Twenty years ago, Vice President Dan Quayle stepped on a liberal land mine by stating the obvious: The (then) extremely popular television show “Murphy Brown” was sending the wrong message to teenage girls about single motherhood.
Murphy Brown was doing quite well. She made single motherhood look glamorous and easy, but most single mothers and their children are likely to live in poverty and die in poverty.
Last week, presidential candidate Rick Santorum confronted another dangerous liberal myth, “G.I. Jane.” There is a reason this Demi Moore flick bombed at the box office and nearly ended her career. Even Hollywood fantasies must have a hint of truth.
Quayle became the brunt of jokes, but eventually a few honest journalists began to tell the truth about the incident: Dan Quayle was right. By then his political career was irreparably damaged.
Will Rick Santorum suffer the same fate? My guess is this gutsy grandson of a coal miner is made of sterner stuff. He is not about to make-nice with the liberal media and hope the dustup he created over White House plans to send military women to the front lines of battle will go away.
You and your daughters better hope it doesn’t.
Obama’s latest bend-over in order to kiss the Birkenstocks of radical feminists who are expected to carry the water for his re-election campaign was barely noticed due to his squabble with the Catholic Church. His unconstitutional edict requiring religious institutions to offer insurance coverage that includes birth control and abortifacient drugs to their employees – even if it violates their moral teachings – is an extremely important issue. Equally important is his decision to place military women with combat battalions.
Thank you, Rick Santorum, for calling attention to an equally dangerous pronouncement.
If this decision had received the same amount of press coverage as the birth control pronouncement, Obama likely would have been forced to walk it back or trash it entirely.
His edict on birth control (if allowed to stand) will be the death of the First Amendment.
His edict to place women support personnel with ground combat units will mean the unnecessary deaths of countless military women – and men.
Women are technically prevented from serving as combat soldiers. However, when the battle rages and a combatant is wounded, a soldier who is co-located with him is often his only ticket out of the line of fire. Is a 110-pound woman capable of carrying a 180-pound man in his battle gear to safety?
Warfare is serious business. Every soldier must be able to count on every other soldier around him in the event the worst happens.
Presently, there is no shortage of men to fill these units. Nor is there any shortage of jobs for military women.
Feminists have no use for the military. However, if we must have one, they want to control it, and the path to the Joint Chiefs leads through combat. That is what this is all about. What we have is a few women officers who are willing to dance on the graves of countless enlisted women and men so they can advance in rank.
What we have is another temper tantrum from their feckless feminist sympathizers who will do anything to prove that men and women are interchangeable fungibles.
In case you missed it, when Santorum was questioned by CNN’s John King about the Pentagon’s announcement, he expressed concern that placing women in these positions could compromise a mission because “people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission.”
After the initial explosion from frantic feminists, Santorum did not backtrack. He doubled down in subsequent interviews. To summarize his position, men have emotions. When they see a woman in harm’s way, they will abandon the mission to protect her.
This is not idle speculation. Israeli women were placed in combat units during the War of Liberation in 1948. This practice was quickly abandoned because the men did just that.
Santorum has three daughters and genuinely cares about women. Liberals are willing to sacrifice them if it keeps the radical elements in their base happy.
Feminists say Santorum’s attitude is so 1950s. In 1950 a man was, on average, six inches taller, 30 pounds heavier and, more importantly, had 42 percent more upper-body strength than the average women. The same hold’s true in 2012.
Congress does have the ability to overrule this decision. Unfortunately, there aren’t many real men left among our elected representatives, and the generals and admirals are unwilling to testify honestly and go against the president in this politically correct environment.
