Category: Economy and the Public Square

Politics and Political Philosophy and the Principle of Subsidiarity

  • Reading Pope Francis

    Reading Pope Francis

    Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to an Associated Press article about Pope Francis’ recent message for Lent.  The link is here and the article is on a relative basis not bad for something written about Pope Francis.  However, I then read Pope Francis’ own words and was reminded again of the inadvisability of reading about Pope Francis when it is so easy to read Pope Francis!

    The problem with reading about Pope Francis in the press lies in the reality that everything written there is presented through an ideological political left-right prism. This prism through which we tend to view almost every event and circumstance in America (and the West) can only warp the words of our Holy Father who calls each of us to re-examine the way we live our lives both as individuals and as members of society.

    As an example, the AP article states that “Francis has riled some conservative Americans for his denunciation of capitalism and trickle-down economic theory…”

     

    Before “conservative Americans” allow themselves to get too riled and before everyone else spends too much time basking in the warm fuzziness of the general absolution granted by the Associated Press, let us keep in mind that our Holy Father challenges ALL of us to use whatever economic clout we have to combat poverty and to promote justice.  So let none of us give himself a pass but rather let each of us engage in an economic examination of conscience:

    Do I spend each dollar thoughtfully, with the full realization that one dollar spent well is very possibly more effective than my vote in a national election?

     

    ·         To the greatest extent possible do I spend my dollars at businesses that seek to operate on a human scale with justice and moderation:

     

    o   Businesses run by folks who work hard, expect their employees to work hard and seek to treat all their constituents (managers, owners or shareholders, suppliers, employees, customers) with a balanced fairness.

     

    o   Businesses whose practices demonstrate their recognition of the equal dignity of all participants in the economy (and of those at the margins of or largely excluded from the economy).

     

    o   Businesses whose focus is to serve society by providing quality goods and services.

     

    o   Businesses that avoid the temptation to amass economic power.

     

    o   Business who let their work be their work and do not seek to use their economic power to bring about various social changes, particularly those detrimental to society (i.e. donations and other influence peddling aimed at destruction of life, destruction of marriage, destruction of freedom).

     

    o   Businesses willing to take an economic hit in order to better care for their employees.

     

    o   Businesses willing to take an economic hit in order to employ more employees (perhaps at the cost of “efficiency”).

     

    o   Businesses that seek to understand and minimize any detrimental impact their work may have on the environment.

     

    ·         Do I realize that until I am willing to “vote” with my dollars in support of this kind of business then no political vote will relieve me of this responsibility and no political top-down solution will effect positive change?

     

    o   Do I embrace BOTH this economic freedom and this economic responsibility that God has given me?

     

    o   Do I reject the temptation to embrace my freedom while delegating my responsibility to others or (worse) to some corporate or government authority.

     

    ·         Am I willing when necessary to give my dollars away freely to those whose needs are immediate and real?

     

    o   Do I understand that no government program can free me of my responsibility to love and care for my brother?

     

    ·         Am I willing to consume less because “voting” with my dollars will almost certainly mean that my well-spent dollars will not go as far as my dollars do when I simply seek to maximize my buying power?

     

    ·         Do I seek economic power in order that I might do good with it or, rather, do I seek to do good by not accumulating economic power, by embracing poverty?  The second is the way of Christ who “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

     

    o   Do I express my frustration toward the cult of the big and powerful by seeking to become big and powerful?

     

    ·         Is financial security a driving force in my economic life?

     

    o   Do I seek to save/plan for MY future needs and MY family’s future (illness, job loss, retirement, children’s education) to the exclusion of generously and sacrificially helping the poor with their imminent needs?

     

                   

     

    While I am grateful the press has taken such a fancy to Pope Francis, I regret their continued attempts to relieve the great majority of us of our individual responsibility to embrace the challenges our good Pope continues to provide to us.  The Pope’s words are meaningless if we view them as being directed to some corporate body rather than being directed to us as individuals (and as individual participants in those same corporate bodies).

  • We have Already Accepted Anything that Anybody of Intelligence ever Disliked in Socialism

    We have Already Accepted Anything that Anybody of Intelligence ever Disliked in Socialism

    I am no socialist believer. On the contrary, I reject socialism both for its aims and for the means it proposes in attempting to achieve those aims; for its attack on the dignity of man and its disregard of the gift of freedom. That said, we are too accustomed in our rejection of one ideology to accept without examination a differing ideology. In our enthusiastic rejection of Socialism we must avoid the trap of embracing without reflection Capitalism. Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to apply the moral maxim “avoid evil, do good” to our economic philosophies, “avoid Socialism, live Capitalism.” Capitalism is not “good”. It differs in many respects from Socialism and many aspects of a Capitalist system can be good if carried out morally but it does not on the whole oppose the evils of Socialism.

    In The Outline of Sanity , G. K. Chesterton quipped, “We have already accepted anything that anybody of intelligence ever disliked in Socialism”. On its surface, this may appear a bold and indefensible position. Rather, however, we should accept it as a challenge to more self-reflection. How have we done with this Capitalist system; has it provided the authentic good for mankind that we should have sought? In order to provide some insight into what we might have expected from Socialism and what we actually have I a reproduce here in its entirety an essay by a contemporary and close friend of Chesterton, Fr. Vincent McNabb:

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    For the purpose of clear thinking on social matters, I venture to set down some thoughts on Socialism

    Very gravely I add they are not meant to be a defense of Socialism. They are merely social facts, the knowledge of which has been arrived at by a process of observation. I set them down as the astronomer tabulates and records his observed astronomical facts, not knowing what use may be made of them but feeling that it is his duty to record them whether they are used or not.

    A late writer in an influential Catholic review maintained that absolution could not be given to a Catholic Socialist who came to confession because the policy of the Socialist party was secularisation. The argument, couched in the accustomed forms of the schools, was very persuasive. But on second thoughts it could be seen that the premises, which served to insure the conclusion desired of the writer, would also serve to justify not a few conclusions which the writer would disown.

    Socialism is accused of wishing to a number of undesirable things. Indeed, the common method of disproving Socialism is to show by striking and detailed word painting that if Socialism became dominant in the Commonwealth, the state of things thereby introduced would be intolerable and even unjust.

    (1) One of the first charges made against Socialism is that it would socialise everything and everybody and that it would therefore make slaves of us all, or at least of all except the State officials under whom we should all be regimented, case-papered, paid, fed, tendered and buried. This argument if carefully drawn by a man of feeling can be particularly effective. It is perhaps the locus communis which for years has left me not unmoved whenever I hear it.

    But, on second thoughts, it appears that this inhuman programme which Socialism is expected to bring forth is already in great part realised and not by the Socialists.

    Mr Belloc and others who are confessedly not Socialists agree that Socialism is committed to this dismal homogeneity and slavery. But they add that it is a thing in great part and essentially realised by existing political parties. One has only to read The Servile State to be haunted by the idea that not only existing Socialism but the existing Conservative and Liberal, and Democratic and Republican parties, are committed to a programme of socialised services which rest essentially on a basis of compulsory work, i.e. slavery.

    Moreover, in such a thorough-going Monarchy as Germany, the number of social functions that have now become socialised are almost as many as most Socialists would claim for their Socialist State. Indeed, the formula of the most absolute monarchy “L’Etat, c’est moi” needs a change not of form but of content, to be the programme of every advanced party in modern political education.

    All this is dramatically confirmed by the diagnosis made by Leo XIII of the actual state of social affairs. ‘A small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.'(Rerum Novarum.)

    It is quite evident that this existing state of things is substantially what Socialism is condemned for proposing to bring in! Moreover, it is equally evident that the state of things condemned by the Pope is not due to Socialism; but if attributable to any party, then to Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans or Democrats.

    (2) A second plea for decrying Socialism is that it would secularise education.

    Here as elsewhere in this paper no attempt is made to accept or deny these pleas although it is well known that a large portion of the Education Act of 19021 was inspired by a leading Socialist.

    But anyone dread Socialism because it will secularise education? Has not education, even in these countries, been largely and dominantly secularised? In the United States public education is completely secularised. There it was a bourgeois revolution and not Socialism that brought in secularisation. In England the secular programme is officially Liberal.

    If, then, a Socialist is to be refused absolution because his party would bring in secularism, how can absolution be granted in England to a Liberal whose part have an equally secular programme; and in the United States, to both Democrats and Republicans, who agree in accepting and defending the present secularism? At any rate, secularism is not something future to be dreaded but something present to be uprooted.

    (3) A further argument against Socialism is that it would degrade women by taking women out into the spheres of public work

    But statistics are at hand to prove that women workers are to be found in almost every sphere of labour; moreover, they have often been employed because being non-unionised they could be forced or persuaded to accept a lower rate of wages than men. This is most strongly confirmed by all kinds of investigators. Recently the Municipal Vice Commission of Chicago found that a great deal of the prostitution in their rich city was due to the abnormally low wages paid to girls in a number of employments. The present state of women is such a matter of shame that many of the arguments against the suffrage movement are pointless.

    But what has Socialism had to do with the degradation of women? And if Socialists are not to be absolved for a crime they have not committed, why may absolution be granted to those by whom the crime has been either committed or approved?

    (4) A further and most forcible argument against Socialism is that it would destroy the home. This argument is of great service in strengthening minds that see in the home the only hope of a nation’s future. Any political party that threatens the home, no matter what its claim to social service, must be looked on as anti-social.

    But, it may well be asked, has the home not already been threatened? Indeed, have the threats not been but too well realised and are not great masses of the workfolk wholly homeless. A room or two overcrowded with inmates can not be called a home. A house in such conditions and in such surroundings that the infant mortality is twice and thrice as much as in well-to-do neighbourhoods cannot be called a home. Yet the recent blue-book on the housing of Great Britain and Ireland has an eloquence of statistics proving that the homes of our country are not merely threatened but vigorously attacked and undermined.

    Moreover, to repeat the argument of the previous section, woman’s work has largely taken wives from their own homes and made them wives, not mothers. This is to destroy the home.

    Now this again is not a future evil to be dreaded, it is such a rooted present evil that any whole-hearted efforts to uproot it are likely to offer the features of a revolution.

    Yet again, not Socialism but some other political or industrial policy has set up almost unnoticed this enemy of the home.

    (5) Lastly, and this is perhaps the most urgent of all the pleas against Socialism, it is said that Socialism would destroy the inborn and inalienable right of property.

    But if the right of property means, not that some men shall own all property but that all men shall own some property, one asks ‘Where is the right of property existing in the world today?’ Is the inalienable right of property kept in a state of things where vast numbers of work-folk have not a square yard of land and are never even more than a month from destitution? Is this inalienable right a fact in a state of things where by the testimony of a Pope ‘a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself,’ and where there are ‘two widely differing castes … one which holds power because it holds wealth and which has in its grasp the whole of labour and trade, on the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, broken down and suffering’ so that ‘some remedy must be found, and found quickly, for the misery (i.e. want) and wretchedness pressing so heavily and so unjustly on the vast majority of the working classes’. (Rerum Novarum).

    It is evident that this state of injustice whereby the vast majority of the working classes are in a position of misery is not exactly a state based on the right of property

    For injustice is the forcible taking or holding of property. And it is evident that this state, based on the violent interference with the right of property, is not in any measure due to the political party called Socialism. It must therefore be due, either in its rise or maintenance, to the other political parties which Catholics freely enter without dread of being refused absolution.

    As was said at the outset, this line of thought is not meant nor perhaps even fitted to be a defense of Socialism. It is merely an observed and recorded fact for the guidance of Social thinkers. If a Social thinker refuses absolution to a member of the Socialist party because the Socialist party would bring in a state of things, why does he not refuse absolution to the other political parties; for the state of things is already in existence and has been brought about or, at least, is being upheld by them?

    It is evident therefore that there is some flaw in the course of reasoning which would withhold absolution on a probability and give it on a fact. Either the premises are not observed facts or the reasoning is amiss.

    For the moment our task is to point out that somewhere there is a flaw in the chain of reasoning, with the hope that social thinkers will revise either their facts or their deductions.

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    One lesson from this discussion; we must not accept an ideology of Capitalism as a counterpart to the ideology of Socialism. Capitalism should be for us nothing more than a set of tools to be used under the guidance of a well-informed and just economic philosophy. I have written and will continue to write here at A Sensible Life of those principles that must inform sensible economic living. Let us begin with gratuitousness.

    For more information on Fr. Vincent McNabb please visit the McNabb Society web-site.

  • Pass the Restorative

    Pass the Restorative

    I have concluded that I am not a “conserve”ative. I am a “restore”ative. I do not desire to conserve the new healthcare plan, the degradation to our Constitution that has occurred over the last 150 years, the culture of licentiousness and abortion that characterizes our country… I wish to restore our Constitution to its original clarity. I wish to restore the culture of life that led our founders to write the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I wish to restore a citizenry that values freedom and responsibility…

    The problem with the moniker “conservative” is the very root of the word. How can the act of conserving define my belief? It cannot! What defines my belief is that which I desire to conserve and that which I desire to cast onto the dung heap… If it is the business of “conservatism” to maintain the status quo, then, as G.K. Chesterton said, “The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”

    In a nutshell, I am fed up with the labels “conservative” and “liberal”. The labels are practically meaningless. The fact is that as a rule “conservatives” are more liberal than “liberals”. That is, “conservatives” are more likely to live liberality, to practice gratuitous giving and humbly embrace gratuitous receiving. “Conservatives” are more likely, as a group, to value liberty while their counterparts seek to create government bureaucracies and regulations designed to restrict liberty. “Conservatives” are more likely to trust their fellow citizens and to allow them the freedom to choose Good while their counterparts seek to coerce the populace into living according to the restrictive standards set by a plutocracy of social engineers.

    So I’m more inclined to favor those who call themselves “conservatives” than those identified as “liberals” but if you want to call me something, call me a restorative – and on that note, I think I’ll go have one…

  • “Social Justice” Ideology Opposed to Moral Living

    “Social Justice” Ideology Opposed to Moral Living

    Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote, “What our Lord says to Judas, he says to the world today: You seemingly are very interested in social justice. Why are you not concerned about individual justice? You love your neighbor, why do you not love God? This is the attitude of the world today. We have swung away from a period in which we were concerned with individual sanctification to the neglect of the social order. Now we have gone to the extreme of being immersed with social justice, civil rights, and so forth, and we are not the least bit concerned about individual justice and the duty of paying honor and glory to God. If you march with a banner, if you protest, then your individual life may be impure, alcoholic, anything you please. That does not matter. Judas is the patron saint of those who divide that universal law of God: Love God and love neighbor.”

    “Social justice” has taken on the status of an ideology in our culture. Adherence to this ideology allows us to commit (or participate in) any number of attrocities while remaining untroubled by our consciences. We participate in sin through: counsel, consent, provocation, praise or flattery, concealment, partaking, silence and the defense of the ill done. We can stand by and witness the taking of innocent life on a massive scale, turn a blind eye to the degredation of morality in our culture, watch the destruction of marriage, see our religious (and many other) freedoms restricted day by day but these things do not trouble some of us so long as we continue to support the ideology of social justice.

    Of course, the greatest manifestation of this phenomenon can be seen in the participation of many in the public square. These well-meaning but ill-formed voters think they are doing good by supporting political candidates who conform to the social justice ideology while actively seeking the destruction of marriage, the destruction of innocent human life and the limitation of human freedom (including religious freedom).

    Here at A Sensible Life, we work to explore authentic justice. Authentic justice, the distributive justice contained within the Catholic Church’s social teaching, grows from a root of gratuitousness, that is a free giving. This justice then is characterized by freedom and is opposed to the idea of imposing “social justice” by taxing some in order to aid others.

    We must seek truth in all our public and private activities. And, of course, in order to seek truth in sincerity we must be prepared to love and live the fruits of our seeking. This preparedness we call FREEDOM. The pursuit of freedom itself entails some effort on our part. We must actively seek to free ourselves from attachments that restrict our ability to embrace truth – attachments to sin, to certain ways of life, to certain ways of thinking, to ourselves and our own thoughts and, particularly in this current culture, to ideologies. On December 19, Pope Benedict XVI wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times entitled “A time for Christians to engage with the world.” In it, he spoke of this importance of remaining authentically free: “Let Christians render to Caesar only what belongs to Caesar, not what belongs to God. Christians have at times throughout history been unable to comply with demands made by Caesar. From the emperor cult of ancient Rome to the totalitarian regimes of the past century, Caesar has tried to take the place of God. When Christians refuse to bow down before the false gods proposed today, it is not because of an antiquated worldview. Rather, it is because they are free from the constraints of ideology and inspired by such a noble vision of human destiny that they cannot collude with anything that undermines it.”

  • The Great Boycott Controversy

    The Great Boycott Controversy

    I recently initiated a boycott of Gilbert Magazine, not because I dislike the magazine but, on the contrary, because I love it (though I recognize its failings) and I love the American Chesterton Society (ACS). I love these institutions in much the same way that I love the United States of America and in much the same way that I love my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. I do not love them because of their perfection but, rather, I love them because of their potential good, their potential beauty and even because of the beauty and goodness that has been, hoping that it may be again. I love them with their failings.  In fact, I love them so much that I am willing to expose their failings to the light of day.  I am eager to love them in a manly way and I fear any failure of love that may manifest itself in the form of indifference.  So, in the case of Gilbert Magazine and the ACS  my love took the form of a boycott.

    The occasion that gave rise to this action of love was the editorial by Dale Ahlquist in an issue of Gilbert Magazine published in the months leading up to the recent presidential election (“Why I Won’t Vote for Mitt Romney”, May/June 2012).  I laid out my objections to Mr. Ahlquist’s editorial in another article here at A Sensible Life so I will not say much more about it in this piece other than to say that I found it impossible to get through to folks at the ACS without resorting to the step that I eventually took, the Boycott.  The good news is that the Boycott had an almost immediate positive effect.  I was able to get the attention of some folks at the ACS.  The Boycott engendered some conversation on Mark Shea’s blog as well as on the ACS blog and the ACS Facebook page.  Unfortunately, the folks with whom I interacted remain entrenched in their support of Mr. Ahlquist’s position.

    Let me just say that though I find Mr. Ahlquist’s position poorly reasoned and indefensible, I would not normally make a public objection to an individual’s privately held belief.  The problem with Mr. Ahlquist’s error is manifestly that it is not a private error but one that he made publicly not only in his own name but also “for the editorial board of Gilbert Magazine“.  In effect, he relied upon his position on the editorial board of the magazine and as president of the ACS to attempt to sway readers away from a sensible approach to our 2012 elections.  Rather than remaining silent or, better yet, encouraging Gilbert readers to actively support the candidate on the correct side (if not absolutely correct, then most certainly correct on a relative basis compared to his opponent) of the great moral absolutes of our day (marriage, life, religious freedom), Mr. Ahlquist led those who would follow him to disregard their civic duty.

    In the somewhat jovial though serious debate that ensued as a result of the Boycott, Mr. Shea and other Ahlquist/ACS supporters objected strenuously to my objection but their objections can broadly be summarized in two points: (a) Gilbert Magazine and Mr. Ahlquist have minimal influence in this country and (b) Mr. Romney was a flawed candidate (a point to which I stipulated over and over again).  I don’t know which of these objections I found more troubling.  The first indicates to me a frivolousness (and by that I do not mean Chestertonian frivolity!) that is unbecoming of an organization founded upon the memory and thought of the great apologist and social/political commentator, G. K. Chesterton.  I cannot imagine Chesterton taking a controversial position and then when that position runs into some public resistance, tucking his tail between his legs and saying, “well it doesn’t really matter what I say because no-one reads what I have to say anyway”.  Further, this frivolous response to my objections seems to me to indicate a failure on the part of  Gilbert Magazine  and the ACS to embrace the significance of the role they could (and frequently do) play in reclaiming our culture and society and the positive impact they could have in the public square.  I am glad they had some fun with the Boycott but I am disappointed that to a certain extent their fun became a cover for their inability to defend an indefensible position.

    With regard to the second point the Ahlquist/ACS defenders raised, the faults of Mr. Romney as a candidate, I can only say that I found it to be a red herring.  Of course, Mr. Romney was a flawed candidate.  However, this objection merely served to attempt to distract the conversation away from the fact that they were unwilling to act positively to remove President Obama from office.  In all the dialogues in which I engaged, none of the Ahlquist/ACS crowd was willing to admit the obvious: no matter how bad a candidate Mr. Romney was, he was substantively better than President Obama on all three of the great moral absolutes facing us this election cycle (defense of real marriage, protection of innocent life and protection of religious liberty).  Why did they refuse to acknowledge this reality?  I fear it is because of an ideological bias against Mr. Romney’s party.  I also fear there is a substantial contingency within the ACS that appears to hate the Republican Party so much that it is unwilling to ally itself with the Republicans in order to save the lives of innocent children, save the institution of marriage in our country and safeguard our religious freedoms.  I realize Mr. Romney would likely not have done all we could hope in any of these areas.  But there is no doubt that as a result of having President Obama in office for another four years we will lose more lives of innocent unborns that we would otherwise have done; our religious liberties will be further eroded; and marriage will suffer greater and more powerful attack.

    Herein lie the reasons behind the Great Boycott. I wanted to awaken Gilbert Magazine, the ACS and Mr. Ahlquist to their responsibilities as the foremost commentators on Chestertonian thought in the United States.  Have fun, by all means but do not be frivolous!  Also, I would like to see the ACS work with others of us out here in the hinterlands to educate the American public in authentic Catholic social teaching.  For too long Catholic social teaching has been misconstrued in such a way that it has led many men and women of good will to believe in progressivism.  Progressivism and big government control of social programs are not authentic manifestations of Catholic social teaching.  A proper understanding of gratuitousness, freedom, responsibility, subsidiarity and solidarity will lead us to a distributed approach to dealing with the needs of our brothers and sisters and with our economic activity.  These concepts will lead us away from a focus on centralized government.

    Let us unite in guiding and informing our society.  Let us have fun doing it but let us be serious about it.  Let us be willing to work for small victories (like defeating President Obama) when no greater victory is within our grasp!

    “Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of ‘touching’ a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.” (GKC) Hence, the Great Boycott…