Another seed which requires an article-length response. 

Santorum: Single Moms Are Breeding More Criminals

http://onesearch4-2.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/06/10592856-santorum-single-moms-are-breeding-more-criminals

Santorum is at it again. Another crowd, another group to vilify. He’s back to excoriating single mothers.  Not the single fathers who may have ditched them, who were so abusive, the mothers had to leave, or the millions of single dads who don’t support their children, thereby relegating their children to potentially harmful environments, reducing their life chances, and essentially stealing from the families they created. No, just single mothers. Another sexist attack from another right winger on American women.

No. He claims that single mothers breed criminals. No caveats. No equivocation. One equals the other. That’s what Rick Santorum is claiming.

• He lumps all single mothers (not single fathers, though) together. He characterizes ALL single mothers as being young and poor and uneducated.
• He ignores the millions of women, and their children, who were dumped on the curb by their husbands (and fathers) who promised to be there forever.
• He ignores the hundreds of thousands of military wives who raise their children alone while their husbands have been off the last ten years fighting two poorly prosecuted wars, one which turned out to be based on a lie. Two wars started by a Republican and his advisers; one based on knowingly false information, speeches, and sound bites.
• He ignores the women who were widowed when their husbands were killed in work accidents – like the miners in West Virginia who lost their lives because the mine they worked in was not properly maintained.
• He ignores the many corporate wives or wives of businessmen who basically raise their children alone when their husbands are assigned by their companies to jobs in foreign countries, or who attend an unending string of corporate meetings, business start-ups, seminars, and the like.

And then, he ignores this:

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Bill Clinton, and our current President, Barak Obama, were all raised by single mothers.  Two, Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, never knew their fathers at all. Barak Obama didn’t know his father well. George Washington’s father died when George was 11. Thomas Jefferson’s father died when Thomas was 14.

Every one of these Presidents were stand-outs because of the times they lived in and the accomplishments they achieved. All but Barak Obama served two consecutive terms. (We’re working on making Barak Obama a 2-term President.)

Two were founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence. George Washington led the Revolutionary War for our independence and signed the Constitution. Bill Clinton was one of the few Presidents who managed to balance the budget and reduce the national deficit.

George Washington had no political party affiliation. Thomas Jefferson was a Democratic Republican. Andrew Jackson, Bill Clinton, and Barak Obama were/are Democrats.

But Rick Santorum, with two advanced degrees, doesn’t want his audience to know any of this.

Rick Santorum, a Presidential candidate, never talks about the fact that women still only earn 77 cents on the dollar paid to men (even during the recession, when more men were laid off than women). He doesn’t talk about inequality in opportunity: Only 12 CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies in 2011 were women.

He doesn’t talk about inequality in political representation:

Summary

Women hold 90, or 16.8%, of the 535 seats in the 112th US Congress —

17, or 17.0%, of the 100 seats in the Senate and

73, or 16.8%, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives.

In addition, three women serve as Delegates to the House from Guam, the Virgin Islands and Washington, DC.

http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/levels_of_office/Congress-CurrentFacts.php

Rick Santorum doesn’t talk about the fact that about 85% of over 15 million single parents are women or that, in 2010, unpaid child support totaled $110.3 billion.

He talks about no abortion under any circumstances, even though his own wife had to have one to save her life when surgery on her 20-week (fetus) baby resulted in a life-threatening infection for her and failed to resolve the baby’s medical problem.

He talks about no birth control.  "It's not OK. It's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

He doesn't talk about the thousands of children who are turned away from public schools every year in this country for lack of a "fixed address" by the very administrators who earned their teaching degrees and credentials with federal financial aid. He doesn't talk about the fact that, by 1987, it became necessary to pass McKinney-Vento, in order to ensure that every American child had access to education regardless of their families' economic status and living situations. He doesn't talk about the fact that American citizen children are still discriminated against because their families don't have a lease or mortgage in their own names.

He doesn't talk about the fact that, if the federal Department of Education is abolished, more homeless children will be turned away from the school districts in which they actually live, because local control will translate to no oversight of these children's human and civil rights.

He doesn't talk about domestic violence, or the fact that the church ignores DV, doesn't hold its male attendees to account to the same degree as its female attendees, or that, in most cases, fathers walk away by choice.

He advocates for home schooling rather than public schooling. Of course, women would have to quit their jobs to stay home to educate their children, which would send even more families into poverty and increase the already high rates of poverty among single parent-headed families, but that doesn’t matter to Rick Santorum.

Once again, we have someone on the right who has access to a microphone and uses it to denounce 1) any woman who isn’t married, 2) anyone who uses birth control to plan her family size, or 3) doesn't home school. This dynamic is one of the most restrictive, isolating, and controlled environments a woman can find herself in.  

He wants us all “out of the way”, back in the home (and bedroom, from all indications), subservient, uneducated (except for the level of reading and math required to cook a recipe or understand the instructions on a box of laundry soap).

It doesn’t matter how “committed” to his stand he is. Anyone can be committed to a ‘stand’, a ‘belief’, a ‘political position’. What matters, when he is running for President, is whether or not he views all citizens equally and is committed to seeing that all citizens have equal life chances, equal opportunity in education, freedom of life choice, equality in access to opportunity, equal representation in the policy and decision-making which affects every aspect of all our lives. What matters is, all men and women are created equal under our laws and policies and that these laws and policies are applied and enforced in equal measure. What matters is that every child is treated equally, fairly, and adequately in society and under the laws of this land.

If he’s not committed to that, he’s not Presidential material. He wants to be dictator. He’s already demonstrated his ability to be a demagogue.

There’s no room for those in our democracy. There's no room for demagoguery in the People's House.

http://www.singleparentmagazine.net/presidents-raised-single-parent/

http://www.usconstitution.net/declarsigndata.html

Partial list of Presidents’ accomplishments during their terms: (through Clinton)

http://apusnotes.nfshost.com/timeline/presidents2

Partial list of people raised by single mothers:

http://withoutafather.com/celebrities.php

With art:

http://www.justparents.com/blog/2011/08/celebrities-raised-by-single-parents/

Two others not on these lists:

Alexander Haig, Jr.

Oprah Winfrey

http://scienceblog.com/community/older/1999/C/199902490.html

http://womenincongress.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-congress.html?congress=112

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/stimulus/2012/feb/21/rick-santorum-leading-gop-party-masoch/

dem·a·gogue

   [dem-uh-gog, -gawg]  Show IPAnoun, verb, -gogued, -gogu·ing.

noun

1. a person, especially an orator or political leader, who gainspower and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions,and prejudices of the people.

2. (in ancient times) a leader of the people.

verb (used with object)

3. to treat or manipulate (a political issue) in the manner of ademagogue; obscure or distort with emotionalism, prejudice,etc.

verb (used without object)

4. to speak or act like a demagogue.

Also, dem·a·gog

Origin: 1640–50;   Greek dēmagōgós  a leader of the people, popularleader, equivalent to dêm ( os ) people + agōgós  leading, guiding;see -agogue

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/demagogue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinney%E2%80%93Vento_Homeless_Assistance_Act

http://center.serve.org/nche/downloads/briefs/reauthorization.pdf