Excerpts from conservative Senator Rick Santorum's new book, "It Takes a Family," have leaked out. Some gems (courtesy of CapitolBuzz) include:
Abortion rights are worse than slavery! "But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave." (page 241)
Women don't need no education! "The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." (page 138)
Feminists tricked women into working outside the home! "Many women have told me, and surveys have shown, that they find it easier, more "professionally" gratifying, and certainly more socially affirming, to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children. Think about that for a moment... Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders." (page 95)
Count on Wal-Mart to uphold "moral values"! "Another corporate good citizen cooperating with parents to keep kids from inappropriate content has been Wal-Mart." (page 332)
The title is an obvious jab at Hillary Clinton's "It Takes a Village." Says Santorum's publisher:
"Throughout his book, Santorum emphasizes the central role of the family— in contradistinction to the metaphorical 'village' of the federal government, as promoted by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton— in achieving the common good."
Which prompts me to ask: If you think the family is all it takes, then why are you a United States Senator?
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I particularly like te third one. I can see him desperately asking women how they feel about working outside the home, hoping against hope that the next woman will say not that she really does find it fulfilling, but that she was forced to by the ravages of feminism.
Stephanie Coontz (a historian) wrote a couple books on the topic of #3 called "The Way We Never Were" and then "The Way We Really Are" in which she tackles how women aren't working outside the home in some quest to assert female dominance. They've been working outside the home since the beginning of time in order to make ends meet in a household and this has gotten worse in the last 50 years because of the Republicans' method of chipping away at welfare and the tax burden footed by the wealthy and keeping real wages stagnant since the late 70's.
(Go Reaganomics).
Only 15% of households in the US can live on the one bread winner model because the other 85% of families are poor/divorced/widowed/etc. The fact that women like working just shows that we are willing to foot the financial burden without getting our knickers in a twist. Sacrifice in the name of family and he's pissed because we don't let our children starve.
Excellent.
Before I go into volcano mode over the abortion-slavery comment, I'd like to mention that it seemed to me that Coontz's book "The Way We Never Were" was more about explaining how the "perfect family" of patriarchal times was a) not perfect, and b) paid for with the happiness and fulfillment of women. Financial necessity is not the ONLY reason women have ever worked--fulfillment and economic independence are some damn good incentives. Also, as a pre-eruption earthquake, I'd like to point out that Rick Santorum is a complete asshole, a selfish, illogical moron, and above all, SEXIST, for suggesting that women feeling fulfilled is a bad thing.
Now . . . In regards to the abortion comment . . . I didn't think there was ANYONE on Earth who was STUPID enough to CONFUSE A SLAVEHOLDER WITH A SLAVE!!!!! It is forced pregnancy and childbirth that is comparable with slavery! It is the mother who is forced to support the fetus, not the other way around--it is the mother who has to restructure her life around the fetus's requirements, not the other way around--granted, the fetus is more like the overseer, with the government as the slaveowner (evil requires intent), but it does not change the fact that it is women who would be enslaved by pregnancy, not fetuses. What services is the fetus forced to provide for the woman?
And slaveholders did not kill their slaves to get rid of them because they had other ways to accomplish that--slaves could be sold or freed. You can hardly sell a fetus to another woman (not that it would provide unpaid labor for her either), and, well, try freeing it! Just try! Liberate it from your body! Oh, wait, then it would just die. Just like in an abortion!
Isn't a big chunk of the Right's support of the death penalty due to the fact that they don't want to waste money supporting criminals?
By the way, what about that Texas futile care law, where children can be removed from life support if their families can't pay? That was signed by George "Abortion is murder" Bush! You know what that says? Ventilators are worth more than women--it's wrong somehow to force a machine to support another life--that's what women are for!
The existance of Rick Santorum is reason enough to support the Equal Rights Amendment.