PDP-Frothy Radicalism

Although the media doesn’t often acknowledge it or let it get through, the radicalism in this year’s crop of conservatives runs quite deep.

Take the current front runner, Rick “frothy mixture” Santorum.

Now.. Rick’s a Catholic and I have no problem with that, since I grew up catholic and although I’m an atheist, I find a number of elements of catholic teaching–such as the notion that to be good you have to do good–to be a very good thing.

 However… so far as I can see–Rick is quite the selective catholic.  As Juan Cole has so nicely laid out–there are numerous Catholic teachings that Rick Santorum is happy to ignore and/or outright oppose, while he just cannot stop frothing at the mouth about contraception and TEH GAYZ!

 

However.. now there’s a new and even more radical thought that he just put out yesterday–namely that “State-run factory schools”–i.e. all public education–is “anachronistic” and should be done away with…

Wow.

What’s particularly fascinating here is not that you have a conservative attacking public education–that happens all the time–and/or doing so by claiming that it hasn’t evolved or improved at all over time with absolutely no evidence–that happens all the time too–but that you have one that is Catholic specifically targeting the “factory style” of public education.

Dear Rick–have you ever heard of the “Parochial School system” that Catholics have been running since public schools came into existence. I went to one of those schools for grade school–and let me tell you–THEY ARE JUST AS “FACTORY STYLE” AS THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS THEY ARE COMPETING WITH…

So.. in other words.. your criticism of the public school system is also a criticism of the catholic school system that I’m betting you don’t want to say nasty things about.

I wish some journalist would follow up these comments with a question of whether Santorum thinks the Catholic parochial school system in many northern cities is also anachronistic.

That would be great.