My Oct. 1 column on the glories of liberalism evoked some reader comment, for which I am grateful since it not only allows me to reply but also since it shows reader interest. One gentleman’s letter objected to my favoring a movement “with precepts so against the teachings of the Catholic Church.” Although I never endorsed liberalism’s preference of abortion, he took me to task as though I had. He says, “The cornerstone of liberalism is abortion, including late term abortions for any reason.”
I have to respectfully deny this claim. Neither the dictionary’s definition nor the common understanding of this widely inclusive term suggests this. As should be unnecessary, I repudiate abortion, and the editor of this Catholic newspaper would not allow a column endorsing it even indirectly. Long before Roe v Wade and Sherry Finkbine’s New York abortion before it, liberalism was dealing with more equitable distribution of God’s creation, trying to see to it that the poor get their minimum due, which Catholic social justice strongly defends. Anyone objecting to this is way off Catholic teaching as enunciated by an ecumenical council, popes and conferences of bishops.
Many liberals also support embryonic stem cell research, gay marriage and euthanasia. But to assume because I see merit in liberalism’s attending to government attitude to the poor that I must adopt these parts of some of liberals’ agenda is what they called in Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s time “guilt by association.” “Tail-gunner Joe,” so named because of his World War II military service and because of his unsubstantiated attacks on civil servants like John Rice Davies and John Stewart Service, ruined careers in the paranoid days of the fifties with baseless charges of communism and communist sympathies. All his headline-grabbing accusations never resulted in even one conviction of treason, spying or sabotage. It was no far-left zealot who finally asked him at the end of the Army-McCarthy hearings, “Sir, have you no decency?”
What about universal health care, the National Endowment of the Arts, food stamps and federal aid to education?
The U.S. bishops opposed the recently passed health care reform bill because it came with the possibility of expanded abortion funding. But their objection to that particular legislation does not mean the church opposes universal health care. Just a few weeks ago, on Nov. 18, Pope Benedict XVI said it was the moral responsibility of nations to guarantee access to health care for all of their citizens, regardless of social and economic status or their ability to pay.
The NEA is a great notion, but once again because of a few celebrated lewd displays it featured, guilt by association demands that the whole edifice must crumble. Food stamps are bad because they give a man a fish so that “he will vote for me” instead of teaching him how to fish. Federal aid to education also fails my friend because it teaches “young children how to use condoms and all about sex without consent from parents.” I think public school parents will inform him that school boards accountable to parents oversee what their children are taught.
For some, a few flaws of a program completely nullify it. Then there is the cost of government programs. No one wants them to be excessive. Certainly legislators should ride herd on waste and obsolescence. Public programs for programs’ sake are worthless. But if the real agenda is to conserve the wealth of the wealthy, leaving the poor to be cheated by tax cuts for the rich, this is wrong, way off Catholic teaching.
I suspect that if an objective study were done, it would find that conservatives are far wealthier than lefties. The limousine liberals who host parties for liberal causes are so few that it’s the same names every time. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. If this is so, then why are so many middle-class people bankrupting themselves to conserve the wealth of the rich? They evangelize for the sake of votes, saying one gets rich by voting for the rich. Experience says the opposite. How many thousands of Americans face foreclosure because they do not have the “socialist” health insurance that Europe has long had?
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