Life Out Here: America's moral conscience

I grew up with a guy who was convinced he was the moral conscience of America.

He would lecture girls about skirt length and trouser tightness. He would scold boys about hair length and trouser tightness. He would preach to other students against promiscuity, for general moral uprightness and against, of course, trouser tightness.

He even would proselytize about proper word pronunciation. One regular refrain dealt with how fellow students wrongly pronounced the “wh” sound as a “w,” so they said “wat” or “wy” instead of “hwat” or “hwy.” Having attended school with him from kindergarten until our 12th grade year, I’d probably heard this refrain a couple hundred times as he was laying it on a couple of girls in English class one day during our senior year.

From two rows away, I said, “Hwy are you such a pain in the a—?”


He turned bright red and sputtered. I had set him off, yet again. He considered me his nemesis.

He hated that a rarely studying, moderately partying, sports-playing, wisecracking guy did as well or better than he — a paragon of academic and personal virtue — did in school. He and his buddy, another fellow who projected himself as intellectually and morally superior but copied off my Spanish exams, for which I would loudly scold him in class, booed me when I received an award at a scholarship awards ceremony. On the way back to my seat I blew kisses to both, then scratched under my arms like a gorilla.

They were, predictably, appalled. Most particularly appalled was the young man who considered himself the moral conscience of America.

Even back then he wore his signature sweater vests and usually had eyes always welling with tears, either upset that not enough people were listening to his righteous wisdom, that so many of us were heading toward hell, or both.

Now that guy is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president. OK, it’s not the same guy bodily, but it’s the same guy spiritually, a person convinced he’s the moral conscious of America.

Rick Santorum is against Americans using birth control. He believes states should be allowed to ban birth control. He thinks birth control encourages us to do things in the “sexual realm.”

He’s right about that. But as long as those involved are adults, most Americans agree it is no one else’s business. Santorum believes there is no right to privacy guaranteed in the Constitution, even for married couples. So what goes on behind the bedroom doors of American homes is the business of the government, the police, and Rick Santorum, according to Rick Santorum.

Hence, Santorum supports the reinstitution of anti-sodomy laws. (Santorum even has compared homosexuality to bestiality.) Anti-sodomy laws, though, cast a pretty wide net.

On top of all that, Santorum is against public schools and working mothers.

Like the person I grew up with, Santorum cannot be accused of hypocrisy. He appears to live the life he preaches, and for that he deserves credit. Like the fictional character he so closely resembles, Flanders on “The Simpsons,” he doesn’t seem a bad person, just one convinced we are all going to hell unless we follow the strict dogma to which he adheres and deeply desires to impose on everyone in our country.

All that means I strongly support the Republicans nominating Rick Santorum for president.

Hwy? Because hwat will happen if they do is Barack Obama will be re-elected by hwide margin.

Bret Kofford teaches writing and communications at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus. His opinions don’t necessarily reflect those of SDSU or its employees. Kofford can be reached at Kofford@roadrunner.com