Jonah Goldberg‘s latest column informs National Review Onlin readers about the “shockingly dishonest propaganda being peddled by leading Democrats and media outlets” about Republicans and efforts to ban contraception.
Part of the problem is simply psychological projection. Since many liberals believe there’s no valid limiting principle on government’s ability to do “good,” they assume that conservatives believe there’s no valid limiting principle to do “bad.”
Rick Santorum, who unproductively helped inject birth control into the GOP primaries, nonetheless explained the flaw in this thinking. “Here’s the difference between me and the Left, and they don’t get this. Just because I’m talking about it doesn’t mean I want a government program to fix it. That’s what they do. That’s not what we do.”
But don’t tell that to the Democrats who are desperate to accuse the Republicans of Comstockery. …
… The Obama campaign insists that “if Mitt Romney and a few Republican senators get their way, employers could be making women’s health care decisions for them” and require that women seek a permission slip to obtain birth control.
It’s all so breathtakingly mendacious. Rather than transport us to President Franklin Pierce’s America, never mind Charlemagne’s Europe, the Blunt amendment would send America hurtling back to January 2012. In that Handmaid’s Tale of an America, women were free to buy birth control from their local grocery store or Walmart pharmacy, and religious employers could opt not to subsidize the purchase. What a terrifying time that must have been for America’s women.
