Countering Zealotry with Clarity

Regardless of the number of delegates he actually accumulates, Rick Santorum has made it clear that he cannot be ignored.  This means that those who vote for him cannot be ignored either.  Apparently, there are votes to be gained by appealing (pandering) to the highly exclusive precepts of Fundamentalist Christian morality.  It was therefore refreshing to read the efforts of Robert Reich to stand such Fundamentalism on its head in an editorial in today’s San Francisco Chronicle:

What Americans do in their bedroom is their own business.  What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardroom and executive suites affects all of us.

Unfortunately, such clarity is easily silenced;  and, as we learned from the case of Eliot Spitzer, the closer the clarity gets to actually threatening the financial sector, the more vulnerable it becomes to attack on purportedly moral grounds.  Nevertheless, I am always glad to see Reich trying to break the cycle, even though I have lost any of my own personal faith that his efforts will ever have an effect.