About Flavor of the Week Santorum

Never mind that he has been dubbed “the dumbest man in the Senate”, Rick Santorum does not think with the mind of the Church, despite wearing his Catholicism on his sleeve. On preemptive war, torture, climate change, immigration, labor unions, and more his is a Republican orthodoxy, not a Catholic one. Which will not keep conservative Catholics from peeing their pants at the prospect of a Santorum candidacy.

John Gehring offers a fine analysis here: http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/fplaction/the-catholic-case-against-rick-santorum/, to which I would only add Santorum’s Islamophobia, which is white-hot, and his indifference to the suffering of the Palestinians.

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Andrew Bacevich on Ike’s Warning

“Fifty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower … warned of the rise in America of the “military-industrial complex.” An accomplished soldier and a better-than-average president, Eisenhower had devoted the preponderance of his adult life to studying, waging, and then seeking to avert war. Not surprisingly, therefore, his prophetic voice rang clearest when as president he reflected on matters related to military power and policy

Ike’s farewell address, nationally televised on the evening of January 17, 1961, offered one such occasion, although not the only one. Equally significant, if now nearly forgotten, was his presentation to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953. In this speech, the president contemplated a world permanently perched on the brink of war—“humanity hanging from a cross of iron”— and he appealed to Americans to assess the consequences likely to ensue.”

More: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-tyranny-of-defense-inc/8342/?single_page=true

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