None of Santorum's critics on the right, including me, take any issue with this sentiment. To set up "But surely we should not banish faith from the public square!" as if it were a rebuttal to our complaint that Santorum ought not act like a missionary who merely happens to be in government is to wage war against a straw man that only the Daily Kos kids would defend.

There is a difference between a deeply religious man looking to the Lord for personal guidance on how to run a business and a CEO who includes big chunks of scripture in the daily staff memo. In government, that distinction is a particularly important one.

Jim: All our hopes and best wishes go out to you and your family. Thank God you are all safe and together. Please let us here know if we can help in any way.

Judithann: A former Santorum aide has said publicly something to the effect of, "he isn't a Senator who is Catholic, he is a Catholic missionary who happens to be a Senator."

I feel that vision is completely at odds with any traditional American conception about the relationship between our government and our civil society, especially those articulated by actual conservatives.

With all due respect, and I mean that, such thinking is totally confused. They are not refusing to sell you anything on account of your beliefs, they are merely consulting their beliefs and judgments – be they religious, moral, aesthetic, or economic – in deciding what they, as private citizens, choose to stock and sell. They are not discriminating against customers, as you allege, any more than an ice cream parlor that does not happen to stock Pistachio is "discriminating" against customers who seek that particular flavor.

Here is, I think, a close parallel: is it in any way unfair or unethical for a Christian couple who owns a bookstore to decide they will not offer pornography for sale? If you agree that they would be within their rights, then you must also side with us and the pharmacists in question. The only difference is whether the product is ink and paper or a cocktail of chemicals; the principle is precisely the same.

The Lawrence O'Donnell stimulus plan: enlarge the House and Senate to employ tens of thousands of Americans as legislators!

This logic sounds good but is completely untenable. Where do you derive this natural right to buy whatever medicine you want at whatever store you want? If an entire community of Catholics would be happy to patronize a Catholic-run pharmacy, you would seek to ban their voluntary transaction of business because you wouldn't be happy shopping there?

And why stop at medicine? If a balanced diet is an important component for health, why not fine any grocery stores who deign to sell us fatty foods or don't display vegetables prominently enough for your liking? Why should department stores be allowed not to carry running shoes or exercise gear? "Our health can't be left up to shopkeepers' discretion!"

No way.

Thanks for the compliment, David, and thanks for checking out the kids table over here on the College Feed.

Professor Rahe: If we're saying that Romney "gave us" a Massachusetts health plan on which he was forced to compromise with a fleet of rabidly liberal Democrats, then I think it's fair to apply the transitive property to Santorum's massive, Arlen Specter-sized lapse in judgment:

Santorum gave us Specter.

And Specter cast the deciding vote on Obamacare.

So...

You hit on the critical difference between positive "rights" and negative liberty. A positive "right" to a good or service that others produce and provide necessarily infringes on the providers' liberty to contract, freedom of commerce, and liberty of conscience.

How does the thought that there exists some transcendental "right" to specific medicines accord with the fact that those medicines have only recently come into existence? Was every pre-1960 pharma scientist who didn't invent hormonal birth control violating women's "rights" by not inventing the Pill sooner? For that matter, was every pre-1960 individual who didn't go into pharmaceutical science violating that right through omission?

The logic is completely untenable, of course. There are big problems when people want to usurp the rhetoric of "rights" when they actually just mean "things that I feel people ought to have if they want it." Huge difference.

I think an important distinction is that between a man whose political career has, by any reasonable expectation, just passed its apex and is likely to begin its denouement versus two young men who are still viewed as "rising stars."

Nobody can possibly blame a one-year Senator for not feeling ready to run for President, either on grounds of actually insufficient experience or for the more personal fear about blowing his entire career in a premature fashion. Paul Ryan is maybe more debatable, because his career has been longer and his path to future advancement less clear.

But – both of those men are in national government, fighting on the front lines day in and day out. Daniels thinks the country is headed off a cliff and is taking early retirement; Ryan and Rubio are not.

This is a brilliant description of Brooks's trick here.

1. Morality and sports are deeply at odds.
2. [Patented Brooks musing about abstract "virtue."]
3. Therefore, you were silly to believe #1, because the world is a complicated place!

Uh, except that none of us thought morality and sports were at intractable odds until you constructed that premise.

Some hack columnists, like Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich, make their living by conflating invented themes and media narratives with the actual details of public policy. Others, like Nick Kristof, make their living by shaking their heads sadly while conspicuously avoiding any actual point of view. 

But David Brooks? He makes his living by inventing Very Important And Fundamental Clashes Between Competing Visions, based on his patented blend of pseudo-sociology and amateur moral philosophy.

In my humble opinion, Ross Douthat is the only Times opinion writer worth his salt. But he is really good.

Really?

Resistance to embryonic stem cell research culminating in a courageous veto of the SCREA, appointment of Roberts and (though it took way more prodding than it should have from the base) Alito, signature on a federal law banning partial-birth "abortion," Mexico City Policy, signed Laci's And Conner's Law. . .

Insofar as I am socially conservative I will take Bush 43's record on those issues eight days a week.

Without speaking specifically to the thesis that campaigning on social issues is always good politics, I think much of Bell's point speaks to the deep fallacy that obtains in liberals' distaste for focusing on moral questions (I tried to unpack this the other day over on the College feed).

The same liberals who constantly implore the most productive Americans to put ethics (specifically, the ethics of self-sacrifice) ahead of economic considerations do not hesitate to denigrate as reactionary rubes any American voters who do just that – prize their moral compass more highly than their finances.

We're promising you a big basket of governmental goodies, and you still vote your moral principles? You really don't know what's good for you, do you?! 

How empty. And how condescending.

And politics and Paul Krugman are doubly so!

I would simply ask that you re-read your comment, but substitute "solar energy" for "manufacturing." This will reveal that your argument for carving out an artificial advantage for companies that happen to be involved in manufacturing (thus making the corporate tax code less flat and less fair) relies on the same liberal logic as policies we all recognize to obstruct market forces in a harmful and distortionary way.

Picking winners and losers among economic sectors is, conceptually, no better than picking winners and losers within a sector. It's the same central planning that affords preferential treatment based on incomplete information and political convenience. Wherever it crops up, this tempting but ultimately fallacious policy diverts resources away from their maximally productive use.

Senator, I completely agree with the energy policies you put forward in this post. But please recognize that the same economic logic that makes "picking winners and losers" such a fruitless task applies to the idea of carving out special tax exemptions that only apply to  corporations in a certain, politically convenient sector of the economy.