Santorum on Citizenship

Santorum, at a NH townhall Saturday:

The job of a citizen is one that was essential--our founders believed was essential. They limited, as you know, initially, the rights of citizenship from the standpoint of voting to a small group of people because they were concerned that all Americans wouldn't take the responsibility seriously, wouldn't be educated enough to make an informed decision. Over time, though laws passed and amendments passe to the constitution, that opened up and more and more people. But with that freedom to be a participant in the electoral process comes responsibility.

That's right. The exclusion from the franchise of women, minorities, and poor dudes didn't have anything to do with a preponderance of influential 1700s politicians people believing they were classes of human being that didn't belong in public life, or in some cases, subhuman. Those infalliable Founders just didn't think they were "ready" yet, but boy would they have been pleased to learn that with a century or two of hard work they'd show they were worthy of getting a vote.

Why has a fetishization of the "founders" so characterized the current right-wing resurgence? What necessitates such an extreme whitewashing of history when surely there would be no face lost in claiming that these extraordinary men were nonetheless products of their time in some respects, or even, that their impeccable morality exists outside of space-time but they lived in a democracy after all and their co-generationalists forced these positions on them?

But of course, neither of these questions would get at the real objective here: rationalizing conservatives' deep discomfort with the principles of egalitarianism that liberals, and the modern society they have shaped, hold dear. That discomfort, a result of deep aesthetic and sentimental attachments to authority (be it the ancien regime or Christian white male privilege), can be suffocating to the emotionally and intellectually incurious who make up much of the conservative base. Santorum's bed-time stories at once absolve these folks of a responsibility they can't bring themselves to bear while reinforcing a truth they really do cherish deep down: that people "like them"--really know what's best for the country.