This is absurd. These quotes are mostly contextless and un-extreme. There are bigger fish to fry than this stuff, and I seriously doubt this will even become a semi-major campaign issue.
Women's Place is in the Home: "In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might confess that both of them really don’t need to, or at least may not need to work as much as they do… And for some parents, the purported need to provide things for their children simply provides a convenient rationalization for pursuing a gratifying career outside the home." (It Takes a Family, 94)
Not only does he not mention women in this paragraph, but he goes out of his way to not even imply women. Bravo to Santorum.
This is absurd.
Blame Feminism for Women wanting to work: "Many women have told me, and surveys have shown, that they find it easier, more “professionally” gratifying, and certainly more socially affirming, to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children. Think about that for a moment…Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders." (It Takes a Family, 95)
I don't totally understand what he's going for here ("core philosophies of the village elders" suggests this requires greater context), but the general idea seems to be that some women would rather work outside of the home than raise their children soley because of radical feminism. Honestly, I don't entirely agree with him here - if they want to work outside of the home, it's their right; I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with feminism. But this isn't totally absurd.
Who Needs College?
"The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." (It Takes a Family, 138) Definitely a context issue. I'd like to hear his argument, which is impossible with just a topic sentence.
Slavery Wasn't So Bad:"But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave." ((It Takes a Family, 241)
This is a rather stupid argument on Santorum's part. It does what many pro-abortion arguments (but not all do) - assume that everyone agrees that life starts at conception and goes from there. This does NOT in any logical way say that slavery "wasn't so bad."
Diversity is Bad: "The elementary error of relativism becomes clear when we look at multiculturalism. Sometime in the 1980s, universities began to champion the importance of “diversity” as a central educational value." (It Takes a Family, 406)
I think this is probably a set-up for a case against affirmative action and hyper-multiculturalism, which is understandable.
Public/Private Schools are bad:"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. It’s amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools." (It Takes a Family, 386)
Socializing with people our age is weird? OK...
There is a whole campaign's worth of attack ads in this book. Santorum is a complete nutjob who wants to take America back to the Puritan days of the 1700s.
This extremist Senator is a danger to this country and needs to be defeated in 2006.
None of this is extremist. Some of it I disagree with, but it's hardly calling for anything extreme. Besides, most ideas expressed here are his personal, not political, views. It's not like we're doing away with public schools anytime soon.
This is just a mix of muddled context and statements that not everyone will agree with but aren't really extreme. If this is the best you can find in the entire book, Santorum must be a lot more even-headed than I thought.
