Ideology and Dialectic Continued

To suggest that Santorum sees himself as a messianic figure might be to over-state the case, but it is clear enough that the values he professes are centered in a comprehensive and uncompromising world view, one complete unto itself and consequently no longer open to dialectic.  Santorum's world view is comprehensive, in part because it is uncompromising.  It is sustained by a father knows best nostalgic idealism, a desire for an America that never really existed, but even if it had, an America that could no longer exist within the boundaries of his comprehensive vision without some very broad and very obvious exclusions.  There are, of course, the exclusions that emerge out of the world view (a reduction of sexuality and of women's sexuality in particular to reproductive efficacy) and the exclusions that have emerged outside of the world view (the vilification of non-Christian religious world views but perhaps more those who resist, on secular grounds, the imposition of political theology, the "American left who hates Christendom").  As Krugman points out in a recent editorial, however, it is not only "about sex and religion."  Santorum has "also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a 'beautifully concocted scheme' on the part of the 'the left' to provide 'an excuse for more government control of your life.'"  There is an element of conspiracy theorizing behind Santorum's denunciation of the "junk science" behind the "whole narrative," and that in itself should render the diatribe suspect, but Santorum goes on to point out that it's a "beautifully concocted scheme because they know the earth is gonna [sic] cool and warm.  It's been on a warming trend so they said, 'Oh, let's take advantage of that.  We need the government to come in and regulate your life some more.'"   I find such a dialogue improbable at best, absurd at worst, in part because, at one remove, it is difficult for me to imagine who might actually benefit directly from such government control -- the environmentalists, perhaps, but who has significantly profited from a regulatory stance to limit greenhouse emissions?  Any regulatory stance is predicated on the common good, and while it is incumbent on those who advance the regulations to demonstrate how they do serve the common good, it is equally incumbent upon those who resist regulation to demonstrate how they harm or impede the common good -- that is to say, engage in dialectic aimed at consensus.   Having said that, the list of those who might in fact profit from the contrary stance and who might want to foreclose on dialectic could be rather long.  It is just as easy, if not easier, to imagine big oil executives making contributions to a super pac in support of a reactionary cabal against the regulation of greenhouse emissions.  If Darwinian accounts of evolutionary biology must be rejected because they don't square with Biblical accounts of creation, the recent accounts of climate change caused by, or helped along by, human action must likewise be rejected because they don't square with an equally sacred notion, the self-regulatory free market.