Lunacy

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

Just when you thought the words and ideas of the Republican presidential hopefuls could not possibly get any more insane – by attrition, if for no other reason, three loonies, Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain and Rick Perry having dropped out of the race – they do.

With the implosion of Newt Gingrich and the continuing irrelevancy of Ron Paul, Republican voters have been left with two unappetizing choices: a fanatic and a fake.

Last week Santurrón (Rick Santorum), the fanatic, came out with the most imbecilic statement in a campaign marked by countless stupid, untrue, and misleading assertions. Appearing on a show hosted by Glenn Beck, a character who was fired from his last job because he was too wacky even for right-wing Fox News, Santorum said: “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college.”

And what was Santorum’s insight into Barack Obama’s motives in trying to open the doors of higher learning to all? Universities are “indoctrination mills,” Santorum said, where youths go to lose their faith, brainwashed by a horde of atheists and secular humanists that make up college faculties. He later added that Obama was a “snob” for desiring that every high school graduate have the opportunity to attend college.

This is wrong in so many ways it’s hard to know where to begin. First, Santorum is just plain wrong on the facts. According to a study published in Social Forces, a major sociological journal, Americans who don’t go to college experience a deeper drop in their participation in organized religion than those who do. The authors’ conclusion:  

“Contrary to our own and others’ expectations…young adults who never enrolled in college are presently the least religious young Americans….64 percent of those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution have curbed their attendance habits”… compared to “76 percent of those who never enrolled in college.”

Since, according to PBS, this is the very study on which Santorum bases his claim, Santurrón is either a fool or a knave. A fool would misunderstand these findings, never read past the first part of the conclusions, and consider that as all the proof needed that college breeds heathens.

On the other hand a knave – dictionary definition, a dishonest, deceitful person – would take the first part of the quote out of context and deliberately distort what the researchers are really saying, and use it to make an outlandish claim against a political adversary.      

Santorum is certainly an ignorant fool; his statement equating gay marriage with bestiality is only a small sliver of the overwhelming evidence. Even so, it is hard to believe that in this instance he didn’t know he was peddling a lie.

The results of the Social Forces article strongly suggest a very different interpretation. It is not college but the independence that comes with adulthood that produces a sharp decline in religious observance. The family, not the university, is the institution most implicated in religious indoctrination and observance. It is not by accident that the children of Muslims become Muslim and the children of Roman Catholics are mostly Catholic. Adult status, at least in the United States, liberates individuals from the thought and behavior control exercised by family. Thus one plausible of why those who go to college are less like to lose religion is an extension of adolescence, and college students unlike most young people in the labor force, are economically dependent on their families.

All this is only the first, and not the most important, thing that is wrong about Santorum’s twisted, vicious explanation of why Obama wants kids to go to college. Doesn’t nearly every parent? Shouldn’t Obama want for every American child what he surely wants for his own girls? Are there not reams of studies that show that on average college graduates earn considerably more and have lower unemployment rates? Isn’t higher education critical for U.S. economic development, global scientific progress, better health, the country’s security, and even national self-respect? Is the snob the one who wants all kids to have the right to higher education, regardless of color or class, or the one who would do nothing and allow steeply rising costs to limit college to an ever-shrinking, mostly white, rich elite?

And one wonders why Santorum, the militant Christian, came up with such an uncharitable – not to mention unlikely – reading of his brother’s intentions. Or is it the case that for Santorum, like almost all Republicans, no charge can be too dirty or false to pummel the first “brother” to reach the White House?

As for Mitt Romney, his latest week of campaigning provokes me to turn on its head the mantra of American anti-intellectualism, and ask: “Mitt, if you are so rich, why aren’t you smart?” Last week, Romney was in Michigan, where he was born and where his father served as Governor. It’s a measure of the antipathy against Romney that this native son, expected to win the primary in a cakewalk, is sweating bullets in the contest with Santorum.

Then, too, Romney wrote an opinion column in The New York Times opposing government help for the auto industry under the title “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents make their living directly or indirectly from the auto industry. No one should be surprised then that when Romney booked a gigantic stadium for an event in the state, it was attended by only a few dozen people.

Embarrassing? Not as much as what Romney said there to show his support for the average American worker: “My wife drives two Cadillacs!” At the same time would be quite a feat but not a cruel deed like the time Mitt tied his dog to the top of the car for an entire twelve-hour road trip.  

I close with a question for Republican voters, who will choose one of these two turkeys to stand for their party in the presidential election to be held on the month of Thanksgiving. If you are so rich and so Christian, why aren’t you a little smarter and kinder?  

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