Rick Santorum will never read this . . .

. . . but he should. Yeah, it's a little highfalutin', but it's what I'm reading right now so I thought I'd share a little. From Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action:

Actors who raise validity claims have to avoid materially prejudicing the relation between language and reality, between the medium of communication and that about which something is being communicated. . . . [M]ythical world views prevent us from categorially uncoupling nature and culture, not only through conceptually mixing the objective and social worlds but also through reifying the linguistic worldview. As a result the concept of the world is dogmatically invested with a specific content that is withdrawn from rational discussion and thus from criticism. . . .

Only against the background of an objective world, and measured against criticizable claims to truth and efficacy, can beliefs appear as systematically false, action intentions as systematically hopeless, and thoughts as fantasies, as mere imaginings. . .. To the degree that mythical worldviews hold sway over cognition and orientations for action, a clear demarcation of a domain of subjectivity is apparently not possible . . . In this connection it has been observed that members of archaic societies tie their own identities in large measure to the details of the collective knowledge set down in myths and to the formal specification of ritual prescriptions.

Alas, it appears that the United States, today, is in large part an archaic society. As I have said many times, the Republicans are not trying to lead us back into the 19th Century. They are trying to undo The Enlightenment, to restore the 14th Century.