Men With Principles

House republicans held hearings recently on the issue of health care and availability of free contraceptive drugs. On the first panel: not a single woman, and all the men present were/are opposed to White House policy on this issue. Besides the fact that the Republican Party is digging a huge ditch the size of the Amazon for itself (nearly 70% of Americans and 90% of women support the WH position), the most frightening element of this event and countless other events staged by conservatives in recent months is that it seems to have swept away American post-war history with regards to basic rights in general and women's rights in particular. Where are we going as a nation if we're actually going to debate the merits of allowing Americans access to birth control pills (and, in the case of students at Catholic and Christian oriented universities, even deny contraceptive medications to women who use them to combat life threatening illnesses?) But these are men with principles. Men like Rep. Issa--who has had his own ethics issues in the past; but which of these hypocritical U.S. representatives hasn't?--are trying to take this country down a dark road. We discuss dystopian societies on this site as there are many writers who imagine dystopian settings that seem too wild and implausible to be real. But listening to Issa and Mr. Vitner and, in recent weeks, Santorum, the new frontrunner on the republican side who seems to favor making contraceptives illegal, it appears that we don't need dystopian literature to show us what can happen when those in power get drunk on that power. These discussions and arguments aren't about the Constitution or the separation of church and state. They are, simply put, about politics at the expense of basic freedoms and rights. Syria and Egypt are extreme examples of what happens when we forget how important it is to keep a democracy democratic.