What's Rick Santorum Really About?

Which was the Constitution primarily written to defend: the individual or the family? Libertarians obviously believe the former, while, as Jonathan Rauch makes clear in Reason (by way of his perch at the National Journal), Rick Santorum sides with the latter.

Goldwater and Reagan, and Madison and Jefferson, were saying that if you restrain government, you will strengthen society and foster virtue. Santorum is saying something more like the reverse: If you shore up the family, you will strengthen the social fabric and ultimately reduce dependence on government.

Rarely does a paragraph lay out such a pointed contrast between ideologies and the men who hold them. Too bad for Republicans, Rauch notes, that it's a fight between wings of their party. "The bold new challenge to the Goldwater-Reagan tradition in American politics comes not from the Left," writes Rauch, "but from the Right."

Rauch's piece is also especially worthwhile in that he may be the first Santorum critic to present the Pa. senator as anything but a fascist clown. In fact, Rauch serves up a Santorum who is a gutsy intellectual steering his party toward a line drawn over the past 200+ years by politicians who shared his values.

Neither smear nor puff, Rauch's fantastic piece is one of those deep, thoughtful articles you come across maybe once every six months and just read again and again, and to which the "brilliant" label is aptly applied. Whole thing is here.