These are not normal political times. How do we cats know? Because Rick Santorum is taken seriously.
By whom, we're not sure. To us, Santorum is an off-the-charts right-wing fool whom the voters of Pennsylvania were silly enough to twice elect as their U.S. Senator. (Thankfully, they came to their senses in 2006.) But now, the Republican Party has become so fringey-nutsy that Santorum is considered some kind of credible candidate for President, and he merits mentions on POLITICO's "2012 Live" calendar.
For example: Today, Santorum spoke to the Home School Legal Defense Association's Pacific Home School Conference in Santa Clara, California. POLITICO listed it as one of his events. Ho hum.
Ya know — in normal times, it would be an automatic disqualifier for a Presidential candidate to speark to such an inherently un-American group. America wouldn't be America if not for the shared experience of public education. Public schools helped make generations of immigrants true citizens of this country. Public schools are (pardon the expression) as American as apple pie.
Home schooling? Home schooling is creating a generation of Bible-quoting, science- and math-denying, fundamentalist automatons who won't be able to come up with an original thought if their lives depended on it. Children who are home-schooled will grow up knowing nothing — literally, figuratively and historically — about people who don't look, and act, and think like them. Home schooling contributes to the Balkanization of our country. It's bad for America.
If Ronald Reagan had spoken to such an outrageously fringe, far-right Christian group as the home schoolers in 1980, the media would have immediately drummed him out of the Presidential race as a ridiculously senile idealogue. But Rick Santorum speaks to these folks today, and nobody bats an eye. All is right (pun intended) with the world.
How far have our standards of acceptability fallen.
There's only one party, one ideology, and one religious movement to blame for it. We cats HISS.
(IMAGE: Norman Rockwell... who's more American than that?)
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