During Wednesday night's debate in some temporarily politically relevant zone of America, Rick Santorum defended his belief that contraception is dangerous and the cause, as opposed to the solution, to social problems like single motherhood and attendant issues e.g. poverty, but not zygotes, because they are not a problem but are excellent in every imaginable scenario. To bolster his claims, Mr. Rick invokedthe thoughts and somehow not self-published words of Charles Murray, an author widely considered to be racist, or at the very, very least, severely blinkered, deranged and stuck in antebellum times. Murray is the author of a book called "The Bell Curve," which apparently "argues that black people score lower on IQ tests because they are genetically inferior to whites." Yes, truly shocking, Santorum's interest in this "theory." In that book, Murray and his co-author also conducted "research" "showing" that the average IQ of African Americans is 85, while the average IQ of whites is 103 and the average IQ of Hispanics is 89.
During the debate Santorum justified his fandom of this guy, who just released another book called "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," by saying that he was featured "on the front page" of the New York Times last week. Murray was also mentioned in a February op-ed piece by Ross Douthat in which Douthat calls the new book, which is apparently less scandalous than "The Bell Curve," but still sucky, "exasperating," full of "impractical" ideas, and "entirely divorced from American political realities," just like our tighty-whitey pseudo-frontrunner Rick. (There is also this much morethorough takedown of the book by former W. speechwriter David Frum.)
Santorum's whole thing is "children be having children," and it is incredibly amusing that he thinks that contraception somehow ENHANCES/INCREASES American children's likelihood of begetting their own children. One could also say his interest in this book just proves once again that Rick Santorum doesn't care about blah people or anyone else except wha people, because, hi, Title of Book. [ThinkProgress]
Santorum: Contraception Is Evil Because This Racist Author Said So
Hypothetical data that could change my mind:
-- If cannabis caused lung cancer or birth defects at a non-trivial rate -- if the inheritance tax resulted in decreased net tax revenue and employment over 20 years -- if the death penalty significantly deterred violent crime, and no innocents were ever executed -- if the legal availability of safe abortion produced a permanent Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a permanent Republican presidency