In his column today, Michael Gerson discusses the relationship between Catholic Republicans, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Tea Party. I think he provides a decent summary of Catholic social teaching. He also makes the following observation:
Catholic social teaching is simply not libertarian. Neither, of course, are most conservatives. But where Republicans veer toward libertarianism, they will run smack into the bishops.
The context for this statement is Gerson’s reflection on the role and influence of the Tea Party in and on Republican officeholders. His operative assumption seems to be that the Tea Party is basically or essentially libertarian. I’m not sure that I agree with that.
But I do mostly agree with this:
The Catholic tradition asserts the necessity of limited government. The establishment of justice and acts of compassion should be done at the lowest, most human levels of society, instead of by distant, centralized bureaus – a perspective fully consistent with the designs of America’s founders. But gaps in the justice and compassion of a society require government intervention to secure the common good, which is not common until it includes the poor, the immigrant, the sick, the disabled, the unborn. Catholic teaching elevates the primary importance of families, charities and strong communities – while rejecting the simplistic notion that such institutions render government unnecessary. In determining the proper balance between civil society and government, there is much room for political debate. But the search for that balance is a source of sanity in our political life, involving the rejection of both collectivist and libertarian utopias.
Let me repeat one of his statements: “In determining the proper balance between civil society and government, there is much room for political debate.” Is there any debate about that in the Tea Party? (As it’s a fractious, though civil, group, I assume there is. But it’s hardly monolithically libertarian.)
In the end, I find myself unpersuaded by Gerson’s picture of Catholic Republicans caught between the bishops and the Tea Party.
But there will probably come a point when red lines get crossed and Catholic and other religious leaders declare: Contempt for immigrants, even illegal immigrants, is not a moral option. Or, cutting AIDS and malaria funding violates pro-life principles. Or, health-care repeal without a serious alternative is not responsible.
He may be right about the social witness of the bishops, but to attribute contempt for immigrants and advocacy of “health-care repeal without a serious alternative” to the run-of-the-mill Tea Partier strikes me as a caricature.
Am I wrong about Gerson? Wrong about the Tea Party?
February 8th, 2011 | 4:59 pm
I had almost exactly the same take on Gerson’s column; it’s as if he was trying with all his might to find a point of tension that will soon explode into dissent, but without avail. He ends up falling back on a stereotype without really dealing with the array of views (sometimes in conflict) within the Tea Party movement. Gerson’s column is the third or fourth piece I’ve read recently that begins, for all intents and purposes, with the assumption that the Tea Party must be, at its core, in opposition to essential aspects of Catholic social doctrine. None of them have been convincing, in large part because they don’t really delve into what the Tea Party is (why was it formed? how?) or really try to understand what the movements seeks to accomplish.
February 8th, 2011 | 5:04 pm
I suspect it’s a matter of defining the Tea Party according to the media meme, rather than an analysis of whom it is composed of and what they believe. If the mainstream media take on the Tea Party (whatever that is, I’m not even sure how “the Tea Party” is actually defined) is correct, Gerson’s correct. But if, as I suspect, it is not quite that simple or stereotypical, then Gerson ought to be gently faulted for making assumptions about his subject matter rather than knowing it.
February 8th, 2011 | 5:29 pm
If Michael Gerson equates “contempt for immigrants” with concern for civic order, then he would probably be correct. If, on the other hand, concern for civic order means that solutions which respect human dignity must be found (registration at the border, for example), then he is wrong about most people who are part of the Tea Party movement.
If Michael Gerson believes that participation in finding a solution for AIDS requires that Catholics or anyone else for that matter abandon all moral principle and all support for sexual discipline, then he would probably be right about most people who are part of the Tea Party movement, whether Catholic or not.
(The Church is unsurpassed in assistance to those afflicted with AIDS.)
If Michael Gerson believes that a program of the United States Government would be superior to the great effort of the Gates Foundation in the area of malaria research and/or that public programs are always superior to privately funded programs, then he would probably be right about most people who are part of the Tea Party movement.
I know only one person who is part of the Tea Party movement. He is a person of intelligence, great kindness and generosity who loves his country while also being a clear thinker. I suspect there are many others like him.
February 8th, 2011 | 5:55 pm
“…advocacy of “health-care repeal without a serious alternative”
Wrong about the Tea Party?
I don’t know. What is the Tea party proposed solution to access to healthcare?
February 8th, 2011 | 6:07 pm
Health-care repeal without an alternative? How about the whole history of mankind up until Obamacare? Including the most advanced (and I will say amazing) health-care system ever seen, that of the United States.
February 8th, 2011 | 7:51 pm
I think most Tea Party participants know in their gut the core of what they believe (for example, living on immense amounts of debt is unsustainable and immoral), but probably haven’t ever unpacked a lot of the consequences or come up with detailed solutions before. If someone were to tell them about subsidiarity, for instance, I’ll bet a lot of them would agree with it.
February 8th, 2011 | 8:15 pm
The Tea Party doesn’t have a platform. It’s not a political party. People participate for different reasons. Many of these are negative reasons — they don’t like what President Obama and the Democratic Congress of the last two years did, and want to undo it. Many of the participants were not politically active before and are eager to learn; they don’t have a detailed agenda.
February 8th, 2011 | 8:17 pm
I’ve never understood the “access to healthcare” line. Can anyone point out an instance where an American was denied basic healthcare due to their weekly earnings?
Alternatives for a better healthcare system should always be a welcomed discussion. But this to try and insinuate that some Americans are simply denied “access” to healthcare is wrong.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:56 am
“Can anyone point out an instance where an American was denied basic healthcare due to their weekly earnings?”
I’m not sure but only tens of thousands die annually because they can’t get access to adequate healthcare.
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/deaths-rising-due-to-lack-of-insurance-study-finds/
And hundreds of thousands are impoverished:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3846673&page=1
And unisured catastrophic medical bills are one of the leadign causes of bankruptcy in the U.S.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html
Since the Tea Party seems oblivious to these facts, yes, they will run afoul of Catholic teaching.
February 9th, 2011 | 6:16 am
Joe McFaul
You’re actually quoting The New York Times to assert that tens of thousands die annually because they can’t get access to adequate healthcare? (Yes I read the blog and it’s arguments are a mountain of straw men with very little proof).
We know that the The New York Times has no political agenda or bias in reporting.
“Since the Tea Party seems oblivious to these facts,”
That’s a pretty broad statement. First, your “facts” can be challenged (particularly the first).
Second, “The Tea Party” isn’t one thing. It is a broad movement with a variety of people. If you went to a Tea Party gathering, you would likely get a variety of different answers as to the best solutions to healthcare problems. But you would get one consistent answer. Obamacare isn’t the solution to these problems and would in fact make things worse.
There are very few people who deny that our healthcare delivery and finance system does not need improvement. But the skewed incentives and delivery are much more of a result in the government involvement in the system (the biased tax incentives toward employer provided health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid with it’s flawed financing, and the byzantine patchwork of rules from state to state) than a lack of government involvement.
Get an accurate set of facts and make a real argument and then maybe you will have credibility.
February 9th, 2011 | 6:44 am
Joe McFaul,
You are engaging in strawman tactics. You act as if a government takeover of health care is the only single moral outcome. Expand your imagination.
Are we talking about the Tea Party or the Republican Party here? They’re not the same thing. The Tea Party is a phenomenon, not a cohesive political program. Which is fine, everything has its place.
As far as not being “oblivious” to health care problems, how about real health care reform focuses on creating a true market for insurance, instead of the 50 different state markets that existed before Obamacare, and is likely on its deathbed due to the requirements of the legislation. The whole strategy of what was passed last year was to get the most left-wing plan passed as possible, destroy the private insurance market, and then come back and pass a single payer plan. They didn’t count on the (justified) backlash that will prevent that from happening.
Or here is another idea, how about we take steps to unwind the linkage of health insurance to employment? Its an artifact of WWII wage controls, and losing a job is the number one way people lose health care. We could look into Health Savings Accounts that let people save for their own health plans.
But that doesn’t expand the reach of the federal government, so I guess its “immoral”
February 9th, 2011 | 8:36 am
Gerson is quite on point with his caution, and the fact that it disturbs some is telling.
February 9th, 2011 | 9:14 am
Yes, disagreement is always “telling.” It’s never that what’s disagreed with might be wrong, or that there could be more than one perspective.
I’m not Catholic, so what does my disagreement “tell” you?
February 9th, 2011 | 11:17 am
But that doesn’t expand the reach of the federal government, so I guess its “immoral”
This notion of the Right’s that what the Left is really interested in is expanding government is not only a canard, but a most un-Christian thing to think. Why is it so hard to believe that the Left is really interested in justice?
And if you guys don’t like the health care Obama gave us, which I can understand, perhaps you ought to blame yourself for not giving us anything better when you held power.
February 9th, 2011 | 11:36 am
Ken: what makes you assume that any change is good change?
Haven’t you learned yet that change comes in two flavors? Sometimes change is a BAD thing.
America, unlike Canada and England, does not have emergency room wait times that stretch so long that people have quite literally died while waiting for emergency care.
So why would I blame the Republicans for Obama delivering a bad healthcare package? If Obamacare is bad (and it is) then doing nothing is the better option.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:04 pm
Since when do conservative Catholics listen to their bishops on issues like this? I’m not trying to be snarky. I think most (though not all) Catholics, liberal and conservative, tend to emphasize the Church teachings that go along with their own politics. Indeed, Putnam and Campbell’s recent book “American Grace” documented that most Americans choose their church based on their politics, not the other way around. My point here is simply that Gerson may be right that Tea Party Catholics will clash with their own bishops on some issues, but that won’t, in the end, make a decisive difference in how those lay Catholics behave politically — any more than politically liberal Catholics who dissent from the Church’s teaching on abortion and same-sex marriage will be persuaded by their bishops’ witness.
I’m not saying it should be that way. In fact, I don’t think it should be; I’m no longer a Catholic, but the Church’s authoritative social teaching led me away from some of the views I once held as a Republican. But I am saying that’s how it is.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:07 pm
Ken, I don’t doubt there are many liberals who genuinely desire to achieve what they consider to be justice. But a) there is a difference in how liberals and conservatives define justice. Conservatives tend to hold people accountable for their actions and see people as moral agents who make choices. Liberals tend to see people as victims of forces beyond their control (poverty, racism, etc.) or beneficiaries of unjust systems. b) You have to admit that even those liberals who sincerely desire only to achieve their notion of justice generally propose to do so by expanding the power of government to enforce that notion.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:53 pm
Blake, I don’t assume all change is good change, which is why I said I can understand people opposing Obama’s health care plan. Republicans are not directly to blame for Obama’s plan, but they have little right to complain about what he came up with after they didn’t take responsibility for doing something themselves. Remember, they shot down Clinton’s plan too. And then did what?
Fred, of course I agree that liberals do try to expand government, I just say that their motives are good. But I don’t think all or even most liberals see victims as purely victims. I just think they place a greater emphasis on mercy and empathy, unlike the local conservative radio host I heard yesterday raging against spending any of his tax money to help illegal immigrants.
February 9th, 2011 | 12:57 pm
“You act as if a government takeover of health care is the only single moral outcome.”
“the NY Times lies and you should doubt evething they say”
Apparently my comment caused quite a number of knee jerk and ignorant reactions.
I do not think government takeover of healthcare is the only singe moral outcome and never said so.
I never hinted at that.
For those who are not famialr with the healthcare system as it is today, the largest players calling the shots are Medicare and Medicaid. The remainder is an oligarchy of a few insurance companies under a hodgepodge of state and federal regulations.
News flash: We already have a de facto government managed healthcare system.
Next News Flash: It’s broken. My links above demostrate that–even to those who won’t read the NYT or any other news source.
What is the Tea party or Republican solution:
apparently none.
What is the Democratic solution: Obamacare. Perfect? No. Can it be improved? I suspect so. Is it it better than the current situation?
Yes.
If Republicans or the Tea Party have any actual suggestions to fix this broken stystem, I suggest they get busy. Criticizing someone else’s solution (Obamacare) is not a solution.
Yes, there is a fundamental human right to adequate healthcare in Catholic teaching, and yes, Rod Dreher is right–this is rejected or ridiculed by many conservative CINO’s.
If Republicans continue to ignore this problem I’d like to invite them to President Obama’s inaguration in January 2013.
February 9th, 2011 | 2:34 pm
“News flash: We already have a de facto government managed healthcare system.
Next News Flash: It’s broken. My links above demostrate that–even to those who won’t read the NYT or any other news source.”
So the remedy for a broken de facto government managed healthcare system is to create a de jure government managed healthcare system?
“Yes, there is a fundamental human right to adequate healthcare in Catholic teaching, and yes, Rod Dreher is right–this is rejected or ridiculed by many conservative CINO’s.”
Only a CINO would think that disagreeing about the proper mechanism for providing healthcare is the equivalent of rejecting the Church’s crystal-clear teachings on abortion and euthanasia.
February 9th, 2011 | 4:51 pm
“So the remedy for a broken de facto government managed healthcare system is to create a de jure government managed healthcare system?”
More spittle.
Demonstrating that Republicans/Tea Partiers don’t intend to seriously address healthcare in the United States today.
Let’s start small. A very large number–millions of Americans–cannot obtain health insurance because they have disqualifying pre-existing medical conditions.
Do you have a proposal to provide these pepole with adequate healthcare that will not bankrupt them?
Yes, or no.
Your proposal can private, public or a mix.
As to the link between the chrystal-clear teachings relating to the right to life and the right to healthcare I refer you to Pacem in Terris: “Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of illhealth; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood.”
February 9th, 2011 | 5:53 pm
“More spittle.”
No, a legitimate question. You claim government is the only answer, yet have no legitimate basis for believing that more government involvement will not turn the entire healthcare system into the programs currently run by the government.
“Let’s start small. A very large number–millions of Americans–cannot obtain health insurance because they have disqualifying pre-existing medical conditions.”
Of course people who have pre-existing conditions can’t get insurance. That wouldn’t be insurance. You can’t call and get fire insurance while your house is on fire.
Are you claiming these people are dying in the streets? Are you claiming there are no charitable institutions to assist these people? Are you claiming that hospitals don’t already treat people and don’t get paid for those treatments? It would be far wiser to strengthen our charitable institutions instead of creating a government-run monstrosity.
“As to the link between the chrystal-clear teachings relating to the right to life and the right to healthcare I refer you to Pacem in Terris”
The distinction is, there are different ways to achieve “social justice” goals, but there are no alternative ways to deal with abortion and euthanasia.
February 9th, 2011 | 6:26 pm
Ken,
I don’t disagree with you, but you know what they say about good intentions. My main point was that what looks like justice to a liberal looks like soft totalitarianism to a conservative, and what looks like justice to a conservative looks like heartlessness and “blaming the victim” to a liberal. We simply have incommensurate world views. That being the case, most conservatives will see liberal expansion of government as a threat, however well intentioned. As for liberals being more empathetic, perhaps in the abstract but it is well-known that conservatives give more to charity. I would say that our empathy and mercy is more concrete, more particular, less universalized, which in my view makes it less dangerous. From the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks to the Maoists to the Khmer Rouge, who has killed more people than the great lovers of mankind in the abstract?
February 9th, 2011 | 10:46 pm
As for liberals being more empathetic, perhaps in the abstract but it is well-known that conservatives give more to charity. I would say that our empathy and mercy is more concrete, more particular, less universalized, which in my view makes it less dangerous.
Great points, but I’ll never understand why so many Christian conservatives can’t empathize with liberals, acknowledging their good will while they disagree with them. If the Christian Right was known for this – in other words if it knew how to live its enemies – it would have a witness, instead of having the positively negative witness for Christ it has today.
February 9th, 2011 | 10:51 pm
Joe keeps saying that conservatives have never offered healthcare alternatives. That is absolutely false. Congressional Republicans wrote up a package and presented it to the president when he gave the Republicans their “token” meeting with him in the fall of 2009. He then ignored it and rammed his plan through Congress. It included health care unions similar to credit unions and other free market solutions. So, nice try there.
Furthermore, if you’d like to procliam the ability to read hearts and diagnose souls, please continue folks as “CINO’s.” But I know of a Carpenter who would disapprove of such presumptions.
February 10th, 2011 | 12:29 am
“You claim government is the only answer”
I made no such claim.
“Of course people who have pre-existing conditions can’t get insurance. That wouldn’t be insurance. You can’t call and get fire insurance while your house is on fire.”
Fair enough. How do you propose that such people obtain quality healthcare for catastrophic illnesses?
February 10th, 2011 | 5:36 am
Ken, how do you know Christians (all Christian?) have no empathy for liberals?
Do not confuse empathy with unilateral disarmament. There’s no reason why any person with even an ounce of moral courage ought to fall for the “either you give me whatever I want or else you must hate me!” line of reasoning. The place to see empathy on display is not where policy discussions are being held. Go to where people in need look for help, and that is where you will find whatever Christian empathy is to be had.
And I still do not see why I should blame Republicans for not having health care. They might take longer to come up with a solution, but Democrats want to create a “shortcut” solution that not only will not work, but will make the problem worse. That’s not an improvement, IMO that’s exploiting the situation for political gain. Not unlike the way Democrats have exploited poverty and race. If you are going to get involved in the suffering of another person, you have an obligation to “first do no harm”, not just exploit the people then leave them worse off than they were before.
February 10th, 2011 | 9:03 am
Congressional Republicans wrote up a package and presented it to the president when he gave the Republicans their “token” meeting with him in the fall of 2009. He then ignored it and rammed his plan through Congress.
Yes, faced with a president determined to tackle an issue they’d ignored when they held power, Republicans finally came up with a plan of their own, a far less comprehensive plan. And then they were just outraged that Obama didn’t embrace it.
And now after months of planning to keep Obama from implementing his own plan, they still haven’t put concrete alternatives on the table.
February 10th, 2011 | 9:40 am
“I made no such claim.”
Well, do you have an approach that doesn’t involve the federal government taking over?
“Fair enough. How do you propose that such people obtain quality healthcare for catastrophic illnesses?”
As the study on bankruptcy you cite reveals, most people who went into bankruptcy due to catastrophic illnesses had health insurance, so the increased availability of health insurance will not fix that problem.
There has to be a separation between the more mundane medical issues that people face more frequently and the catastophic illnesses you raise here.
Personal healthcare accounts combined with catastophic illness insurance policies would be the way to go, backed up by efforts to strengthen charitable medical entities.
February 10th, 2011 | 9:42 am
Joe McFaul,
It’s difficult to give a complete answer to how the Republicans/Free Market Types would address healthcare but the basic steps that I have read would be:
1. End Tax Breaks for Corporations to provide health care and give individuals those tax breaks. (Health Savings Accounts)
2. Lawsuit Reform to limit medical malpractice claims.
3. Eliminate Regulations about insurers not being able to issue policies in multiple states.
4. Government pools for those with preexisting conditions and possibly for those too poor to afford insurance.
February 10th, 2011 | 11:34 am
Personal healthcare accounts combined with catastrophic illness insurance policies would be the way to go, backed up by efforts to strengthen charitable medical entities.
We aren’t going to have any serious health reform until we can separate the issue of catastrophic illness from ordinary health care.
I am willing to go along with the idea that our society has a moral obligation to not let citizens die from treatable diseases. However, the minute I make that concession, people start loading up the shopping cart, demanding that the taxpayer must pay for each and every expense that can even remotely be defined as “preventative medicine”.
February 10th, 2011 | 11:35 am
“End Tax Breaks for Corporations to provide health care and give individuals those tax breaks. (Health Savings Accounts)”
Exactly. The linkage between employment and healthcare is a relic of WWII and has to be broken. There is no reason why losing a job should mean losing your health insurance.
February 10th, 2011 | 1:15 pm
To be fair, Blake, Ken didn’t say “all” Christians; he said “Christian conservatives.” I still think he’s painting with too broad a brush, but he doesn’t impress me as anti-Christian.
And Ken, while it’s certainly true that there is hostility on the part of some Christian conservatives toward liberals, I believe that is largely traceable to the incommensurate world views I mentioned in my last comment. How can mutual hostility be avoided when one side sees abortion as a natural right and any attempt to deny it to a woman an instance of oppression and the other side sees abortion as the murder of an innocent child? Even granting good intentions to your interlocutor, the effect (from either point of view) is still evil.
February 10th, 2011 | 2:02 pm
Blake,
I’m sorry I missed your post earlier. You write that
the place to see empathy on display is not where policy discussions are being held.
Why not? When you imply, if I’m reading you correctly, that what Democrats are really interested in is “exploiting” a bad situation “for political gain,” well, I think the most cynical attitude is usually the mistaken one. Loving our enemies means being willing to put aside suspicion and see the best in them even while we fight them on policy.
I referred to a certain mean-spirited local radio talk show host earlier, but I don’t think he represents all conservatives, and I don’t doubt he’s generous with his personal finances. If you guys don’t like being accused of callousness towards the needy, perhaps you should give liberals the benefit of the doubt more often.
Fred,
in regards to abortion, I’m pro-life, but I think Left and Right focus on different evils. I get disgusted when they say we only care about controlling women’s bodies, but at the same time, can’t you grant that a woman seeking an abortion after a rape isn’t interested in “murdering” anyone, but in gaining emotional freedom from what’s been done to her? Can’t you grant that many Planned Parenthood workers care about poor women and the children they already have? I mean, we don’t have agree with their decisions to see the moral component to them. The good they’re aiming at is in conflict with and is trumped by a greater good, but it does exist. When you don’t acknowledge that but just call them murderers, is it any wonder they tune you out?
February 10th, 2011 | 5:00 pm
“1. End Tax Breaks for Corporations to provide health care and give individuals those tax breaks. (Health Savings Accounts)
2. Lawsuit Reform to limit medical malpractice claims.
3. Eliminate Regulations about insurers not being able to issue policies in multiple states.
4. Government pools for those with preexisting conditions and possibly for those too poor to afford insurance.”
That sounds like a very good start.
As Brian English points out, the linkage between employment and heathcare is a WWII relic. I believe it has outlived its usefulness. The proposed Republican plan did not address the 50 million Americans not currently insured, a significant defect. It also did not address the issue of uninsured indivduals using the ER as their primary source of health care–an extremely expensive waste of resources that shoudl not be tolerated.
Even the GOP plan, though, inevitably involves significant government invovlement: Medicare and Medicaid still dominate the industry. The GOP plan calls for high risk pools of otherwise uninsured or catastrophic loss patients. How will these pools be funded? Taxes? How will they be managed? Goverment agencies?
I do not suggest a government single payer program is the panacea. My point is that the Church does teach that every person has a right to adeqate healthcare. Obviously, such healthcare costs somebody money.
Arguing the medcial versionof “Let them eat cake” is not in accord with Catholic teaching.
It is also agreed by Democrats and Republicans that any healthcare program for the forseeable future will have massive government involvement. The differences are merely a matter of degree.
In that light, Obamacare cannot be attacked becasue it is some form of government intrusion. That already is the case and will also be the case under any alternative scenario. The amount of government involvement could be reduced, but not elimintated. I certainly favor less government involvement as a general principle.
But Ken is correct:
“….faced with a president determined to tackle an issue they’d ignored when they held power, Republicans finally came up with a plan of their own, a far less comprehensive plan. And then they were just outraged that Obama didn’t embrace it.”
The prior president held power for 8 years and squandered our annual fiscal surpluses on a search for fictional weapons of mass destruction. He singlehandedly ran our government budgets from a series of surpluses to a series of deficits because he was gutless enough to wage war without raising the requsite taxes to fund that war as we incurred costs.
His party was rightly turned out of power because of this sqandering of our asssets along with the overdue failure to address healthcare reform. A new Persident was elected on the basis the he would attempt to sovle those problems and he did something about it. It may not have been perfect, but he did was he was elected to do.
Anybody who suggest the American people want something else is delusional. Americans are willing to pay for a fair and efficient healthcare system. There are differences of opinion as to how that system might be structured.
The discussion here has evolved from talking points to the recognition that healthcare is a basic human right and that we can provide that level of healthcare in the United States. We may disagree on details but the broad outline is already in place.
The Tea Party wiill get nowhere by being naysayers.
February 11th, 2011 | 7:16 am
Ken, I simply assume that liberals who like to call us callous toward the needy are ignorant.
I don’t worry too much about it. I understand. Your leaders rely very heavily on that straw man, because it’s the only way to stay attached to policies that have failed utterly in the real world. Liberals today do not know how to both acknowledge their failures and still hold on to their dreams, so they instead resort to denial – everything that is wrong with their policies is because of the evil bogeyman. Right?
Policies should be debated based on right and wrong. I do not have to prove my goodness or decency as a person to prove that my ideas are logical, sound, rational, or the best alternative in a given scenario.
If you’re so attached to the “conservatives are heartless and greedy” motif that you can’t evaluate what I say logically or rationally – based on ethical reasoning, as opposed to emotional appeal – then IMO that’s your shortcoming, not mine.
February 11th, 2011 | 11:26 am
If you’re so attached to the “conservatives are heartless and greedy” motif that you can’t evaluate what I say logically or rationally – based on ethical reasoning, as opposed to emotional appeal – then IMO that’s your shortcoming, not mine.
If you’d actually read what I’ve written, you’d see I reject that motif.
Liberals today
Yeah, we’re all alike, and we can be defined by our faults. And you’re thinking as Christ called us to.
February 11th, 2011 | 4:08 pm
Liberal policies, in fact, have dramatically succeeded in the real world. It was liberals who brought the US the greatest prosperity and equality the nation has never known, the Great Compression of the years 1945-1975, the years when a working-class family could send its children to college and live a middle-class life. A liberal consensus in business, labor, and government made that prosperity possible.
Since then, conservative policies have ruined the working class and stripped the middle class, but hey, the financial sector is doing just fine, even now, after it ran the rest of us into the ditch.
February 12th, 2011 | 4:05 am
Ken, it has been my experience that pretty much all liberals do in fact act the same way under the same circumstances.
Like, for instance, avoiding the substance of a criticism by a particular form of ad hominem argument that consists of passing a “bad boy!” judgment – one that assumes that the conservative in question should behave according to your own personal version of what a Christian ought to believe and how a Christian ought to behave.
Why do so many liberals do this, if my speculation is off base? There must be a reason.
Liberals are currently less than 20% of the populace, and have been actively driving out anyone who does not conform to their groupthink. Liberals not only all believe the same things, but punish those who don’t. I don’t feel there’s anything wrong at all with criticizing their sacred cows: if I’m wrong, you would do me more good if you explained what I’m wrong about, instead of insinuating that I’m a bad Christian (which maybe I am, but what is that relevant to?)
Michael, liberal policies had success in the first part of the 20th century.
Liberal policies have failed spectacularly in the latter half of the 20th century. Remember: they promised us that if we went along with their policy prescriptions, there would BE no more racial tension or poverty by now. Remember that? It is entirely thanks to liberal policies that we now have skyrocketing promiscuity, crime, broken neighborhoods, and broken families.
Liberals have responded to these failures by simply shutting down the feedback mechanisms, and demonizing those who attempt to say “hey your policies are having negative unintended consequences”.
It is no coincidence that liberals tend to be overwhelmingly young people, college students, and “sheltered” people such as college professors and certainly enclaves of wealthy professionals. People who live in former Democratic party strongholds all across America have seen their beautiful neighborhoods transformed into “urban ruins”. Spend some time looking at photo essays of formerly prosperous towns like Detroit, MI; Akron, OH; Gary, IN – etc – and you will see exactly why “Reagan Democrats” and “Blue Dogs” have deserted the party. Those were nice towns.
And it isn’t because industry was outsourced, either, because the same outsourcing has wreaked just as much economic devastation on places that were never subject to Democratic party “experiments” (social experiments done using live populations as guinea pigs). While there is poverty and pain in conservative places, too – maybe even more so because they get far fewer handout dollars – there is not the total breakdown of community, the destruction of the physical space, etc.
The only way you can make a real American wasteland is by coupling economic decline with the deliberate destruction of the social networks and shared values that provide social cohesion – the same networks and values that Democrats deliberately destroyed in the name of “social justice”.
So, yeah, I think any honest definition of “failed social policy” has to include liberal policies from the death of JFK (at the latest) to the present day.
And by the way Quayle was right about Murphy Brown, too.
February 12th, 2011 | 8:21 pm
Blake, first of all, I’m a pro-life, middle-of-the-road-on-immigration Democrat who finds lots to disagree with the Obama administration on, so I’m not your liberal stereotype who doesn’t think for himself. The first thing you asked me is why I assume that any change is good change. I can’t imagine what I said that made you think I think it is. Nor did I suggest you should blame the Republicans for Obama delivering a bad healthcare package. What I said, while implicitly acknowledging that Obama’s plan has problems, is that conservatives could have come up with their own plan when they had the chance to pass it.
Nor did I say that “Christians” have no empathy for liberals – I said I couldn’t understand who many Christian conservatives don’t. Nor did I in any way suggest that empathy = agreement or even the absence of strong disagreement. What empathy does entail in politics is a willingness to understand the other person in the best possible light, to acknowledge the best in them, i.e., “I think you’re wrong and here’s why, but I can see your heart’s in the right place so I’m not going to sneer at you, mock you, or spin hateful fantasies.” Now I’ll grant you that the Left on the whole gives as good, or rather as bad, as it gets. But correct if you think I’m wrong, but I don’t see the Christian Left acting this way – not its pundits or its politicians. I, for one, see Christian conservatives as good and generous people in their private lives, and patriotic in their politics. But a good percentage of them as vicious and cynical as their secular counterparts. If you read Gateway Pundit or Elizabeth Scalia’s blog while they were on First Things, you saw lots of Rush Limbaugh/ Mark Levin style mudslinging there – people egging each other on, reveling in disgust. And don’t we know how good that feels, and how judgmental is it. I’m not going to quote scripture at you, but I can’t believe you think that kind of behavior just runs contrary to some little “personal version of how a Christian ought to behave.”
And by the way, don’t think I have it in for Christian conservatives, or that I don’t try to practice what I preach. I spent years defending CC’s online in a largely liberal forum.
February 12th, 2011 | 11:52 pm
Ken, to say that Christians don’t have empathy for liberals is simply the sort of accusation that can’t be defended against.
Personally I have plenty of empathy for individual liberals. But I’m sick of hearing about this lie which is used to demonize Christians and to manipulate political discourse.
Public debate is supposed to be based on logic or reason, about being right or wrong. Demanding one group be “empathetic” – especially when it’s clear from the start that there won’t be any reciprocity – seems like an inappropriate expectation to me.
Liberals rely on argumentum ad misericordium lines of reasoning in many of their biggest and most controversial arguments. It is right and proper to ignore and reject such lines of reasoning, because they’re manipulative and fallacious.
February 13th, 2011 | 9:34 am
to say that Christians don’t have empathy for liberals
Are you trying to say that all Christians are conservatives, or are you just incapable of reading and understanding simple sentences? I did not say what you say I said.
Public debate is supposed to be based on logic or reason, about being right or wrong. Demanding one group be “empathetic” – especially when it’s clear from the start that there won’t be any reciprocity – seems like an inappropriate expectation to me.
First of all, reason doesn’t preclude civility, and civility promotes reasoned debate. Secondly, we’re told to love our neighbors, not to love only the ones who love us.
February 13th, 2011 | 3:22 pm
Blake,
First, some clarity. When you say that liberal policies succeeded in the “first part of the 20th century,” that would mean 1900-1950. So yes, TR and Wilson pursued liberal policies, which were cut back by Harding and Coolidge. FDR begins to build the liberal consensus in the 1930s, but he was no Keynesian. His attempt to balance the budget created the depression within the Great Depression. It was the postwar liberal consensus forged by Truman and Eisenhower and pursued subsequently even by Nixon that led to the nation’s great prosperity of 1945-1975.
I wouldn’t call 1975 the “first part” of the century. The conservative turn was brought by Carter and Reagan who started the deregulating and started paying more attention to big business with the calamitous results we face today. The forty years of liberal consensus (1935-1975) built a great thing that the last thirty-five years of conservative dominance (1975-2010) has destroyed.
When you look at the pictures of prosperous towns in the rust belt, remember that their prosperity was created by the liberal consensus that was broken by the conservative turn made in the late seventies.
As for the difference between the poverty seen in the rust belt and that seen in conservative places where people get fewer handouts, here in Texas we have never known the prosperity known in the blue states. We believed too strongly in the euphemism “right to work” to forge any consensus between unions, business, and government. The result is that we here in the red states take more handouts from the prosperous blue states than we pay in taxes. Only seven states have more poverty than we do. You don’t see pictures of wreckage in Texas because we never gussied up the place to begin with.
But your focus seems to be on liberal social policies or “social experiments.” Here, liberals have a great record: enabling the growth of unions, racially integrating the military, outlawing segregation. But you seem to thinking specifically of LBJ’s war on poverty, affirmative action, and what else I can’t tell. These all occur in the sixties. Some liberal ideas from this period were boneheaded: busing, for example. On the other hand, at least liberals tried a social policy. Conservative reliance on segregation and neglect wasn’t going anywhere good.
But two things occurred that make the record far from clear. First, liberals failed to conquer inflation. We have Volker and Reagan to thank for that victory. Second, the turn to the right killed the prosperity that would have made progress on poverty possible.
And liberal policies toward blacks have succeeded. The black middle class grew when the country desegregated and when affirmative action opened closed doors. But it is not a stable middle class, and since the 1980s, many middle-class blacks slipped back into poverty just as conservative policies started taking hold.
By the way, the idea that liberals are only 20% of the population is misleading. Only some are willing to call themselves liberal, but lots of people keep voting like liberals.
February 14th, 2011 | 6:15 am
The liberal policies that worked in the first half of the 20th century were people-driven, not imposed from the top down.
Liberal policies have failed because policies based on experts On High telling the little people what the little people need are policies that don’t work.
The criticisms of the New Deal and the Great Society were recorded, as were the promises. We can look at these and compare the situation today. We can see that the criticisms were prescient and the promises failed to come true.
We can see that poverty is still with us. Only now it’s worse, because instead of hard-working people who just need jobs, we now have people who have been trained to “learned helplessness”, accepting a welfare check. Thanks a lot for that.
The evidence is all around. The liberal Guardian can run “urban ruins porn” of Detroit and bewail the fact that it wouldn’t look like this if white people lived here, but the fact is, the white people tried to fix the place before they all left. They said “this house is full of crack” and the leftists said, “you racist! how dare you object to crack!”….the liberals broke everywhere they’ve had. They broke the Rust Belt and now they’re breaking California and New York. They break everything they touch, and then they belittle the residents as “whiners” when the residents try to explain why they’re about to flee the area for someplace that isn’t mismanaged.
February 14th, 2011 | 10:30 am
Blake,
You’re still having trouble with dates. The great liberal victories were in the second part of the century, not the first. The years 1945-1975 are in the second part of the century. TR’s creation of the national parks system was a top-down liberal policy, but otherwise, you’re right that most liberal changes in the first half were people driven: the income tax, direct election of senators, women’s suffrage. Some of them were boneheaded: Prohibition. Some seemed like good ideas at the time but have since become disastrous: recall, referendum, initiatives.
The most disastrous have occurred in California. You blame liberals for the problems out there and for some good reasons. But what really put California in the ditch was Proposition 13, the successful 1978 conservative push to limit taxes. Many of those taxes had been passed by Reagan when he was governor, but the real damage was that progressive-era techniques that gave the people power were used to bankrupt the state. Liberals kept passing spending bills, and conservatives kept voting down taxes. The state’s a mess, and a big part of blame goes to the unintended consequences of progressive-era reform.
But you’re wrong to say that top-down liberal policies have failed. Truman’s executive order desegregating the military and the Brown decision desegregating schools were top-down policies that vastly improved life in our country. Some top-down policies are good, and some people-up policies are bad.
Yes, the criticisms and promises of both the New Deal and the Great Society were recorded, but you’re having trouble reading the record. The New Deal succeeded beautifully. Every economic historian can show you how brutally average Americans suffered in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unfettered capitalism destroyed communities, and industrial workers had no security. Every 7-10 years the country went through a depression, and each depression was more severe.
The New Deal ended that cycle by regulating banks and creating transparency that has aided business. Every recession we’ve had since 1940 has been mild and short compared to nineteenth-century panics and far less destructive. With the ascendancy of conservative policies in the eighties, however, we’ve begun to experience jobless recoveries in which the economy rebounds but employment lags behind. Our current Great Recession is only the most severe example of what conservative policies have wrought.
If you’re right that liberals have created poverty by creating a welfare system that creates helpless people, then I would expect to see less poverty in conservative states with weak welfare systems. But as I’ve observed, Texas, which is as solid red as they come, is the 8th poorest state, even though our rich are very rich. The states poorer than Texas are all red states, too, with weak safety nets. Liberal states are generally more prosperous than conservative ones. They do a better job of managing the economy.
February 14th, 2011 | 11:27 am
Michael, the unique and commercially advantageous geopolitical position the postwar United States found herself in was not the child of a “liberal consensus” but of total war.
February 14th, 2011 | 3:13 pm
Michael, by “liberal victories” I mean things like what happened after the Triangle shirtwaist fire in 1911, when we rose above being a sweatshop nation.
Back when the left wing actually did useful things. (Of course, at the same time the same people were also devising ways to sterilize poor people, and working out plans to put them in “camps” for “reeducation”, so maybe I should be more cautious in my praise).
As far as your economic analysis, I’ll just suffice to say, I think it’s a bit heavy on the wishful thinking.
February 14th, 2011 | 6:06 pm
Blake,
You argued earlier that “all liberals do in fact act the same way under the same circumstances” by “avoiding the substance of a criticism by a particular form of ad hominem argument that consists of passing a “bad boy!” judgment.” You later explained to Ken that “Public debate is supposed to be based on logic or reason.”
Interestingly, you have done what you accuse liberals of doing, namely, “avoiding the substance of a criticism.” I have offered plenty of logic, reason, and examples, and all you manage to come back with is the charge of “wishful thinking.” So much for the triumph of conservative logic over liberal illogic.
—
Francis,
You’re right that the US reaped enormous benefits from the lack of a major competitor after WW2, but the wealth generated by that advantage was distributed equitably because the New Deal had created a liberal consensus that believed that benefits should be distributed equitably.
Compare that liberal ideal to the conservative one that has reigned for the last thirty years. For the first time in last century, gains in productivity have not translated into higher wages. Instead, companies have distributed that wealth only to upper management and stock holders to the impoverishment of the middle and working classes.
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