I guess I spend too much time listening to Dan Savage, because until recently, I thought Rick Santorum was just a boogeyman: a hyperbolic caricature whose name was merely invoked to illustrate the ridiculous extremes to which social conservatism can be taken. I thought that even among republicans he was a sort of pariah, too embarrassing to actually support.

Turns out I was tragically wrong. As his recent performance in the primaries has demonstrated, many people actually consider him a viable candidate for the presidency. To properly understand my shock and puzzlement, consider if Bill Ayers won three primaries in the 2016 election.

Anyway, here’s this farce of a man explaining how he reconciles his religious belief that health care is a human right with his political belief that the government shouldn’t provide it.

Rick Santorum is right. Even if we hold a deep-seated religious conviction that something is right, we shouldn’t ask the government for help effecting the necessary changes. The government only offers inefficient solutions that trample our personal liberties.

Which is why we have to immediately outlaw abortion, or in the least, make it as difficult to access as possible…

If Santorum actually went through the process of weighing rational solutions against biblical prescriptions — as he says he does — then he would have considered that the number of women seeking abortion does not change when the procedure is outlawed. He’d realize that providing birth control decreases the number of unwanted pregnancies, so it constitutes a much better means of prevention for “baby murder.” But it’s clear that he doesn’t actually think about the bible rationally. In fact, it’s clear he doesn’t even think about the bible. In December of 2011, he was taken aback when a student at Dordt College (a christian institution) asked him how we can care for our poor without our social programs. Santorum, visibly shocked that a Christian would be concerned with helping the poor, replied “You go to Dordt College and ask me that question?”

Evidently, Santorum believes charity should be limited to personal or church-mediated giving, but assuming his confusion was not simply feigned for the sake of his condescending retort, it’s frustrating that he wouldn’t have considered that many christians’ motivation for supporting social programs is due to their theological beliefs.

One more Santorum gem:

(Embedding disabled, so watch here)

Yeah, this is why all math majors just dogmatically believe that x⁰=1 … because if they didn’t, the liberal establishment would not have granted them membership to their elite, close-minded echo chamber.

Dear butthurt Catholics: