The more we find out about Rick Santorum’s theocratic views on government regulation of private morality, the more frightening the prospect of having him in the White House. Now it turns out he wants to ban gambling as well as contraception — at least when it’s too convenient:
I’m someone who takes the opinion that gaming is not something that is beneficial, particularly having that access on the Internet. Just as we’ve seen from a lot of other things that are vices on the Internet, they end to grow exponentially as a result of that. It’s one thing to come to Las Vegas and do gaming and participate in the shows and that kind of thing as entertainment, it’s another thing to sit in your home and have access to that it. I think it would be dangerous to our country to have that type of access to gaming on the Internet.
Freedom’s not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute? There is no right to absolute freedom. There are limitations. You might want to say the same thing about a whole variety of other things that are on the Internet — “let everybody have it, let everybody do it.” No. There are certain things that actually do cost people a lot of money, cost them their lives, cost them their fortunes that we shouldn’t have and make available, to make it that easy to do.
Though he tries to make it sound as though he’s only talking about gambling online, bear in mind that he said this while campaigning in Las Vegas, so he obviously wasn’t going to say that Vegas should be shut down. But the logic of his argument applies just as readily to gambling in any setting. If freedom is not absolute and it should be limited by what Rick Santorum thinks is “beneficial,” then there is no firewall between the two. Just another example of his Christian authoritarianism.
What’s the mantra we hear constantly from the right? “Liberals think they know how to spend your money than you do!” And yet Rick Santorum could now be on his way to the Republican nomination for president. And at least some conservatives recognize the contradiction. Alana Goodman writes in Commentary magazine:
The question is, where’s the conservative outrage? If Santorum’s comments aren’t nanny state-ism in its purest form, then what is? If President Obama made the same remarks, the story would be getting the Drudge siren. Conservatives would be up in arms. Twitter would be flooded with speculations over what “vices” the president would try to clamp down on next.
If you’re a conservative and you give Santorum a pass on this, you forego any future right to complain about liberals taking away your Happy Meals and trans fats. There have to be consequences for these things.
They gave up that right a long, long time ago.
35 comments
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dingojack
February 22, 2012 at 12:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mr Frothy dribbles: “Just as we’ve seen from a lot of other things that are vices on the Internet, they end to grow exponentially as a result of that“.
So, Mr Frothy, how much of the Internet is taken up by porn, for example (expanding exponentially as you recall. y = e^(n))?
One percent*. Yep, a mere one percent!
You know, Mr Frothy, what is making up the bulk of Internet communications? SPAM.
Gonna ban that too, oh ass-exploding one?
Dingo
—–
Quote from here
eric
February 22, 2012 at 12:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The funny thing is, I can see Mitt saying the exact same thing, albeit for more mercenary reasons. E.g., “Don’t worry Vegas, I won’t let that nasty internet take away your business.” And given that Newt has now taken $20 mil from a casino mogul, he’s a foregone conclusion.
So, it seems doubtful that any GOP candidate at this time will support freeing this particular market.
chilidog99
February 22, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
oops
bahrfeldt
February 22, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Freedom is not absolute, for the rest of us. However in his warped “mind” power is definitely absolute, at least for himself.
joeina2
February 22, 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Though let’s be honest, dingojack, if anyone did come up with a way to control spam on the internet without it being a thinly-veiled attempt to control and monitor the web, i’d be inclined to vote for them.
I won’t even joke about voting for Santorum, the thought of him getting the even the nomination drains me of hope. But such an initiative would take a mediocre candidate to a fantastic one.
Also – I wonder how much traffic, not pages, porn accounts for. At first I was thinking more than 1%, but I’ve changed my mind. I access amazon and gmail at least once a day, but youporn? not so much.
raven
February 22, 2012 at 12:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well shoot, my comment keeps disappearing into cyberspace. Last try.
Let’s see. Rick Santorum is:
anti-women
anti-birth control
anti-nonprocreative sex
anti-No Religions
anti-mainline Protestant
anti-science-creationist, global warming denier
anti-gambling
anti-gays
anti-??? Seems like Rick is anti anything that isn’t an old, white rich male Catholic extremist.
If you add up all the groups he has on his anti list, it seems to be most of the American people. Now why is he running and why is anyone supposed to vote for this kook?
The other issue which hasn’t got much attention. He is a war monger. Santorum is all but saying he is going to start a war with Iran. Iran isn’t my favorite country but all our wars have cost a lot of money and lives and haven’t really accomplished much.
rjmx
February 22, 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Fixed to say what he really means…
The Lorax
February 22, 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My state recently passed bills allowing casinos to be built, because they bring in a metric fuckton of revenue for the state.
Also, I’m deeply concerned with his use of the word “gaming” in place of what his context seems to be indicating, “gambling”. We’ve seen wingnuts attack games in the past (from Dungeons and Dragons to Grand Theft Auto), and if Santorum wants to go down that route, then he should expect absolutely no support whatsoever from people age 30 and under. We grew up on video games, lest he forgets.
… on the other hand, I’d squee like a My Little Pony if he did go down that route, because it would mean Penny Arcade would rally the troops against him. And that, my friends, would be incredible.
Ed Brayton
February 22, 2012 at 12:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s actually a myth that the brick and mortar casinos want to stop online gambling. That was true about 15 years ago, but they have since found out that online gambling actually helps them. That is especially true of Harrah’s, which owns a ton of Vegas casinos and owns the World Series of Poker. They’ve made a fortune because online poker sites send thousands of players to that event every year. Even before Harrah’s bought them, Caesar’s Palace had an online site ready to go, just waiting for it to be made explicitly legal (it’s not really illegal now, other than sports betting, but the government keeps pretending that it is). MGM Mirage, which owns most of the Vegas casinos that Harrah’s doesn’t, would be a huge player in online gambling if it was licensed and regulated. The American Gaming Association, the lobbying arm of the casinos, did not support the UIGEA in 2006. They’re not opposed to online gambling. And Nevada just passed a law allowing it in that state once the federal government gets its head out of its ass.
lordshipmayhem
February 22, 2012 at 12:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If he’s against gambling, does that mean he’s against stock and bond trading on Wall Street?
Is he secretly (or more likely unwittingly) an Occupy Wall Streeter?
Does the Tea Party know this? (I know, “Do they know anything.”)
magistramarla
February 22, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And how many steps is it from censoring internet gambling that he doesn’t approve of to censoring something else that he doesn’t approve of – such as FreeThoughts Blog, perhaps?
DaveL
February 22, 2012 at 12:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pop quiz: those limitations lie:
A) Where your freedom begins to impinge on the equal rights of others; or
B) Where Rick Santorum says they do?
Next on Santorum’s hit list: Guns, boats, horses, and hot rods.
Area Man
February 22, 2012 at 12:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Something tells me he won’t be counting on much support from that demographic anyway. Santorum has about as much appeal to young people as Palpatine, but without the charisma.
raven
February 22, 2012 at 12:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t forget alcohol. That does cause a lot of harm to certain people and their families, alcoholics.
greg1466
February 22, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, it might not be all bad…easy access to religion and alternative medicine also “actually do cost people a lot of money, cost them their lives, cost them their fortunes”, so maybe he’ll ban them too.
And don’t forget bingo night at the local Catholic church/school. That will have to go too.
Who Knows?
February 22, 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would think the casinos in Las Vegas would love to expand their customer bases by adding online gambling. I know I’d feel more comfortable gambling at one of the well known casinos sites.
abb3w
February 22, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…have any of the press bothered to ask Santorum what his position is on the reinstatement of a federal prohibition on alcohol?
Anyone have connections to reporters on the political beat?
Area Man
February 22, 2012 at 1:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
At the risk of incurring the wrath of others, I’m going to somewhat defend Santorum here.
My views on gambling are a rather nuanced. I am generally in favor of allowing rational adults to do things that are harmful to themselves and to take risks that may end up badly. To a large extent you have to allow individuals to decide what risks are right for them. (When those risks get externalized onto others, however, I draw a bright line.)
But the key word here is rational. Problem gamblers, by definition, are acting irrationally. Studies have shown that the pleasure centers of their brains light up when they lose, which inverts the negative reinforcement that keeps most of us from playing when the house has the edge. Like a rat that gets rewarded with cocaine when it presses a button, gambling addicts will keep playing again and again, for days at a time, and often ruin their lives and that of their families in the process. Under those circumstances, I don’t have a problem with the state stepping in and putting a stop to their destructive behavior (and ditto for analogous situations, such as with hardcore drug addicts or clinically depressed people contemplating suicide).
In an ideal world, we could somehow separate out the problem gamblers from those who are taking calculated risks, or who are conscientiously paying for entertainment, and then ban the former from playing while leaving the latter alone. Of course, we don’t live in that world. So I’m in favor of erring on the side of liberalized gambling laws. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t set limits and take other proactive measures to keep gambling addicts away from the casinos.
So, my point is that Santorum’s formulation above isn’t really all that far off the mark. If you can stop people from destroying their lives, why wouldn’t you? The problem is that there’s no reason to think that Santorum would stop there. He is obviously of the authoritarian bent in which people having too much fun bothers him. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a grey area.
noastronomer
February 22, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“What rights in the Constitution are absolute?”
Seriously?
Ellie
February 22, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@6 You left out anti-education and anti-prenatal testing.
roundguy
February 22, 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll believe him when he tries to pry the bingo card out of some Catholic’s hand.
naturalcynic
February 22, 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
C’mon, Ricky. The immortal soul has to be in there somewhere, otherwise it’s all just capitalism.
Mr Ed
February 22, 2012 at 2:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If the test for a restriction on a right is Cost a lot of money, Cost lives, and/or cost fortune then I might point out gambling doesn’t hold a candle to religion in this test. People who can ill afford it give 10% to a church, countless thousands have died and are still dying in the name of religion and people regularly give all their wealth to religious figures.
Trebuchet
February 22, 2012 at 3:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh come on now, you know very well Vegas and Wall Street are entirely different. There are lots fewer crooks in Vegas, and the games are vastly less likely to be rigged.
eric
February 22, 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man @18:
The same logic could be used re: alcohol and chronic alcoholics. The point is, we don’t restrict the freedoms of the vast majority because a small percent can’t handle it. What we do in that case is provide support for that small percent. Or we carve out much more narrow exceptions to support them.
For example, it bothers me to know that U.Nevada Reno has an on-campus chapter of Gamblers Anonymous that occasionally has to deal with students who gamble away their tuition money and so are forced to drop out of school. But I don’t think this is a reason to prevent gambling per se: I think its a reason to try and find a very local, Reno-specific solution to that problem. Likewise, we should look for ways to specifically address on-line gambling use by problem gamblers. This could be as easy as a credit check or bankruptcy check…or maybe not – maybe its a tough problem and we never find a prefect solution to it. But, either way, we should probably not restrict the freedoms of the population of the entire country because of them.
Area Man
February 22, 2012 at 5:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, I agree. Which is why I said that the ideal solution would be to separate out the addicts from everyone else, and restrict the access of the addicts while giving everyone else free reign. In real life though this is highly impractical for a number of reasons. So I favor harm mitigation similar to what you suggest.
The point I was making is that Santorum is not crazy to suggest that it is proper to limit “freedoms” in certain exceptional circumstances, namely those where people are clearly acting irrationally and ruining their lives. A lot of people tend to think that either gambling is a vice to be forbidden or a freedom to be protected, but there’s a more subtle (and I think, proper) way of looking at it.
timgueguen
February 22, 2012 at 6:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Santorum won’t go after guns. Well, at the very least he’d never admit wanting to. That would definitely get him in hot water with his constituancy
Crudely Wrott
February 22, 2012 at 8:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
roastronomer:
I think he might be. Perhaps his memory needs a nudge.
Hey, Rick! Look out! Here comes a clue-by-four!
Rick, I’ll just call to your attention the penultimate clause, the one that starts with “and” and ends with “Posterity”. Posterity. That would be you and me, boy. It also includes everybody else. Any questions?
jonhendry
February 22, 2012 at 9:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I bet Santorum doesn’t believe in limiting the freedom of corporations to charge usurious interest rates.
tomh
February 22, 2012 at 9:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man said:
The point I was making is that Santorum is not crazy to suggest that it is proper to limit “freedoms” in certain exceptional circumstances, namely those where people are clearly acting irrationally and ruining their lives.
Santorum would limit freedoms for everyone, in all circumstances. Aside from that, who is to decide when someone is “ruining” their lives? We may know nothing about their lives, how can we decide what is best for them? To limit someone’s freedom because you think you are saving them is, in my opinion, simply wrong.
Area Man
February 22, 2012 at 10:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The notion that we can’t figure out when people are hurting themselves, even when they have a clinically diagnosable disease, is utterly ridiculous. If you want to err on the side of caution and say that our first assumption is that people who destroy their financial lives are acting in their own best interests, well, fine. We can then see if that default view stands up to scrutiny. But to say that we can never know when people are acting compulsively, and not rationally, is is simpleminded solipsism. It’s tantamount to denying that we can ever know anything about anything.
You’re entitled to your opinions. In my opinion, gambling addicts are not “free” in any meaningful sense of the word, and to fail to help them, much less facilitate their addiction, is highly immoral. It’s no less immoral than letting a clinically depressed person commit suicide out of the absurd belief that they must know what they’re doing.
tomh
February 23, 2012 at 2:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man wrote:
Who said anything about a clicically diagnosable disease? Your words were, “where people are clearly acting irrationally and ruining their lives.” Pardon me if I don’t trust you to decide for me if I’m acting irrationally.
Because I don’t trust you to know if I’m acting rationally, it means we can never know anything about anything? Utterly ridiculous.
Oh good, you and Santorum can tell us just who is a gambling addict and then take away their freedom. That will make them meaningfully “free” somehow.
Area Man
February 23, 2012 at 10:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Who said anything about a clicically diagnosable disease?”
What do you think gambling addiction is? What the hell have we been talking about this entire time?
“Oh good, you and Santorum can tell us just who is a gambling addict and then take away their freedom.”
Of FFS. First of all, you should really put forth the effort to read what I’ve written. I think Santorum is a tool and that simply telling certain people they can’t gamble won’t work.
Secondly, you do realize there are objective methods to determine whether a person has a gambling problem, don’t you? This is not a matter of me going around making a subjective assessments. Most gambling addicts are aware of their problem and would like to stop but can’t. There is even a program where people sign up for the casinos to ban them. (Shh, don’t tell them the casinos have taken away their freedom!) If you have a hard time understanding this, ask yourself if it is proper to take a shotgun out of someone’s hands who is about to blow their brains out. If your answer is “no”, then I’m afraid we have nothing more to say. If it’s “yes”, then the same logic applies here, freedom hating though it is.
tomh
February 23, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man wrote:
I wonder how you know this. You seem so sure.
So now you’re talking about people voluntarily addressing their own behavior, the way they would go to a doctor, or act to solve any other problem they had. This is a long way from where you started, when you said, “the ideal solution would be to separate out the addicts from everyone else, and restrict the access of the addicts.”
Area Man
February 23, 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m not sure why I bother any more, but you have an amazing knack for missing the point. The voluntary casino bans don’t actually work, but never mind that. The point is that when people know their behavior is out-of-control to the point where they ask other people to stop them from gambling, this is prima facie evidence that their gambling is irrational. You took the bizarre position that it’s impossible to know that someone isn’t making an informed, rational decision to ruin their lives through gambling — not just difficult to know, but impossible to know. That is absurd. When even the addict himself tells you, you know it’s true.
So in this situation, yes, the ideal strategy would be to bar the addicts from the casinos. Concerns about their precious freedoms are a little trite when they themselves want to be banned from the casinos. Capiche?
And I notice you didn’t address the question about taking a gun away from someone who is suicidal, so I assume you have no real interest in the broader moral issue. It looks like you’re just having a knee-jerk reaction.