Give him credit, everyone: he actually gets it right. At the Values Voter Summit, he declares 'We will never have the elite, smart people on our side…our colleges and universities, they won’t be on our side'.
He claims that instead of intelligence and education being allies of the conservative movement, there are only two things that count: church and family. He can keep his church, but he doesn’t get to claim sole ownership of family. Family is whatever human beings bring to it; family evolves; what I consider family, Rick Santorum and his cranky cronies disparage and reject and deny. Family is greater and broader than the narrow, bigoted, and patriarchal version that he wants to promote.
And my ideal of family is not incompatible with intelligence and knowledge and expertise. My families can grow cooperatively and with love and affection while embracing the entirety of human knowledge, seeking more, and adapting to the truth rather than dogma.
My families can go to colleges and universities and come away richer and wiser. At least, those who can afford it…and I want to make that education reachable by more people, unlike Santorum, who wants to limit it and despise it because it undermines his ideology of ignorance.
…and to think ole brown & foamy actually got elected. Pitiful.
They are too stupid to realize that they’ve just been called stupid and applaud him
Dumb people of America, untie!
Now that’s what the people on your side like to hear, Mr. Froth. :)
This is the guy who has three degrees from good public universities. One of which is a law degree.
Which he uses along with his repulsive dark ages mentality to make 3 million dollars per year.
A typical example of hypocrisy and demogoguery in the pursuit of “god’s will”, in this case more money and attention for Satanorum.
“We will never have the media on our side.”
If only that weren’t another lie. Mainstream media don’t dare offend people who wrap themselves in ‘Church and Family Values’. None of them will highlight his arrogant ignorance. None of them will ask why leaders must be or pretend to be less than the best they could be. They want the best mechanic for their cars but not the best and brightest in Congress and the Senate?
Stupid is as stupid does.
He did lose his second reelection campaign by a large margin.
I can’t quite remember what the issues were. IIRC, he had set up an office and was selling favors, influence, and laws to lobbyists for money.
This is exactly what he is doing now but he’s added fundie xian morons to his list of clients.
Church, and the right-wing definition of “family”.
In other words, superstition and bigotry are what the conservative movement is all about.
Rick, you’ve summed it up perfectly.
The statement that the media is not on their (conservative) side is not true. At least not according to Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Link here: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/06/chart-critics-lamestream-media/53061/
raven: Mostly, it was not actually stepping foot in his district more than a couple times a year and that the commonwealth of PA (and thus the taxpayers) were paying for his kids’ cyber-schooling while they and their parents were actually residing full-time in Virginia, not in PA.
Some part of me wants to run the experiment; separate liberals and conservatives into two isolated societies and see which one survives longer.
I can’t quite remember what the issues were.
Among other things, he was only pretending to live in the district he “represented,” and defrauding the local school district in doing so.
Political history buffs may recall a pertinent quip from Adlai Stevenson, when he was running for president back in the fifties. At a campaign stop, a supporter yelled out, “Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!” Stevenson replied, “That’s not enough. I need a majority.
Fortunately, the likes of Rick Santorum and his armies of the night do not command a majority either. They have the advantage of espousing good old American values (God, family, motherhood, patriotism, blah, blah, blah) that virtually the entire society pays lips service to, but their narrow definitions of those values have frustrated their efforts to turn the U.S. toward Christian fascism. And smart, educated people keep fighting them at every turn.
#5 raven
Ah, but it is perfectly O.K. for the “leaders” to be educated. But not the followers. They might ask too many questions that the leaders don’t want to answer. Think of it in terms of sheep and shepherd.
Yet another irony meter went up in flames when he said the part that PZ left out – “…because they believe that they should have the power to tell us what to do.”
Wow. I guess it’s OK, though, for the non-elite, non-smart people to tell the rest of us what to do.
@LykeX:
Don’t say ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ – those words have ill-defined meanings. I suspect that what you mean is ‘non-authoritarians’ and ‘authoritarians’.
In that case, you want what Robert Altemeyer did, to the extent that the Global Change Game is a representative simulation of reality. You can read about his results in Chapters 1 and 5 of his book, “The Authoritarians”, available free here: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ .
How sad that there exists in this country a large audience before which he can say that with a straight face and receive applause.
Santorum loves to bill himself as “just regular folks”, when in fact he is anything but. A lawyer who graduated from a large university himself, he pulls in millions per year. A christian dominionist who got creationist language into the (already questionable) No Child Left Behind act, Santorum deserves contempt. No, Mr Santorum, you will only have bizarre right-wing diploma mills behind you, as any sensible university has long since seen you for what you are.
Rick Santorum’s history for stupid people: Christ lived 2000 years ago in a world where life expectancy was 35 years and everyone lived on a farm, and he did nothing to change that. In fact, nothing changed for almost 1800 years until the American revolution, when we set up the perfect form of government and started capitalism and had an industrial revolution. And now we live longer and don’t have to work on farms, and parts of the rest of the world copied our system (though they didn’t do it as well as us, of course). But then Obama came along, and he passed Obamacare and told those poor, dirty welfare people that they didn’t have to work and appeased our enemies in the Middle East and was rude to our friends and now no one respects us and it’s all going to shit unless we elect Romney/Ryan.
(Source)
I’m cross posting some comments I added earlier to the [Lounge] thread. Apologies to those who have already seen these Values Voter Summit comments.
More news from the Values Voter Summit, (you know this is going to be bad), this time from Gary Bauer:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/gary-bauer-voter-fraud-welfare-recipients.php?ref=fpb
Nope. Nobody has found rampant voter fraud anywhere in the USA. But the right is using the fake issue of voter fraud to pass laws that restrict voting rights, laws that disproportionately affect those likely to vote for Obama.
As for the dog whistle about all those urban folks sucking down welfare dollars, I’m too fed up to even comment.
More news from the Values Voter Summit:
“You know, we had a lot of bad news this week,” DeMint said. “On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets. And then I realized that was a story of the Chicago teachers strike. But we’ve got to think of good things.” –Senator Jim DeMint, Republican dimwit
More news from the Values Voter Summit:’
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#49041111
The segment begins with the caskets of US diplomats killed in Libyan coming home, with the return ceremony featured. This is followed by a summary of protests around the world, with video and excellent on-the-ground reporting.
Connecting these demonstrations to whackadoodle right-wing statements and videos on the web, Maddow makes the point that it was right-wingers claiming that Hillary Clinton was responsible for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood that prompted folks throwing rotten tomatoes at her motorcade earlier this year in Egypt. “Clinton is the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.” (See Jerry Boykin’s wingnut blog, which was believed by people in Egypt.)
“Where do these conspiracy theories come from?”
At about 10:00 the segment switches to the Values Voter Summit, to Paul Ryan’s speech, and to excerpts from other speakers, including Boykin, and Frank Gaffney (“The Muslim Brotherhood: the enemy within”).
Kamal Saleem spoke at the Values Voter Summit after Paul Ryan. “How do you change a terrorist? Introduce him to Jesus!” This is the guy who claims that President Obama is secretly praying Islamist prayers when it looks like he is saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Other Saleem pronuncements:
President Obama is legalizing terrorism in America
If the US passes immigration reform, “we’ll be wearing rag heads”
Roe vs Wade is how the US is being taken over by Sharia law
And this is the group that loves Paul Ryan, and where Ryan chose to speak.
Michelle Bachmann also spoke at the Values Voter Summit. She spent a lot of time connecting President Obama to the Muslim Brotherhood. I won’t repeat the several pages of that crap. She concluded the Obama-is-in-league-with-terrorists section of her speech with:
I’ve heard a lot of this meme on Fox News lately, that Obama is playing with celebs instead of doing his job. Bachmann used her position on the Intelligence Committee to back up her story of “appeasement” from the Obama administration.
Bachmann transcript here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81225.html
So let me get this straight. Obama is secretly in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, as is Hillary Clinton, but at the same time, the US government is backing videos with appalling production values in order to insult Muslims.
I think we may need Rush Limbaugh to explain this one to us. After all, he’s the guy who came up with the theory that Muslims more or less handed Osama Bin Laden over to Obama in order to make Obama look good, and thus to hasten the Muslim takeover of the US government
More news from the Values Voter Summit:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/paul-ryan-featured-alongside-former-terrorist
In addition to the self-described ex-terrorist at the Values Voter Summit, the following luminaries were in attendance:
The Republican presidential nominee (via a pre-taped message)
The Republican vice presidential nominee
Two sitting Republican governors
Two sitting Republican U.S. senators
Six sitting Republican U.S. House members, including the House Majority Leader
Good. Those Republicans in attendance will protect us from the nefarious plot to introduce Sharia law via the foot-in-the-door of Roe vs. Wade. Link to article giving details of the nefarious plot.
Now I know why we really must repeal Roe vs. Wade. /sarcasm
are we still giving out Ray Mummert awards?
Santorum certainly deserves one.
Some part of me wants to run the experiment; separate liberals and conservatives into two isolated societies and see which one survives longer.
there is considerable evidence that authoritarianism has significant selective benefits when group cohesiveness is favored.
you might not get the results you expect.
that hardly is a judgement on any other metric though, for example which society would be judged to have higher quality of life for each member.
I’m just saying it’s actually quite complicated.
I think we may need Rush Limbaugh to explain this one to us. After all, he’s the guy who came up with the theory that Muslims more or less handed Osama Bin Laden over to Obama in order to make Obama look good, and thus to hasten the Muslim takeover of the US government
I don’t have enough painkillers to mitigate the damage that caused my brain.
More news from the Values Voter Summit:
Transcript of Cantor’s speech: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81231.html
ah yes, the republican war on words.
where “seeking to silence” in reality means: “not echoing exactly”
Wait, Ichthyic, you mean a healthy society has a balance of many personality types in a social framework that allows maximum personal freedom, making use of the positive aspects of each type, while discouraging behaviors that are harmful to individual and/or society?
That’s so crazy it just might work!
Or to paraphrase Vetinari: “Everyone pulling together? I hope not. That just leads to tyranny. Free people pulling in all different directions is the only way to make progress.”
What santorum has to say isn’t true at all. Its only meant to deter regular people from investigating academic topics, or to endear an already anti-intellectual population to their cause. George W Bush pretended to be something other than ivy league educated too, it made him popular but it didn’t actually make him uneducated or stupid. The idea is to appear common. Shunning higher education would mean completely rejecting things that have proven advantageous to their party.
Higher education provides all kinds of people to serve right wing institutions- high powered lawyers, business executives, social scientists, engineers, historians, political science analysts, etc. Many specific things in the bush administration come to mind- the way that military technology was presented to the public as universally good, the way that lawyers helped the administration torture other people, the way that big businesses profited from the war, the way that the PR industry exploited 9/11 to make people compliant with war and rights violations, etc. I’m sure there are things I am forgetting. The people responsible didn’t form in a vacuum- they are absolutely products of the system they came from.
Noam Chomsky has written extensively about how the intellectual class of the US is used to serve powerful institutions all the time. They have plenty of the educated class on their side, and there are plenty of consequences for people who veer too far from the party line in specific parts of the higher education system.
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19670223.htm
The last two paragraphs of what PZ wrote are exactly why I read Pharyngula.
That’s so crazy it just might work!
given the history, sadly, one might actually conclude it IS crazy to think it works.
inevitably, history shows that even in mixed cultures, authoritarians typically eventually become empowered and significantly contribute to the destruction of that society.
I think, really, that the only way to avoid that is both to acknowledge that authoritarian personality traits are a real thing, that they can lead to dangerous outcomes, but that they also are not something that can simply be “removed”. Where authoritarian personalities have ended up being destructive, it is always the case they have been empowered to do so, usually by others who see that they can be manipulated as a group to further their personal gain (power, money, or both).
there has been a deliberate effort to empower and extremeize authoritarian personalities in the States for the last 40 years (same thing that happened with the “Islamic Revolution” in the Middle East, for that matter). History, as mentioned, has shown us this never ends well (as in, you typically end up with destroyed societies and/or wars). The only question now is whether the tipping point has been reached, or whether there is still time to reverse the process and re-integrate.
I think it’s too late. I hope I’m wrong. I see those whose plan was to utilize authoritarians for personal gain to be working feverishly to gather their profits as quickly as possible. Tells me that they themselves don’t think there is much time left.
Lynna #21
I can’t even. There are literally no words for how angry I am right now.
Beautifully composed piece, PZ; sounds almost like a speech. Ever considered standing for public office?
At a first approximation, this looks like an experiment that compares r/K reproductive strategies. The r conservatives would be led by the quiverfull strategy with an increasingly crowded consumtion society at the expense of its environment. The K liberals would restrict reproduction to a sustainable level and try to keep a more sustainable level. Just how does one expect the r’s to keep looking with envy on the K society?
if you’re trying to study the internal dynamics, you’d really have to take the “isolated” part of the experimental setup seriously. like, two different earth-like planets, with no space-flight between (or, more lo-tech, two continents with no possibility of ocean-travel)
From Lynna’s VVS summary @28
They wrote a bill to defund and disband the military, DOD and CIA?
Lynna, OM @ 20:
You’re forgetting the Republican conservative doublespeak. By “fraudulent” votes, they mean “not Republican” votes. By their standards, all votes for any Democrat are fraudulent and need to be purged from the ballot box. The only fair election is one where a Republican wins, and if the Democrat wins that is a dead giveaway of voter fraud!
How does it work? Here’s how!
You see, there’s Real America where all the lily-white, straight, male militaristic gun-totin’ authoritarian Christians and their non-penis-having slaves/ambulatory wombs live (as well as any minority sympathizers who are Godly and gracious enough to know their place and keep it).
And then, of course, there’s Fake America where everyone else lives.
And only the Real Americans have the right to vote in our country.
And no Real American would ever vote anything but Republican.
So if you vote for Obama or for any other Democrat you are by definition a Fake American casting a vote you don’t actually have a right to cast–therefore voter fraud.
See, simple!
Oh, crap. I think I just made myself sad. Or maybe more like abjectly pants-shittingly terrified for the future of this country.
@40. Yep. I am increasingly glad my wife and I don’t have kids, but I am terrified for our nieces and nephews (who are starting tom have their own kids).
William F. Buckley is rolling over in his grave. Or so Rick “Sperm Feces” Santorum should be thinking
William F. Buckley is rolling over in his grave. Or so Rick “Sperm Feces” Santorum should be thinking.
I don’t know about that. It seems that voter intimidation is pretty popular in your country through the use of poll challengers. Or maybe they could try what “Pierre Poutine” did during Canada’s last federal election – robocall hundreds or thousands of non-conservative supporters and tell them their polling station has changed.
Funny how the fraud actually seems to be coming from the parties who claim to be most committed to fighting it.
Rick Santorum is an asshat.
Thanks, Lynna. I think.
I seriously question people insistence that asshat Buckley would disprove.
I should have specified in-person voter fraud. That is, one person pretending to be another.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#48683676
I hope they are just warming up and will soon come all the way out and say out loud what they really mean, what they really think. They live in such an echo chamber they might just do it. If they feel so justified and superior and at the same time threatened by everyone that is different. That they to include Mr. Romney just say it all one national TV and stop pretending that they believe in any form of representative government at all that they only believe in power that is wielded by them any thing else is wrong, and they should not have to comply with any of it.
I’ll stop now
I wish there was something I could do but nothing I could do would make it any different.
I vote
I talk I watch
uncle frogy
Not sure where else to post this, and it is a little bit off topic, bbuuttttt
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/fury-at-sydney-protests-20120915-25z0a.html
It seems Santorum is just agreeing with John Stuart Mill;
‘Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.’
Oh, conservative societies can survive a long, long time. As shitholes for the majority of the population, so that the privileged few can live in luxury. That’s what conservatism is for: the establishment and preservation of aristocracies.
Awww. Tiny violins. Signs of trouble in the right wing of American politics.
Michaeil Tomasky, a journalist writing for The Daily Beast, summed up the Values Voter Summit, and Mitt Romney’s pandering to that element of the Republican party. Excerpts below:
This makes me so angry. Yeah, why is that, Mr. Santorum? No one is asking, “Why can’t we attract them?”
I’ve been a working stiff for years; the only way I’ve been to school is on my own dime, a class or two a year.A third of my life is past, and my education level is still “some college.” The more education I’ve gotten, and the more I’ve learned to use my critical thinking skills, the less conservative I’ve become. Then there’s this prattling well-educated bastard telling people they don’t need no book larnin’, not if they’s real Americans.
This is serious pushing-down. Just this morning they had a panel discussion on the radio talking about how there was a serious shortage of educated technical professionals in the USA, (It was on a BBC program they run overnight on the NPR station here), and how American companies were looking to developing nations to augment their technical expertise. (Which, given the models they were proposing, frankly stinks of some new bizarre form of colonialism, if nothing else)
Just – why is that, Mr Santorum? I think it’s very telling that no one on that side is willing to ask the question – or to offer solutions. It says to me, “the American worker is no longer necessary, we can squeeze them out, and starve them out, and keep them stupid until they die out. They were just another thing to step on, on our way to full and absolute authority.”
I’ll stop here. No doubt the more educated among you will read this differently than I do. I really hope so, anyway…
Is it that Santorum thinks that the stupid and ignorant should have the power to tell you what to do, or is he saying that if the elite were smart enough they’d join the Conservative Movement so that they could enforce and impose their values better?
Ichthyic@33:
Excuse the pedantry, but probably pretty obvious.
Agree– though I would start the most significant part of the timeline thirty-two years ago with the installment of the Reagan admin. The proverbial foot was in the door at that point:
-repainting the political portraits of Nicaragua (and El Salvador as well), with Sandinistas as bad guys/Contra thugs as ‘freedom fighters’
– political denigration and severe de-funding of alternative energy research (taking down the solar energy panels put up by Carter at the White House being a right-wing ‘spit in your eye’ at energy advancement)
– spending huge sums accelerating SDI research even as critics rightly pointed out its ineffectiveness and impact on potential nuclear weapons disarmament
– the steady drum beat of rhetoric about how regulation is the enemy of the economy and growth,…and on and on.
-war on (or apathy for) environmental integrity and a sustainable
planet
Most of the major right-wingnut inertia that we are trying to resist, even today, were born mostly out of those eight years.
That’s the question that many of us have been asking. My feeling is that I share your concern that….
I think it’s too late. I hope I’m wrong. [emphasis mine] I see those whose plan was to utilize authoritarians for personal gain to be working feverishly to gather their profits as quickly as possible. Tells me that they themselves don’t think there is much time left.
More news from the Values Voter Summit:
More News from the Values Voter Summit. Mother Jones reports extensively on Kamal Saleem and on his speech. This article is particularly good at debunking Saleem’s ex-terrorist-come-to-Jesus claim.
Saleem also lies about his name, which is really Khodor Shami. He lies about his football career in college, and about a title of “Grand Wazir” he claims an ancestor held (not a real title in Islam).
None of this background bothers the Values Voters. They seem to like liars.
More on Kamal Saleem’s I was a terrorist … Seriously! story.
This explains Saleem’s appeal to anti-immigrant right wingers. Saleem tells them he was a dangerous immigrant before he found Jesus.
though I would start the most significant part of the timeline thirty-two years ago with the installment of the Reagan admin.
actually, I probably would put it back with Nixon’s “southern strategy”.
Point taken. Although, I feel the real acceleration happened after 1980, when there was a greater willingness of the population to sip the Kool-Aid so artfully prepared by the right.
More telling details from the Values Voter Summit:
“Sexual Rampage” news from the Values Voter Summit. Lord save us.
Parker also said that the “HHS Mandate has Made Sandra Fluke a National Icon for Sexual Promiscuity.”
Video of Parker’s speech: Link.
@Lynna
I certainly hope so, but I tend to think these guys just know their audience. They know they can say anything at all, until about Nov 5th, when they will start chanting “Vote Romney”, with full confidence that the rubes won’t actually remember what they were saying more than a few hours, let alone weeks, ago.