'Santorum courts conservative Christians.' You don't say!

It must be a slow news day on the political front. With the Illinois primary a day away, the Associated Press hits us with the headline, "Santorum courts conservative Christians" in a story running across the country. I'm sure the wire service didn't mean it that way, nor did reporter Kasie Hunt, but that headline makes it seem like the AP has just discovered some new and unexpected strategy of the candidate, as if before this week he had courted the secular humanists or the social-gospel liberals. The real story in the story isn't so much Santorum's courting but the continuing mistrust among conservative Christians of Mitt Romney's Mormonism. Based on the people interviewed at the Central, LA church where Santorum appeared at the invitation of Family Research Council pontiff Tony Perkins, Romney may as well be a Muslim, since Mormons' concept of Jesus seems to be a major sticking point among the evangelicals. A more secular Republican might wonder whether that would make Romney less likely to cut taxes for the rich, but Santorum's audience had different priorities. They like the Pennsylvanian because "No one else talks about social issues," by which they mean moral issues. Likewise, when Santorum himself speaks about upholding a "culture of life," as he did in Central, he really means a culture with a particular morality. A culture of morality, especially as Santorum and his supporters understand morality, isn't exactly synonymous with a culture of life. You could call it a "culture of birth," I suppose, but the likes of Santorum have never felt that the state's presumed interest in ensuring that a fetus is born should extend to keeping the newborn alive, healthy and properly trained for a competitive global economy. Once born, you can die and it's no one's business but your own unless someone physically murders you. The morality of a true culture of life would make perpetuating life the highest priority; keeping everyone alive would matter more than how much any individual deserves. But morality in most cases, including Santorum's purported culture of life, really serves only to determine when it's right for someone to die -- when someone deserves death. If these moralists determine that you deserve death, for action or inaction, their motto becomes Donec mori spectemus -- "You can die, and we can watch." They can also help if they want -- if they think you deserve it -- but they reserve the right to let you die and will not be coerced into keeping you alive if they think you don't deserve it. So much for the culture of life as practiced by Republicans and their so-called "conservative Christian" allies. That doesn't make Democrats the culture of life by any means, but if you like the sound of that phrase you may as well come up with an idea for a culture that lives up to the name.