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| Dorothy Day |
Paul Ryan shocked the gentle souls at Georgetown University when he traveled up to their campus last Thursday and said: "We believe that Social Security legislation, now billed as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the idea of force and compulsion." The Wisconsin Republican went on to lament that "we in our generation have more and more come to consider the state as bountiful Uncle Sam," and that citizens justify what they get from the state by saying, "We got it coming to us."continue at Wall Street Journal
Sure sounds like Mr. Ryan was channeling Ayn Rand.
Except for one thing. The words are not Mr. Ryan's. They come from a 1945 column by Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker, in which she complained about how state intervention limits personal freedom and responsibility. Day's skepticism about government was reflected in her nickname for it: "Holy Mother State."
How far we have traveled since then. As the protests surrounding Mr. Ryan's appearance confirm, the Catholic left long ago jettisoned any worries about the size or scope of government (except for national defense). So the Sermon on the Mount now becomes a call for a single-payer system of universal health insurance.
In this worldview, those who believe otherwise—i.e., those who argue that you best help the poor by breaking down barriers to ownership and opportunity—are not simply mistaken. They are selfish and uncaring. It's the same meme President Obama played to when he recently characterized the GOP's approach as "you're on your own economics."
Thomas Reese SJ(Georgetown community organizer) was on Colbert last night. I don't think Reese did a very good job. Colbert I think did a fair job in the interview. Calls Reese a socialist. The main problem with the left is that they have no alternatives. Nobody on the left seems willing to address Ryan's main point, namely, immoral spending(borrowing money to pay for social programs with no plan to pay it back) will have to be paid for by our children. Social Security is the prime example - absolutely unsustainable but all we hear from the left is how the bourgeois are to blame(yet still unwilling to do what the communists did and confiscate everything supposedly in the name of the proletariat). I'm not against social programs run at the state level, but I am against not properly funding them. How is it moral to institute a social program with no intention of actually paying for it?
Maybe I need to just have a weekly Paul Ryan roundup.
10 comments:
Ex priest and Marquette prof. Dan Maguire was on uber-liberal Wisconsin Public Radio this past Monday to let us all know that Rep. Paul Ryan was a heretic and held views inimical to Catholic teaching. Having Dan Maguire defend Catholic teaching is akin to Afolf Hitler building a Holocaust Museum!
I must have been reading a lot of Dorothy Day in the last year because when I first read this on my blog reader feed my first guess was Dorothy Day, not the person most people would think of being opposed to social programs. I happen to agree with her on this one. I just don't know how we move away from it at this juncture. My parent's generation drew more from SS than they ever put into it. Our generation and our children's will pay far more in than we'll ever draw out. It's a true Ponzi scheme.
There was a time when Dorothy Day was not acceptible in the Catholic Church.
I was going to guess Peter Maurin so I was in the right area. But you Badgers never forget. You Badgers always remember.
You have something in your comment that seems wrong, BC. You say "paid for by our children," and I'm pretty sure, if I understand our overlords correctly, we're not supposed to have any. They cost too much, or more than birth control, or something.
ROFL! Kat is back! That wins comment of the month.
Sherry, I sense a CS Lewis quote there. :)
William, typical that they wouldn't ask a Catholic about Catholic teaching...
Liz & Mary, I have not read very much on Dorothy Day but when liberals claim someone, basically they become one of the Borg and whatever they actually said or did gets assimilated to the agenda of the collective.
[ Ex priest and Marquette prof. Dan Maguire was on uber-liberal Wisconsin Public Radio this past Monday to let us all know that Rep. Paul Ryan was a heretic and held views inimical to Catholic teaching. ]
Yes and he was rightly challenged by a caller that the Gospel's imperative to care for the poor does not automatically imply that the Goonverment needs to provide that care. He deployed a embarrassingly convoluted response based on some alleged nuance of the Hebrew of one of the Psalms as to the responsibilities of the king (huh?), mumbled a few more deflective nothings and the host let him move on.
I'm going to try to find that interview and post it. thanks PalmHQ!
I just listened to it again myself. I had to laugh at what followed the weird Hebrew lesson (about the "Hebrew word that comes rooted in the Aramaic language", dontcha know. Double huh?)
He goes on to cite the Old Testament imperative to leave the corners of your fields unharvested and to allow gleaning by the poor. He somehow derives from this the conclusion that "the Bible demands redistribution".
Never mind the fact that the guy who owned the field before the gleaning still owns the field after the gleaning and that sacred Scripture still does not say anything about any Goonverment swooping in to demand that said field owner allow the gleaning, much less redistribute his wealth by incrementally taking the field away from him.
I think that the economic injustices in our society are real and that traditional Catholic social teaching has a lot of solutions. Equally I think that many of Dan Maguire's proposed solutions are antithetical both to justice and Catholicism.
I would love some on my own economics, instead I'm on my own plus everyone the Obammunist has me supporting...and now they want "free" abortions.
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