The next time you
hear someone popping off about how Republicans who are Catholic or Christian
more generally believe such and such that is contrary to Christian teaching,
you can direct them to this post. This is just to clear the air.
I'm opposed to the
death penalty, aggressive wars, abortion, torture, and any other thing
offensive to human dignity. My only regret is that things had to get really bad
and really stark before I understood the principles that underlie Catholic
social teaching.
But I'm still a
conservative. Before someone else goes blathering on about how cutting a social
program hurts the poor, and the teaching says we should care about the poor,
and so we should uncritically support whatever inane thing the Democrats are
proposing, might I suggest that the efficacy of a certain program along with
its intent should be our primary concern in public policy. I want to be the
kind of conservative that says, "I hate poverty too, and that's why I hate
your liberal policy just as much." I don't know why Democrats deserve
points for compassion when their policies don't work, they don't dignify, and
they don't have a moral foundation, beyond the self-gratification of whoever
proposed them. Thomas Sowell may not be a Christian, but he's right about that.
A government that is large enough to be the principal means by which economic
and distributive justice takes place is large enough to trample human dignity.
Ayn Rand may be anti-Christian, but she was right about that.
In recent times, the
battle within conservatism broadly speaking has taken place between social
conservatives and economic conservatives. This should not be. The strongest
social conservative argument beyond that of natural law is that because of
natural law, bad moral acts have social consequences that policymakers must
face. Part of the lack of efficacy of our social safety net is that it failed
to take account of the moral dimensions of not only the public policy, but the
consequent reactions of those impacted by it. And so, we wander around and
attempt to convince each other that public policy is amoral, when it never has
been, and never will be. It is either in accord with reality, or it is not.
Activists on the side of liberalizing policy in terms of social issues are well
aware that policy has a social dimension; why should we be afraid of presenting
the contrary, and presenting the good as having a beneficial social dimension
that can be argued? Economic policy and any other kind has a moral dimension as
well, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise. With respect, we cannot help but
see that individual autonomy absolutized gives us both abortion, and unjust
economic inequality. And that is not simply the result of a fair process, but
is the result of pretending that a tool in the hand of an unjust person will
somehow produce a just result. We have no right to blame the Bernie Madoffs of
the world on a systemic flaw, yet we should not expect our system of "free
enterprise" to function without the true freedom that comes by moral
justice. If we teach our MBAs when they are undergraduates the truth is
relative, then they will behave as though truth is relative when they steal the
savings of the people they serve, and lie to the regulators, and defraud the
taxpayers. I believe that a free market is a mutually beneficial free exchange
of goods and services that is in accord with the moral order. Economic freedom
is but a species of that true freedom that is ordered liberty. That ordered
liberty is ordered to the common good, and is directed toward it, even when the
person is not consciously aware of that orientation.
I will not hector you much longer, but I wanted the opportunity to
sketch a brief outline of what I am thinking and feeling as a passionate
conservative Republican who identifies first as a Christian.
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