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Saturday, April 26, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:28 AM:
Marcus is on the Santorum beat big time. Start at the top and scroll down. Marcus is, of course, absolutely on target in his comments on where true conservatives stand on this issue - his conservativeobserver URL is as always appropriate.As for the neocons at National Review, what would one expect? Has Marcus forgotten that patron saint of the conservative movement though he may be, Buckley has a book subtitled "Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist"? Notwithstanding their conservative sentiments, Buckley and NR have long been chary of entrusting the US government with much of anything, including enforcing their conservative beliefs.
The TurkeyBlog, for its part, tilts more libertarian, believing firmly in the conservative axiom that human nature is as it is and won't be changed by new man, Soviet man or any other such utopian (dystopic?) idea. But what one does about that is a different question. The TurkeyBlog opposes incest, bestiality and child molestation on libertarian, rather than conservative, grounds - the affected are not in a position to defend their liberty or truly give consent, because of immaturity, omnipresent coercion, and outright inability to speak at all. Homosexuality, on the other hand, may be an abomination, an evil, or whatever. But between consenting adults, it is consensual and the adults in question don't need the state trying to save their souls. As for prostitution, the one other one that is seemingly a-ok if the court can't pronounce on the homosexuality, Marcus and I had an exchange some time ago in which I argued that the circumstances in which prostitution occur almost invariably fail to meet the test for free or freely chosen interactions, before the morals question was even undertaken. If it were, the moral sensibilities that come with my conservative worldview would lead me to denounce as vile, repulsive and even evil, but my libertarian instincts would leave me wary of celebrating the state for restoring morality by criminalizing it. The state may assure greater order and safety with the criminalization of prostitution, but if it's doing it for Jesus, then it's over the bounds.
That said, Santorum ought not be canned. As Marcus notes, he speaks for a lot of Republicans - many more than will have the nerve to put their name to such sentiments in our politically correct times. I am not, of course, among those Republicans, but I'm aware that my party is pretty split on the matter and don't think those with whom I disagree should be summarily booted anymore than they should be able to boot me. This party, like all parties, needs to figure out where - if anywhere - it stands, with those truly committed to the party understanding that the only way to be on the winning side of every intra-party battle is to split the union into 260 million parties of one. Given the impracticality of this, we'd best stick by our representatives in order to assure that our broader agenda is implemented, while negotiating finer points as they come.
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