The morally (un)credible Santorum

 "Santorum is the only candidate who cares about the moral breakdown of society"

Me: "He cares? What is that worth? I want a president who will actually address the core issues.  No more reflexive and fruitless odes to traditional values.  So what, exactly, will he do?"

"He's against abortion. And he'll serve as the moral inspiration for Americans to follow."

Me: "Ok, ok.  First off, nobody's ending abortion.  Second, it doesn't work like that. Leaders have the potential to do great things, but they can't shift a decades-long process that is unfolding due to the immutable laws of human nature and human society. Even if it were possible, Santorum doesn't have the charisma to be that man."

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I was arguing with a friend about feminism, women's rights, and the moral disintegration of the West. I replayed the various ills feminism has wrought: he spouted politically correct platitudes to the tee.   I offered nothing original, just pointed out the verifiable effects of women's economic and political empowerment, but he still failed to grok the connection between women's rights and societal breakdown.  After a few minutes of fruitless bantering, the conversation made way for the subject of political elections when he, against all reason and rationality, he had the chutzpah to defend Rick Santorum because of his unwavering "defense of moral values and hard position on abortion." Talk about not getting it.

I replied that restoring moral value to the country and outlawing abortion was a whole lot harder than anyone imagines, a task Santorum or any of the candidates would be impotent in implementing, not with the technological miracles of contraception and reliable abortion, thinking at the time of Ferdinand Bardamu's excellent post on technology's intractable caper on hedonism. 

On second thought, the only way to restore moral sanity to the U.S would be to hand it a one-way ticket to economic abyss, so it looks like Barack Obama would be the best candidate after all.  But I digress.

Of course, technology isn't the only source posing problems, so the moral argument for Santorum may still have some relevance. In that vein, I will present a few policy prescriptions that, if it could be demonstrated that Santorum not only would support, but would do his absolute best to implement, then I will publicly endorse him for President.  Here it goes.

End no-fault divorce.

End female suffrage. Alternately, limit the suffrage to weed out parasitical voters.  

Provide women significant incentive to leave their corporate job to become stay-at-home mothers. No one is exempt from tradeoffs.  If women devote all their energies in competing in the endless horse-race that is corporate America, the necessities of the home and the nuclear family, the self-evident foundation for any moral society, will be neglected and its function will deteriorate.

End to Alimony and other single-mother welfare programs.   

In other words, he pretty much just has to spot the elephant in the room, an elephant that is conspicuous to any thinking person but remains invisible for the self-serving cyborg elite.  So while a great deal more policies are necessary to remedy our moral plight, any politician going this far would be so out of the mainstream that he would merit my vote.  Santorum, man up!