and then there's that pesky illiteracy problem

Capitol Buzz is posting excerpts from Rick Santorum's new book "It Takes a Family" so we can all get a chuckle or two without having to line the coffers of the logically impaired senator. Among the interesting things Santorum notes is that those who were aborted would consider themselves lucky to have the cushy lives of slaves ("in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave") and that diversity is a baaaaaaaad thing; Walmart, however, is the epitome of a corporate good citizen for not selling things some parents disapprove of (even though many of their employees need to go on the dole).

Most interesting is his stance on the aberration that is public school

"By asking the right question, we can see that when it comes to socialization, mass education is really the aberration, not homeschooling. Never before in human history have a majority of children spent at least half their waking hours in the presence of 25 to 35 unrelated children of exactly the same age (and usually the same socio-economic status), with only one adult to keep order and provide basic mentoring. Never before and never again after their years of mass education will any person live and work in such a radically narrow, age-segregated environment."

Santorum seems to forget a few things such as the fact that education was a luxury until relatively recent history and that those children who weren't attending school were working on the family farm or subjected to working under harsh conditions in mills, factories or were sent away to work as servants in the homes of others. He also seems to ignore the many children placed in orphanages because families could not afford them and had no consistently effective available way to limit family size (aside from the relatively high infant/child mortality rate of the dark ages he's leading us back to). As usual, facts and historical perspective are completely lost on Santorum.

There's more too, including little Ricky's take on how horrible it is that working mothers find it "professionally" gratifying and socially affirming to work outside the home; we all know how bad it is when women feel like that and that those evil feminists are surely to blame. Really, who knew Rick was so adept at satire?

Tags: santorum; abortion; feminism; public education; walmart; conservatism

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