◼ Our most powerful social asset is the one we aren’t supposed to cultivate. - John Hayward/Human Events
On the eve of what could, therefore, be either his big break or his swan song, Jim Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute took a look at Santorum’s detailed campaign platform. As with the other GOP candidates, he doesn’t talk about it enough when he has the attention of a national audience – it’s curious how they treat so many powerful, intriguing proposals as footnotes.
Santorum is better than average at tying the many elements (31, to be exact) of his platform into a unified theme, reflected in its title: “Made in America: Empowering American Families, Building Economic Freedom.” The economic freedom part comes from lowered and simplified tax rates, particularly on investment and manufacturing. One of those curiously underplayed ideas is what amounts to a flat income tax with only two rates, 10% and 28%.
Unlike some other tax reform proposals, Santorum’s keeps plenty of deduction incentives, compromising economic freedom in the service of a very specific goal: supporting American families. He offers tripled deductions for children, and eliminates marriage tax penalties. He would keep the deductions for charity, home mortgage interest, health care, and retirement savings, all of which are of keen interest to families.
Our media and political culture is rather hostile to the notion of deliberately supporting families through government policy. This is partly a result of the enormous energy deployed in the quest to re-define marriage – an effort premised on the notion that there is absolutely nothing special about the union of one man and one woman. Policies deliberately designed to cultivate traditional families are unhelpful to this effort, so they draw accusations of bigotry, theocracy, or at least hopelessly out-of-touch nostalgia. The defense of marriage and the family is dismissed as the province of unthinking religious zealots.
However, there are eminently practical reasons to support and nurture the traditional family, which have nothing to do with religion.
