always appreciative of the memories people hold dear to them, but I’m especially concerned when people gloss over history because they let nostalgia get the best of them. For example, veterans of various wars may recall events in that period of their life as parallel to the story of a movie based on those events, when in actuality the occurrence of events as shown in the movie are fictionalized, but in turn also fictionalize the memories of the veterans. In other words, they remember themselves always as heroes, or the time always as better than what they experience today. Similarly, in Santorum’s case, his “Ward and June Cleaver” ideal remains untarnished because the delusions of an entire generation states that things were simpler and much better in the 1950s, especially when it came to the family. “Families ate dinner together, kids didn’t have video games and violence to raise them, the world wasn’t spinning out of control.” These are commonly held notions that read more like some horrible internet chain letter than truths.

Santorum and those under his world view neglect to take into account the scores of disastrous marriages that resulted child abuse during this time, or the number of alcohol-ridden households run with an iron fist by the husband. Instead, what’s focused on is how television depicted the world - carefree, easy-going, simple, but honest. In my family’s case, both my parents came from abusive households, yet I can see even in them this idea that things were still better. “Children today are so much different than we were,” is the words I hear many of the baby boomer’s say. “Kids today don’t respect their parents, and we didn’t have to deal with such a messed up world like it is today.”

You’re right, you didn’t.

Instead, you were learning how to duck and cover in case a nuclear missile struck a major urban area. You had to endure race riots because bigotry was actually being legislated (though it is today with the vote against gay marriage) until finally someone with sense said African Americans are human beings too. Under those two points alone, I still stand firm that differences between the generations are negligible. That is why Santorum is seeking to legislate based on a fantasy world, and sadly, in his vision, the world’s greatest gay couple cannot raise a child better than the world’s most dysfunctional straight couple. That’s just piss-poor reasoning. And p.s. Mr. Santorum, you were born in 1958, so harkening back to the time you never lived in is pretty foolish when you don’t know exactly what you’re asking for.

As for the interview, which you can listen to in full here, I was completely dumbfounded by a statement Santorum made, especially because it was a flat out lie. The statement by Santorum, whose stupidity still baffles me, is put in bold and underlined, which is obviously my doing. The conversation went as follows, word for word:

Ed Gordon: Why do you believe that black America has not embraced the Republican Party?

Santorum: Well obviously for over a century they did. If you were an African American by in large in America from, you know, 1860 to the early 1950s or maybe 1940s, you were a Republican. And that changed. Maybe in many respects Republicans took the black community for granted. And now I believe the shoe’s on the other foot. I think the Democrats are taking the black community for granted, and this is an opportunity for us to reshift again and show that the values that we are putting forward will work better for that community. And, you know, that’s why, one of the reasons I wrote this book - one of the reasons on the back cover of this book is an African American family - because I believe very, very clearly that the values that build stronger families are absolutely in synch with where everyone I talk to in the African American community believes that that community needs to go again; it needs to rebuild the African American family, and we can’t do that unless we have policies, programs, and the like from government, as well as a culture, that is changing the tune that is being sung right now in that community.

Gordon: Yet there are so many programs, I think about Affirmative Action at the front end of that, that black America will say is under attack, in particular by conservatives and the Republican Party, and they say that message that you just delivered does not jive with the actions that they see, when gains - many people think of the Voting Rights extension - are looked to be -

Santorum (interrupting): Oh and, uh, this is, this is the Straw Man that the Left elevates, somehow or another, that, you know, the Republicans are against the Voting Rights Act. That’s just crazy. I mean, you know, what the Democrats are doing, they’re fighting the old battles [sic.] of the Civil Rights era of 1960, and most African Americans understand this is just the politics of race, that it gets nowhere anymore today. That battle was fought. That battle was won. Some Republicans were on the right side. Some were on the wrong side. More Republicans, by the way, voted for the Voting Rights Act, voted for the Civil Rights Act, than Democrats did.

Hold it right there Rick. I think you have your facts out of order. A quick search of the vote tallies for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reveals the truth in this matter, and maybe that’s why you, Mr. Santorum are so confused - you can’t figure out what your own party has believed over the past few decades, more specifically decades you grew up in!

From Wikipedia.com, here is the statistical breakdown of how parties voted in both the House and Senate:

Civil Rights Act 1964
Vote totals by Party and Region:

The Original House Version:

* Southern Democrats: 7-87
* Southern Republicans: 0-10

* Northern Democrats: 145-9
* Northern Republicans: 138-24

The Senate Version:

* Southern Democrats: 1-21
* Southern Republicans: 0-1

* Northern Democrats: 46-1
* Northern Republicans: 27-5

Based on those results, and also understanding that the term “Southern Democrat” is synonomous with “Dixiecrat” which is synonomous with “Republican,” we now see what little truth Santorum’s statement carries. Essentially, for House members in the South, there were only seven “yes” votes out of 104, or 6.7%, and only one “yes” vote in the Senate out of 23 potential real, rational people, or 4.3%, to include African American’s as equal human beings. In the North, Northern Republicans still did not outweigh Northern Democrats in their vote to include African Americans in both the House and Senate, and therefore Rick is completely wrong.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is simple. Rick Santorum, while outspoken on a great many issues, has no bearing or moral compass of his own. Instead, he seeks to alienate people through attempting to pass legislation that tells those who are different - such as homosexuals, his favorite target group - that they have no right to privately have sex because the Constitution does not specifically provide for it. And his views on the American family are off-base as well as I illustrated above. What I’d hope for Mr. Santorum and others seeking to legislate morality is that they learn to empathize and not criticize. Rather than see a single mother’s predicament as being one that will cause her to rear bad children, seek to legislate aid and positive programs to ensure these children are properly cared for if the mother cannot do it fully herself. By concerning themselves with these topics that frankly have no place in our politics, they make our system muddy, hard to navigate, and about as unwelcoming as any government in tune with it’s intolerant side.