THE ATTACK ON RELIGION IN AMERICA: A CHRISTIAN CALL TO ACTION

By Stephen M. Krason

     The Obama administration’s imposition of a legal requirement on religious employers to provide contraception and sterilization services in the employee health insurance plans is certainly one of the most blatant attacks on religious liberty in American history—at least since colonial days in places like Maryland when Catholics could not worship publicly and were double taxed. Indeed, the Obama assault on religious liberty even extends to freedom of religious speech. The plan is to require religious entities that apparently would not come under the regulation—that apparently would be very few kinds of institutions—to inform employees where they can go to get these services. Of course, this information is easily available to people already. To mandate that religious entities provide it is nothing more than an effort by the most aggressively secular presidential administration in American history to consolidate the secular state’s hegemonic position and further extend the leftist-secularist sexual agenda. Indeed, the increasingly intolerant left—exhibiting something like what Jean-Francois Revel in the 1970s called the “totalitarian temptation”—can brook no dissent from its basic beliefs. Sexual and reproductive libertinism are probably the most central of these.

      If Obama wins a second term, don’t be surprised if his people concoct some rationale to extend this mandate to abortion services—Hyde Amendment or not. If the Democrats—for some time the party of the secular left—gain control of houses of Congress the pressure on religious institutions is likely to be even more intense. The leftist mind now understands “religious liberty” to mean merely freedom to worship, but not to carry on any other actions in the name of religious belief. This follows from the left’s diminution of the important of religion. As Paul Johnson wrote, in recent decades for the first time in American history there has been “a widespread tendency, especially among intellectuals, to present religious people as enemies of freedom and democratic choice.”

      If Obama is defeated, probably the new regulation will be rescinded. If not, the issue will be resolved in the courts—unless his administration uses some of its customary sleight of hand to get around even an unfavorable court decision. However, that assumes a Supreme Court decision—the matter will probably end up there—will be unfavorable to him. The Supreme Court probably gave the early impetus for this new restricted notion about religious liberty in its 1990 Smith v. Employment Division decision. In that case, the Court overturned its line of religious liberty decisions going back to the 1940s and held that religious belief is not a ground for exemption from a generally applicable law that is otherwise constitutional.

      If the Obama administration has carried the secularist assault to new heights, the Court has over the decades been a major architect of the secular state. It has been its decisions starting in the post-World War II period that progressively forced religion out of the official, public domain and ultimately led to such inanities as public school officials forbidding depictions of Santa Claus at Christmas and the banning of Christmas trees on public property. It was also its Flast v. Cohen decision of 1968 where, contrary to the basic legal rule that to bring a civil case a party has to suffer some kind of injury, the Court held that establishment clause cases could be initiated by virtually anyone. As a result, we see evangelical atheist organizations such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) snooping around local communities throughout the country to find any hint of something with an even indirect connection to religion in the public domain so it can threaten to sue beleaguered public officials.

     The federal courts’ devotion to the cause of implanting a secular state was illustrated vividly with Smith v. School Commissioners of Mobile County in 1987. This was the famous federal district court decision of Judge Brevard Hand who—after a trial featuring testimonies of such heavy-duty, perspicacious scholars as Russell Kirk, Gerhart Niemeyer, and James Hitchcock—ruled that the textbooks used by the Mobile public schools promoted secular humanism. Thus, they violated the Supreme Court’s precedents that held that there should be neutrality between belief and unbelief. The federal appellate court summarily reversed Hand, not even so much as opening the boxes of the voluminous evidence he sent it to back up his decision. Presumably, neutrality was the rule if it worked to the disadvantage of religion but not if it excluded secularism.

     In a way, the appellate court’s action anticipated developments like the Obama contraception/sterilization regulation: accept the secular perspective, or else. The “or else” now also includes religious institutions and employers.

     The entire judicial—and now executive—enterprise of imposing a secular state is happening even though, as I show in my forthcoming book, The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic, America’s Founding Fathers believed religion to be essential to the sustenance of a democratic republic. George Washington said in his Farewell Address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Similarly, John Adams wrote, “it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”

     What should be the response of Christians and other believers? I have long believed that in most things the best defense is a good offense. The best way to combat the assault on religious liberty is to work aggressively to reverse secularism. In other words, it is not enough just to try to carve out protections and exemptions for this or that religious entity, but to seek to reclaim the culture. As Christopher Dawson and others explained, every culture emerges from the cult—from its religious beliefs and worldview. There is no such thing as religious neutrality, just as there is no such thing as moral neutrality. Secularism has uprooted America’s Christian past and put itself in its place. Now, it is seeking a sweeping cultural victory. This also means a legal, political, and economic victory—so that the threats to religious liberty will likely be more numerous and systematic in the future.

     An offensive strategy must operate both on a philosophical and a practical level. As mentioned, the philosophical should be nothing less than to return America to her religious roots. This is truly a time for a Christian call to action. It will be a difficult and long-term struggle, starting with a determined effort by Christians not to be bowled over anymore. The practical level requires not just a concerted, broad-reaching legal response—a la the Alliance Defense Fund, which drafted the critical comment of several Catholic colleges and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists to the Obama regulation—but also an increasingly visible and vociferous popular opposition. A good beginning of this was the December 2011 rally of several thousands in Athens, Texas to support local officials who refused an FFRF demand to remove a nativity scene from the courthouse grounds. Another was the “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” earlier in the fall when evangelical pastors deliberately evaluated the moral positions of political candidates in their sermons and dared the IRS to threaten their tax exemptions.

     Both the Obama regulation and such recent episodes as certain states demanding that religious social service organizations must be prepared to facilitate adoptions for same-sex couples have hit the Catholic Church the hardest. It’s time for the USCCB and other Catholic leaders to get over both their worries from the priest sex-abuse scandal and their historic reticence at asserting themselves in the American public arena and help lead this effort.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

NEWT GINGRICH ON RESTRAINING JUDICIAL POWER: IN LINE WITH THE CONSTITUTION (MOSTLY)

By Stephen M. Krason

     Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich caused a stir during a media interview when he set forth his ideas about how the excessive exertion of judicial power should be checked. Among his claims were that a president could ignore unconstitutional U.S. Supreme Court decisions and that Congress could subpoena federal judges to make them justify questionable decisions and abolish lower federal courts. He was subsequently attacked for threatening judicial independence, and his comments were called “radical,” “frightening,” “irresponsible” and “outrageous” (these last two responses were from two former Republican U.S. attorneys general).

   Are such views truly radical or likely to undercut judicial independence (which, as I state in my forthcoming book The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic, was a central principle that the Founding Fathers believed necessary for sustaining republican government)? The answer is, for the most part, no. They are also mostly well grounded in the provisions of the Constitution and in earlier American history.

     As usual, the reactions divided on political lines and people evidently did not take the time to examine actually what he advocates. Some of the strongest criticisms of Gingrich, not surprisingly, came from left-leaning commentators and publications. One wonders if their writers and editors would express the same views in looking back at FDR’s court-packing plan of 1937. One of the former attorneys general, Michael Mukasey, is a Mitt Romney supporter. (Don’t expect Romney, by the way, to refuse to follow unconstitutional court decisions; as Massachusetts governor he didn’t lift a finger to resist the state Supreme Judicial Court’s invention of a state constitutional right to same-sex “marriage.”) Few seemed to study—if they even mentioned it—Gingrich’s scholarly and well-documented 54-page position paper on how the courts have overreached their authority and the constitutional and historical basis for different ways to redress that.

    First, he calls for the appointment of “originalist” judges. While one must recognize that constitutional provisions are not always crystal clear and the intent of the Founding Fathers sometimes obscure, most people believe that the Constitution cannot simply be changed by the courts. Its basic meaning and principles cannot be transformed, even if it has to be adapted to a degree to obvious changing circumstances. For example, it not a problem after World War II to set up an air force even though some said the Constitution did not provide for it.

     Still, we cannot just say that originalism means rejecting an “activist” judiciary. I’ve long favored a judicial activism that strongly—if prudently—promotes the natural law principles that America was founded on. I’m for a “restraintist” judiciary when it comes to, say, decreeing ersatz rights—such as abortion, sodomy, and same-sex “marriage”—which are found nowhere in our constitutional tradition and are, in fact, often antithetical to it. One hopes that Gingrich understands these two faces of judicial activism.

    A couple of other Gingrich proposals are hardly controversial, although they require a seldom-seen proactive stance by the political branches in protesting judicial actions. One is that the president should order the solicitor general (who’s in charge of arguing the federal government’s cases in court) to join litigation—that, say, might be initiated by a state or a legal advocacy organization—to seek to overturn unconstitutional judicial precedents. That could be more important than it seems because when the government joins a side in a federal court case it enhances that side’s chances of winning. The second is, simply, that Congress and the executive should routinely issue resolutions and statements opposing what they believe are unconstitutional court decisions. Gingrich believes that such statements could exert moral pressure on the courts. The problem would be to get both branches to agree, which especially would not be easy in an era of divided government.

    Other Gingrich proposals are indeed more daring—but only in light of the fact that the political branches historically have been so lethargic in resisting judicial encroachments. He wants Congress to put limits on federal court jurisdiction—that is, to take away their power to decide cases on certain topics on which they have issued problematic rulings in the past. Thisis much talked about, but seldom done. Article III of the Constitution clearly authorizes Congress to do it. After the Civil War, Congress removed jurisdiction over cases concerning federal Reconstruction policy. While his proposal that Congress abolish federal judgeships and even lower federal courts may sound like a far reach—and Gingrich’s position paper says it “is warranted only in the most extreme of circumstances”—there is no question of its constitutional soundness. The lower federal courts are entirely creatures of Congress. They were established by Congress—the district courts at the beginning in the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the appellate courts not until the late nineteenth century—and could be abolished by it. The only court prescribed by the Constitution is the U.S. Supreme Court, but only the chief justice’s position is mentioned. Congress determines the number of associate justices, or even if there will be any.

    In addition to Congress subpoenaing federal judges, Gingrich also says that it can withhold funds that the federal courts need to carry out certain decisions and also impeach federal judges who hand down unconstitutional decisions. He asserts that the president can order executive branch agencies to view problematical court decisions as limited only to the parties in question and not as establishing a precedent that they must follow. He insists that it is in “very rare circumstances” that the president can ignore a court decision.

     As Federalist 78 says, the executive has the sword and the legislative has the purse; the courts have “no influence” over either. There is no doubt that Congress can use funding to resist judicial encroachment, or that a president can refuse to carry out their edicts. Not having the sword means that judicial decisions are not self-enforcing; they require complicity with the executive to carry them out. For example, if the Supreme Court ordered the president to accept open, practicing homosexuals into the military or put women in combat roles, he could simply refuse in light of his role as commander-in-chief. Let’s remember what Andrew Jackson said when the Cherokee Indian decision (1831) was handed down: “John Marshall has made a decision. Now let John Marshall enforce it.” Chief Justice Marshall couldn’t, and it wasn’t.

     In saying that a judicial decision is limited to the parties before it, Gingrich is merely echoing what Abraham Lincoln asserted about the Dred Scott case. Lincoln said that if that decision were viewed as binding the political branches for the indefinite future, the people would have “ceased to be their own rulers.” As far as impeachment goes, it is generally agreed that it does not require the commission of a great crime and the position paper mentions how Federalist 81 and the great Justice Joseph Story said it could be used to restrain the courts. Still, the Jeffersonian Era set a precedent that it would not be easily invoked against judges.

    It is important to keep in mind that open resistance to the courts could very easily be abused and then subvert the separation of powers in the opposite way: by over-embellishing executive and legislative power. It must be used only in the cases of blatantly unconstitutional decisions and obvious overreaching of judicial authority (such as the Colorado judge who is telling the state government that it must massively increase its funding of public schools). Gingrich demonstrates his awareness of this when he couches his proposals in such terms as “in certain” or in “very rare” or in “the most extreme of circumstances.” The only of his ideas that is troublesome is the subpoenaing of federal judges. This is unprecedented, and indeed could be damaging to judicial independence. Otherwise, what Gingrich is seeking to do is redress the harm that has been done to separation of powers in an era of historically unparalleled judicial supremacy.

    Hopefully, Gingrich also realizes that one must use the utmost prudence in facing off against the judiciary right now. In spite of judicial excess, this is an era of increasingly sweeping power by the legislative branch and—more than ever under Obama—the executive. Those concerned about limited government may in the future have to look to the courts as allies.

     Finally, even while showing a willingness to resort to strong responses such as these if necessary, Gingrich’s position paper makes clear that the best long-term solution for restraining judicial excess is to appoint judges with the correct understanding of the Constitution. Gingrich recently stated that he would appoint judges in the mold of Robert P. George, the eminent natural law scholar, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, and long-time First Vice President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. One hopes the other Republican candidates are thinking the same way.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

    SELECTING PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES, REPRESENTATIVENESS,

AND THE NEED TO BE “MORE DEMOCRATIC”

By Stephen M. Krason

     While the 2012 presidential primary and caucus season will begin within a couple of weeks, the Republican race is already almost a year old and still there is much grumbling about whether there is a good choice of candidates. So, it is worth considering whether the current means of selecting party presidential nominees is suitable. Much has been said about how the best, strongest nominees do not emerge and how ideologically driven party activists out of sync with the rank-and-file shape the nomination races. The result is party nominees who lack broad popular appeal.

     We should consider the historical background. The current presidential nomination arrangements date to 1972. After the rancorous Vietnam War-era 1968 nomination season, the Democrats (who were the predominant party) set up a commission to reassess the party’s practices. The McGovern-Fraser reforms aimed at “opening up” the party to groups of people who supposedly had previously been excluded. The result was a massive increase in presidential primaries and direct-participation caucuses, such as the forthcoming one in Iowa. Most convention delegates were now going to be bound to vote the party electorate’s preference. The reforms also signaled the decline of the influence of party organizations and party leaders. Since the Democrats then controlled most state legislatures, they were able to push through the needed election law changes to implement the reforms. The Republicans thus had no choice but to go along. Along with changes in Congressional rules to weaken the powers of committee chairmen, opening up to public scrutiny virtually all aspects of Congressional deliberations, and making it easier to stop a Senate filibuster, it was the final stage of the democratization of American politics that had begun in the Jacksonian Era.

     As usually is the case, much question can be raised about whether the new nomination procedures truly have been more democratic. True, the new arrangements have involved the public more—in big states, each rank-and-file party member was now guaranteed his one/one millionth role in candidate selection—but only especially well-heeled candidates could hope to compete, since broad public appeal with heavy media utilization was now crucial. Also, party “interest groups”—generally more ideologically extreme than a party’s mainstream—became more important and voters often found themselves less satisfied with the nominees chosen. Ironically, the new, more democratic procedures did not always broadly represent a party’s rank-and-file nor bring forth the most electable nominees. As Professor David Carlin has written, Catholics found themselves alienated from a new leftist dominated Democratic party that had long been their home.

     Perhaps the nomination procedures in place in the decades before 1972 were both more reasonable and more representative. For example, in 1960, when party leaders—whose primary concern then, as now, was winning elections—played a major role in presidential nominations, John F. Kennedy thought that the way he could convince them that he was strongest candidate was to enter as many of the small number of primaries as he could and show that he had substantial popular appeal. He entered seven, won them all, and then by strong efforts to woo Democratic convention delegates, was able to secure the nomination. It was a hybrid arrangement. The party’s leaders, officeholders, and activists selected the nominee to be sure, but they paid heed to the popular preference—without being required to do so, as the party rules often dictate today—and as a result produced an electable nominee whose views were not extreme.

     This old arrangement helped insure that the party interest groups did not exert a disproportionate role in candidate selection. Carlin argues that the interest group domination that followed the decline of the party organization was the major factor that moved the Democratic party in a rankly leftist, secularist direction. Also, the parties probably better vetted the candidates before the media went to work and dug up real or exaggerated scandals that could cause embarrassment and defeat. It may also have encouraged a whole range of qualifications to be considered in a presidential candidate other than just who performed best in debates—as we have seen this year—or who had more “charisma.”

     Procedures that are more democratic don’t necessarily result in a more representative outcome, to say nothing of one better for the country. Anyone who thinks that what is more democratic is more in line with American principles should keep in mind that our Founding Fathers established a republic, not an out-and-out democracy. The Father of our Constitution, James Madison, said in Federalist Paper #10 that democracies “have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” It is true that the Church seeks a “society of participation” and “democratic and participatory” forms of government instead of authoritarian ones (see Sollicitudo rei Socialis #44 and Centesimus Annus #35). She does not insist, however, that they be as procedurally democratic as possible and makes it clear that democracy—by which she really means a democratic republic or representative regime—cannot be insured by a mere recourse to procedures (see Centesimus Annus #46). Indeed, the current “procedural era” has been the one in which democratic regimes have countenanced the most direct assault on human life and the family. The Church’s concern is that people have the opportunity to shape their political destiny. The former hybrid method for selecting presidential nominees easily met that.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

JUST WAGE, WOMEN’S WORK, AND THE FAMILY

By Stephen M. Krason

            We do not hear too much nowadays about the question of the just wage, and there is especially an aversion to discussing the effect that the massive presence of women in the workforce has had on this. Almost thirty years ago, Dr. Rupert J. Ederer, the senior Catholic economist and early recipient of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists’ Pope Pius XI Award, wrote that the conditions that Pope Leo XIII—and, interestingly, also Karl Marx—“denounced…where father, mother, and children all had to work outside the home to accumulate one living family wage” seemed to be reappearing. What he meant was that wage and price levels had adjusted to accommodate the fact that more than one income was coming into the household. While perhaps this has been an excuse for some employers to allow wages to stagnate, there are probably various economic forces that have responded to this new reality and created a spiral effect that has made the sole-breadwinner household difficult. This is especially so in some parts of the U.S., where the costs of housing are overwhelming. On the just wage and women’s work generally, it is worth looking back at #19 of Blessed Pope John Paul II’s first social encyclical, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work).

            John Paul spoke about the need for a “family wage,” “a single salary given to the head of the family for his work, sufficient for the needs of the family without the other spouse having to take up gainful employment outside the home.” Lest one thinks that by saying “spouse” the pope accepts an equivalency of the roles of fathers and mothers, it should be noted that he also says that needs can be met “through other social measures such as family allowances” or grants to mothers staying in the home and that mothers should not have to abandon the crucial role of childrearing and education to go to work outside the home. John Paul was reiterating the same concerns that Pius XI expressed in Quadragesimo Anno (#71).

            Ederer explained that what the Church seeks to do about the just wage and women is to insure that both commutative justice and social justice are maintained. Commutative justice directs that a man and a woman are entitled to an equal wage for genuinely equal work. Social justice—which is geared to upholding the common good—indicates, however, that a wage boost beyond that is needed for the fathers in the workplace. This is so their wives will be able to devote themselves to their children—the good of the family requires this, which in turn is necessary for the good of the political society. Ederer goes even further: he says that women should probably step aside and not even compete against men who need to support a family if the available jobs are limited. In order to take account of these imperatives of both commutative and social justice, public policy arguably should embrace the family allowance or other wage supplement approach. The question is how to do it. One needs to be wary of conditions that might be attached. For example, if government arranges for something like this it might mandate a certain kind of childrearing. If in-kind supplements, such as food stamps, are given, the problems of dependency and overstretched government budgets come into play. Tax credits might work, but the extent to which they would financially help a family might be limited. If government obstacles would get out of the way, it surely would be better if employers or groups of companies in one sector of the economy put aside the tenets of economic liberalism and just decide to do this.

            Ederer even hoped that the time might come again when an employer could legally choose a married man breadwinner over an unmarried woman or a married one whose income is gravy for a family’s budget. At least, it should be accepted—legally and in popular thinking—that an employer is justified in offering greater compensation for the same job to a sole-breadwinner father with a wife staying at home with the children than a woman without those responsibilities.

            Another point of John Paul’s is also pertinent. He opposes genuine discrimination against women in work—e.g., something like choosing a single man over a single woman for a job that the latter is clearly more qualified for—but makes clear that this involves jobs “for which they are capable” and that work expectations should take into account “their own nature.” The meaning of this—completely lost in our era of mindless egalitarianism—is that there is an intrinsic difference between men and women that must be taken account of in the realm of work. To be sure, this means that women have no right to work that requires intense physical labor—the considerably less upper body strength of women than men comes to mind here—or that could expose them to environments where, say, their reproductive capacity or unborn children could be harmed (this, despite what the U.S. Supreme Court held in UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc.). Moreover, when one considers the expressions of concern by such popes as Pius XI and Blessed John XXIII about protecting women’s morals in the workplace, attention to the “nature” of women almost certainly includes protecting their dignity. Both the issues of physical stature and female dignity make one vigorously question whether women belong, say, in the military, even at the very time that the Obama administration wants to integrate them more fully into combat infantry roles. The Church, to be sure, has not issued a statement or document about this, but one recalls Pius XI’s statement in his encyclical on Christian Education of Youth that the military training girls were being subjected to in some countries in his time was “contrary to the very instincts of human nature.” Indeed, the contradiction between the routine concerns about protecting women and children in combat zones and having women as military combatants is evident. This is to say nothing about how the obsession with sexual equality has pushed aside the crucial question of military effectiveness.

            Laborem Exercens makes clear that work is for the human person, not the person for work—that the person is the subject of work. It is in this spirit—and also, of course, because of the Church’s intense concern for the family—that the encyclical insists that women should not be placed at a serious professional or occupational disadvantage for leaving the workforce for a period of years to raise a family. Working arrangements should be restructured to accommodate this.

            It should be apparent that all of these problems—attaining a just or family wage, eliminating genuine unjust discrimination against women in work, structuring work so that women can have a proper role in it according to their capabilities, nature, and family aspirations—mean that work and women’s—and men’s—welfare with respect to it cannot be left to unregulated market forces. Ethical decisionmaking must shape economics, as it does any other human endeavor. Indeed, Pius XI provided a remarkably balanced perspective on this when discussing in Quadragesimo Anno the considerations to be taken account of in formulating a just wage: the needs of the workingman and his family, the state of the business (market forces particularly are a factor in this), and the requirements of the common good (#70-75). It is the same kind of reasonable, balanced, just and charitable approach that should be used to shape policy and practice about the family wage and women’s role in the workforce today.

 Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

]]> http://skrason.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/just-wage-womens-work-and-the-family/feed/ 0 scssblog http://skrason.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/the-sixties-redivivus-the-%e2%80%9coccupy-wall-street%e2%80%9d-protests/ http://skrason.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/the-sixties-redivivus-the-%e2%80%9coccupy-wall-street%e2%80%9d-protests/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:15:34 +0000 Stephen Krason http://skrason.wordpress.com/?p=170 ]]> Neither Left nor Right but Catholic

THE SIXTIES REDIVIVUS: THE “OCCUPY WALL STREET” PROTESTS

by Stephen M. Krason

     Those of us old enough to remember the 1960s cannot help but be struck by the similarities between the upheavals of that era—especially the anti-war movement—and the current “Occupy Wall Street” protests. Both have featured mass protests in the streets. Both have had a distinctly leftist socio-politico-economic orientation. Both have viewed “capitalism” as an enemy and eagerly embraced class-war rhetoric. Both have occurred at a time when probably the most leftist presidential administrations and policy agendas up to their time were in place. While the 1960s protests targeted government more because of the Vietnam War and the draft, both have criticized military policies but at the same time called for an expansion of federal social welfare programs. Most protesters are younger people—probably below thirty in the 1960s (Remember the “Don’t trust anyone over 30” slogan?) and below thirty-five now. The participants in both cases have educational attainment far above the average of the population, with 92% of the OWS crowd having at least some college (notice that I did not say they were more educated, as their ignorance of social ethics, economics, and American Founding principles abounds). Both movements have been propelled by sympathetic media coverage. Both have betrayed a kind of “unwillingness to sacrifice” or an entitlement mentality. As I point out in my forthcoming book The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic, for all the problems of the country’s Vietnam War policy it was consistent with the Founding culture’s belief in the need for present sacrifice in the hope of future good. This was typical of America’s entire Cold War effort, as seen in JFK’s insistence that Americans would “pay any price” in the struggle for freedom. The 1960s anti-war protests made clear that Americans would no longer do that, and so the 1970s witnessed the U.S. standing by while countries were swarmed over by Communist forces and the accession of the USSR to the height of its power. The current OWS people want banks and the wealthy to give them the money to pay off their student loans that they voluntarily contracted for. They don’t believe they should have to carry out their responsibilities since others have so much money and in their view should “bail them out.” This is entitlement run amok. Also, like the 1960s the origins of the movement have hardly been spontaneous; leftist activists and organizations were involved from the beginning. People like the Communist Bettina Aptheker and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activist Mario Savio led the UC-Berkeley “free speech movement,” which inaugurated the sixties’ student rebellion. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which grew out of the American socialist movement, egged on student activism and played a significant role in campus clashes. The Canadian-based leftist, environmentalist group Adbusters engineered the OWS movement. OWS has welcomed a range of arch-leftist organizations (socialists, Communists, and anarchists), one of its main organizers has been Obama “green jobs czar” and former Communist Van Jones, and the leftist public advocacy group MoveON.org has been strongly promoting it. Both movements also have seen left-leaning clergy providing cover for what is a rankly secularist movement. Unlike the sixties, though, it’s not just Christian and Jewish clergy, but also Moslems, Hindus and others.

     We also see a 1960s-type utopian vision of democracy at work. The hundreds or thousands of OWS participants all gather in a “general assembly” to decide what their agenda for each day will be. It is not surprising that they can’t come to decisions. Their labyrinth of committees can’t agree on how their money will be spent. Such Rousseauism was also seen in the SDS’s 1962 Port Huron Statement. The ugliness of such ultra-democracy (ochlocracy) has become readily apparent in both cases. Historian Allen J. Matusow writes that in the Weather Underground—an SDS faction—the male leaders dominated the female faithful, sexually imposing themselves on them or telling them who their bed partners for the night would be. The unreasonable trust prompted by OWS’s version of democracy has led to stolen laptops, iPods, and cellphones and also sexual assaults in their camp cities.

     There are some differences, to be sure. The unions now are involved, whereas in the 1960s they were spearheaded by the likes of the anti-Communist George Meany who supported American Vietnam policy. Also, the universities are not targeted now. One commentator pointed to the oddity here: Wall Street is being blamed for student loan indebtedness, even though it is the universities, bolstered since the sixties by federal student loan and grant programs, which have sent tuition and other expenses skyrocketing beyond the inflation rate. Some of this increase has been due to campus amenities that the students themselves clamor for. Again, they avoid responsibility.

     While, then, the comparisons with 1960s radicalism create an unimpressive picture of OWS, can we say anything better about its views from the perspective of Catholic social teaching? Not much, in my opinion. Their blanket condemnation of capitalism—by which it is presumed they mean the market or business economy—is not in line with that teaching, which upholds private property, economic freedom, and the right to make a reasonable profit, while it rejects an uninhibited market where ethical restraints are pushed aside. One recalls John Paul II’s distinction between the two notions of “capitalism” in Centesimus Annus (#42). Class conflict has consistently been rejected by the Church, as has socialism (which at least some of the OWS crowd seem ready to embrace). Recall that Pius XI stated firmly, “no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist” (Quadragesimo Anno #120). OWS’s angry rhetoric and confrontational tactics hardly mesh with the cooperative spirit that the Church has long called for in economic and social relations. OWS seems impervious to the certainty that its demand for universal health care would translate into a massive new government entitlement program. John Paul’s trenchant criticism of the welfare state (CA #48) would likely fall on deaf ears with them. The right to medical care in Pacem in Terris (#11) hardly spells out a structure that would violate subsidiarity and or sanction such an unreasonable economic burden on government and taxpayers that rationing of care would result. Indeed, in their zeal to stick it to the rich—even though they, like the Obama administration, seem vague about who all that includes—they are oblivious to the fact that, as Leo XIII taught, excessively high levels of taxation can violate the right to private property and thus be immoral (Rerum Novarum #47). There is no indication that they believe their conception of democracy must be directed by the truths of the natural law, without which John Paul said democracy becomes a “thinly disguised totalitarianism” (CA #46).

     OWS has some concerns that the Church shares: the problems of a stagnant economy, expanding unemployment, the economic dislocations caused by globalization, the growing burden of individual debt, and the lack of a sufficient concern for economic ethics by some in the corporate community (which, by the way, seems to be as much left-wing as right-wing nowadays). The absence of a sound ethical grounding for OWS’s views, its instinctive attachment to leftism (“progressivism”), and its inadequate understanding about how economics works show that—like the sixties protesters—it is full of supposedly good intentions. We know that the road to hell is paved with them—and when overlaid with ideology it is also a recipe for social disaster.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

ANIMAL RIGHTS, ANIMAL WELFARE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

By Stephen M. Krason

            This week’s national news story about how a suicidal man released all his wild animals from his private nature preserve near Zanesville, Ohio—only a few counties west of where I live—brings forth questions about man’s stewardship of the physical environment and what the role of the state should be in animal protection. Callers to a local radio program objected to the fact the so many animals—including lions, tigers, and wolves—had to be killed in order to protect the human population. The confusion among so many in America—nourished, no doubt, by forty years of environmentalist and animal rights propaganda—about the difference between people and animals was disturbingly evident.

            Such an attitude is, of course, an expression of pervasive secularism and philosophical turmoil. The abandonment of a Christian worldview has wrecked much havoc, not the least of which has been the debasement of man. He is no longer understood to be just a little less than the angels and so important that God’s own Son came to save him. Nor is he any longer understood to be a creature with intellect and free will. If man is viewed as nothing more than a superior brute should it be surprising that for some people the brutes take precedence over him?

            Indeed, the wayward underlying philosophical perspective—of both the animal rights movement, and the extreme environmentalism of which it is part—goes deeper than the philosophy of human nature to metaphysics. It is monistic—it is oblivious to the simultaneous sameness and difference of being. Man, animals, and maybe even other things are all viewed as the same. Actually, man seems to be regarded as even less important than the rest of physical creation. We do not observe, for example, many pro-lifers among animal rights activists.

            While it has been typical in American history that interest groups take immoderate positions, it is uncanny that the major animal welfare organizations have for all practical purposes embraced the “animal rights” perspective. A leader of one of them was quoted as saying: “The life of an ant and the life of my child should be granted equal consideration.” The “mainstream” organizations are hard-pressed to criticize even the most extreme animal rights activists—including those who commit criminal acts.

            The animal rights movement betrays another outlook typical of the secularist mind: it is utopian. It sees man and the animal kingdom—in fact, all of nature—as able just to “commune together.” We can forge the correct relationship among man, the animals, and physical natural generally if we just get man to think properly about it—and if we regiment him. So, we see: the tendency to blame man for all the problems of the environment, the belief that somehow even wild animals will be no threat to men if they just treat them the right way (for example, insisting that we scare bears away by clanging pots instead of shooting them, the federal government’s bringing dangerous wolves back into parts of the West, and the criticism of the wild animal killings in Zanesville even though people were clearly threatened), and the ever-more unreasonable laws about animal abuse. As with most utopian schemes, they quickly turn into dystopias.

            In fact, of course, animals have no rights. As Fr. Thomas J. Higgins, S.J., wrote in Man As Man: The Science and Art of Ethics, animals cannot have rights because they have no “moral inviolability.” They are merely material and mortal; they do not possess a spiritual and immortal dimension. Man’s spiritual nature, then, is the basis for his rights. Animal rights activists would object to the charge that their perspective undermines human rights. They have no solid foundation for a notion of human rights, however; their support for human rights is little more than a matter of mere sentiment. It is like people who say that “it seems to them” that marriage should be just between a man and a woman, even while they have long since substantially undercut that conviction by embracing a thoroughgoing contraceptive ethic.

            As Higgins says, animals exist solely for the utility of man, the spiritual creature. Not only is there no such a thing as animal rights, but man has no obligations to animals. What he has is obligations about them. He must treat them in a “becoming way,” he cannot be cruel to them. To do so could lead to his becoming cruel to his fellow men, but it is also wrong in itself because it abuses the bounty of nature that God has entrusted to his care. So, to be concerned about animal welfare is part of the stewardship of the environment that God expects of man. In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Blessed Pope John Paul II said that, “The dominion granted to man by the Creator is not a absolute power.” Moral laws must regulate his behavior there, as with other things. (#34).

            Should there be laws to promote animal welfare, forbid animal cruelty, and the like? Perhaps, but since law must promote the common good, those who advocate for them must clearly show how the common good is affected. Laws regulating the details of how animals are treated—such as how rabbits and cattle should be raised—would seem not to measure up. Many of these laws, like child abuse laws, are vague and imprecise. What they mean often is determined by someone making an anonymous complaint and by animal welfare officers or the animal rights-oriented groups that have been deputized by the state to enforce the laws. What, in effect, they become are the activists’ laws. They draft them, vigorously lobby legislatures to pass them (usually with no organized groups to oppose them, and the public not even aware of it), and then someone drawn from their ranks enforces them. Then, there is the question of whether the criminal law is the appropriate vehicle for this: Should people who don’t provide adequate care for their pets or horses be thrown in jail with hard-nosed criminals who mistreated humans? Is this not another example of saying that humans are no more important than animals? In the Zanesville case, the authorities had been called to the preserve many times to investigate allegations of animal cruelty—not the dangers from the animals perceived by the people nearby. Much ideology and little debate, or even reflection, has gone into forging these laws.

            The treatment of animals is one more area in America and the Western world in which convoluted thinking has led to immoderate, foolish, and even dangerous public policy.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

FAMILY AND CULTURAL ISSUES AFFECT ECONOMICS

By Stephen M. Krason

            Most American presidential elections seem to hinge on economics. Even the current crop of Republican contenders, who claim to be pro-life and pro-family, are focusing much of their attention on the economy. While the ongoing recession makes that understandable, we do not see much effort on their parts to show the connection between the economy and life, family, and related issues. It seems as if they are oblivious to the connections, or if they see them they judge there to be no political advantage to mentioning them.

            What are some of the connections? Let’s take abortion and government funding of  contraceptive family planning efforts. This is especially pertinent now, as HHS is about to foist onto private religious institutions—Catholic institutions will be hit the hardest—the requirement that they provide contraceptive and sterilization services in their employee health plans. The resistance to this latest scheme of statist oppression has, rightly, been on the grounds of religious liberty. The objection should go much further, however. Since the 1960’s, American public policy has continued on an anti-natalist path. Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions legalized abortion—for all practical purposes, up to the point of birth—the U.S. has been deprived of between 50 and 60 million persons. It is difficult to estimate the number of people who were not born due to contraceptive use over the last fifty years or so, but it is certainly many millions more. Going strongly against the grain of the anti-natalist mind-set, Julian Simon demonstrated convincingly in his 1981 book, The Ultimate Resource, that population growth causes economies to thrive, and population stagnation causes their decline. Population stagnation means fewer people to buy products, and fewer people to be economic innovators and entrepreneurs. It also means a heavier tax burden on a smaller number of people to sustain government programs and desired public services. Witness the pressures on European welfare states because of their population implosion. Excessive tax burdens make economic dynamism even less likely.

            Further, the evidence is now overwhelming that readily available abortion has meant serious consequences for women’s health—both physical and mental. That has meant a greater economic burden to the country. It has affected health care costs—both private and public—and has resulted in other hidden economic costs due to the loss of women’s services.

            The sexual license that stands behind much of abortion and the contraceptive ethic has been a main negative feature of American culture since the 1960’s. On one hand its economic consequences have been evident. The explosion of illegitimacy has resulted in heavy economic and social costs in welfare and in dealing with the juvenile delinquency and crime that are found much more abundantly among persons born out of wedlock. If one adds to this the family breakdown due partly to no-fault divorce, these costs are magnified, along with the loss to the economy caused by the decline in purchasing power of suddenly single mothers.

            Other economic costs of sexual license and family breakdown are not so readily apparent, but still painfully real. Sexual license means irresponsibility, and why should we expect those irresponsible in this area to be responsible in others? Children of illegitimate birth and broken families are more likely to experience a range of social pathologies. Among other things, many have less educational achievement, become less dependable and responsible workers, and have less job stability. This all hurts the economy.

            As far as another large cultural issue, homosexual rights, are concerned—or maybe “special privileges” would be the better word since there are no genuine civil rights that persons with same-sex attraction do not have that others have—we can discern similar effects on the economy as with aborted women and for similar reasons. Practicing homosexuals have much higher rates of health problems and lower lifespans than the rest of the population (the morbidity situation of male homosexuals is especially bad, but this applies to lesbians too). If homosexuals “marry,” by the way, this does not change—few are really interested, they tend to continue to have multiple partners, and the medical pathologies are still present to some degree because same-sex sexual coupling simply has inherent dangers. Health care costs are affected and the economy suffers because of loss of services. Moreover, as with other kinds of sexual aberration, if there is disorder in one area of a person’s life, it is reasonable to expect that it might occur in another. Man, after all, is not fragmented into different, mutually exclusive parts. Would it not be easier for the person engaging in sexual excess to engage in such economic excesses as greed as a businessman or materialism as a consumer? Such things, of course, affect and hurt economic life.

            Although the evidence is still somewhat tentative and uncertain, if homosexual couples are allowed to adopt children, it is not so clear that the children will not tend to have some of the same problems—with the same economic effects—as illegitimate children or children victimized by divorce. After all, sound social science evidence confirms what common sense and the wisdom of the ages has shown: children simply do better when a father and mother are both rearing them.

             Finally, what about the availability and promotion of such morally objectionable reproductive and medical technologies as in-vitro fertilization and embryonic stem-cell research? This has become as much of a political non-issue as contraception. The problem, from a strictly economic standpoint, is not just the burden on health care costs but also the fact that when people put their funds into these—and despite the iffy chance of success, IVF involves a large financial commitment from a childless couple—they divert them from something else. When foundations or biotech companies invest in these technologies, that is investment that is not made in other, perhaps important, medical research areas. Perhaps other parts of the health care sector are economically hurt as a result. As far as embryonic stem-cell research goes, the burdens on taxpayers increase—and the economy is thus hurt—as researchers run to government for funds since their private sources have dried up because of their poor success rate in finding the miracle cures they claimed were coming.

            Some of these cultural malaises affect the character and tone of the political society, and this can have marked consequences on the economy. Family breakdown leads to crime, and this often causes the deterioration of communities. When this happens businesses won’t invest and the economy of an area will languish.

            These are just some consequences of family and cultural issues on economics. The current Republican candidates—or at least those who have not bought into the individualism that has spawned these problems—should keep in mind the educative function of politics and help the public see the connection. Even if they don’t win, they might aid the cause of both cultural restoration and economic revival.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

THE CHURCH AND THE UN CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

By Stephen M. Krason

     The beginnings of the Obama administration marked a renewed effort to have the U.S. Senate ratify the long-stalled UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Signed by President Clinton in the 1990s but never ratified—which means that it has never become part of “the law of the land,” which status the Constitution gives to treaties—the Convention has been agreed to by almost all the countries of the world. Many provisions of the Convention sound appealing. It speaks about the right to life of every child. It says children may not be treated as chattel. It says that children have the right to be cared for by their parents, and it stresses the responsibilities of parents toward their children. It claims to respect the rights of parents in providing moral and religious guidance to their children. These points sound consistent with the teachings of the Church, and indeed the Holy See ratified the CRC in 1990 within months of its promulgation.

     There is really a very different story about the CRC. In 1995, the Society of Catholic Social Scientists (SCSS) sent a letter to all members of the Senate urging defeat of the CRC. Examining the often ambiguous language of the CRC and considering how various UN committees and entities were interpreting its provisions, the SCSS argued that the CRC would “subject parents to close bureaucratic supervision,” and that parents who went against “the dictates of the prevailing cultural trends” could be subjected to civil and even criminal penalties and seizure of their children by the state.” If one thinks such conclusions extreme, he should just consider the actions of countries such as Sweden and Germany—which readily embraced the treaty and whose views on children’s rights have been internationally influential—in dealing with homeschooling families.

      Article 12 of the CRC says children have the right to express their views freely on “all matters.” Does that include their parents’ child-rearing and disciplinary decisions? Article 13 asserts the right to receive all kinds of information through the “media of the child’s choice.” Does that right include sexual and contraceptive information? Does it mean that parents may not regulate their children’s television viewing? Does it mean that children have the right to access pornography? Article 14 speaks about the child’s freedom of religion. Does this mean that if parents want a child to receive religious instruction and say daily prayers that he can legally resist? Not only are there many child advocacy organizations ready to provide such help to children who are supposedly being oppressed by their parents, but some outfits that primarily view religious liberty as freedom from religion. If this seems extreme, don’t organizations go to court on behalf of teen girls so they can get abortions in spite of parental opposition? Don’t school-based clinics provide contraceptives to teens and pre-teens without their parents’ knowledge or approval? The CRC is, after all, a legal document—binding on the nations that ratify it—and it expects those nations all to legally implement and enforce its provisions.

      The SCSS letter also pointed to “the ultimate in distant, arrogant bureaucratic structures”: an international committee of ten “experts” established by Article 43 to oversee the CRC’s implementation. There is little doubt, in light of the kinds of “experts,” activists, and functionaries who have shaped and man the child welfare structures in Western nations—whose perspective inspired the CRC and who dominate UN conferences on such matters—that such a committee would be unsympathetic to sound, traditional views on the family and child-rearing.

    Noted family rights attorney and homeschooling leader Michael Farris is the president of ParentalRights.org, an organization dedicated to defeating the CRC and to securing the adoption of a Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution (this writer is on its board), has pointed to the following additional facts about the CRC: 1) It expressly forbids corporal punishment of children, which means that parents would be forbidden to—and, I should add, likely criminally prosecuted for—spank their children; 2) The pro-CRC ABA has contended that teaching about Christianity and omitting “alternate worldviews” even in Christian schools would be against the CRC; 3) The “best interest of the child” principle enshrined in the CRC would essentially give a government operative the legal authority to override any parental decision the operative disagreed with; and 4) A nation’s allowing parents to remove their children from school sex education classes has been held by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to be against the CRC.

     In light of the clear assault on parental rights by the CRC, one wonders why the Holy See ratified it. Indeed, when one CRC opponent tried to arrange a talk pointing out the CRC’s problems at a parish in Oregon, she was turned down because “the Church is for it.” The fact is that the Holy See included with its ratification a number of reservations, or clarifications about how it understands and interprets the CRC. Most critically, the Holy See said that it interprets the CRC in a way that “safeguards the primary and inalienable rights of parents.” It also interpreted such a provision as that calling for family planning and education services for children as only those that are morally acceptable (e.g., natural family planning). It also viewed the CRC as a way to protect the rights of the unborn child. Not long ago, Pope Benedict called for a “correct application” of the CRC.

     What the Holy See ratified was a document that it saw as protecting the true dignity of children—both born and unborn—not the anti-parent, anti-family manifesto it has turned out to be. In some respects, what has happened with the CRC has been like what happened after Vatican II in the Western world: false interpretation and faulty implementation replaced the true meaning of the Council and its actions. In both cases, too, the distortion was ideologically-driven and often orchestrated.

     To say that somehow the U.S. Senate should ratify the CRC because the Holy See has or that American Catholics are morally bound to support the CRC for that reason is like the erroneous claim of the “liberal” Catholic academics that John Boehner is a dissenter from Catholic social teaching because he favors cuts in federal social welfare programs. It confuses Church teaching with a mere policy approach. Catholics must uphold the dignity of children and the moral obligations concerning their upbringing, treatment, and welfare, not a matter subject to prudential judgment and disagreement such as a treaty. Moreover, the people who clamor loudest for the CRC are often those who are themselves ready to reject the elements most promotive of the dignity of children: marital indissolubility, a sound family life, parental rights, and even the very right to life of the child himself when in the womb.

     Those pushing the CRC’s ratification in the Senate have no interest in reservations like the Holy See’s. They are also not bothered by the UN’s troublesome interpretations of the CRC over the past twenty years; in fact, they agree with them. If the Holy See had foreseen these developments, one wonders if it would have ratified at all. A further problem is that ratification in the U.S. will have an effect scarcely felt in the Vatican City State: a changing of laws that in everyday terms will further embolden an anti-parent, anti-family child welfare bureaucracy (the so-called child protective system and others) and have deleterious consequences for millions of families.

     What the CRC, in practice, has represented is an unprecedented escalation of the assault on the family by Western elites—and thereby an attack on the very children it claims to be helping and on the moral and social teaching of the Church.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

REASONS WHY GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE TURNED TO

ONLY WHEN NECESSARY

By Stephen M. Krason

   In these times when there is much discussion about what the role of government should be and a strong belief has developed among many that it is simply too big and involved in too many things, it is worth considering exactly what the problems of “too much government” are.

   First, it is commonly said that government is inefficient. It is full of employees who essentially have jobs-until-retirement and it lacks the kinds of incentives to do well that are found in business and elsewhere in the private sector. That is, you have to produce and do a good job or else the competitors will win the customers and you’ll be out of business. (To be sure, however, such inefficiency is approximated in many of today’s mammoth, oligopolistic corporations who have diminished incentives because they have guaranteed their “market share.”)

   This isn’t to say that all activities that need to be done must be done in a market context. As the Church has pointed out, there are many human needs that the market simply cannot satisfy or satisfy well. That does not mean that they default to government; this is the role of “civil society”—voluntary organizations, nonprofit groups, the Church’s and other religions’ charitable works, and simply family and neighbors. This is, partly, the “economy of gift” that Pope Benedict speaks of in Caritas in Veritate.

   Second, government—this obviously becomes more the case as one moves up to its higher levels—becomes more remote and distant from the people, and so more unaware of what their lives and true needs are like.

   Third, in making decisions about what government should be doing—supposedly “for the people”—politicians are often driven, in fact, less by their actual needs or the true public interest than by what is likely to further their—the politicians’—personal or electoral interests. If they do further the interests of the “public,” it is often—or usually—only one part of the public.

   Fourth, politicians have shown themselves often not to be trustworthy—at least in the sense of keeping their long-term promises to the public—as seen in how they have allowed the Social Security system to be jeopardized by diverting money over many decades from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for other governmental programs and schemes, instead of insuring it will be available for the purposes people were taxed for.

   Fifth, government easily falls prey to interest group pressures—especially large, powerful ones. For example, large companies often support massive governmental programs—such as the case of the insurance and health-care interests that supported Obamacare—because of what they would gain from it. Further, they often use the regulatory regimen to get favorable regulations so that they can gain advantages over competitors. What organized interests want is not necessarily what is beneficial for the public or promotes the common good. The story of interest-group government emerging from the expansive welfare and regulatory state set in motion by the New Deal is an old one, perhaps first explored in depth by Theodore Lowi’s famous 1969 book, The End of Liberalism.

   Even when organized interests do not have economic motives in mind—as with the plethora of  “advocacy groups”—they have a historical tendency in the U.S. to take immoderate, extreme, absolutist positions. This leads to rigid, unreasonable public policy that fails to accommodate appropriately the wide range of differences and needs within a community. This is a common theme of writers such as Philip K. Howard, who points to such examples as how the New York City transit system had to cut overall service because of the need to purchase only buses with wheelchair lifts because of the demands of the disability rights movement for “mainstreaming.”

   Sixth, there is also a lot of ill-conceived compromising in the making of public policy. Much legislation is a patchwork affair, where the policy and law that is enacted or promulgated by executive agencies is often contradictory, convoluted, and plain irrational. Citizens and businesses often do not know what is expected of them, but still face punishing legal consequences if they transgress the often-arbitrary interpretations made by government officials.

   Seventh, government decisions and programs often have unintended and unforeseen consequences. An example is how the Medicaid program, according to some scholars, may not actually have advantaged the poor that much—there was already a great amount of charitable care available before its enactment—but instead, in effect, transferred income from some middle class people (taxpayers) to other middle and upper-middle class people (health-care professionals). The decline of statesmanship is partly responsible for this, so that instead of serious reflection about public policy decisions and where they can lead, we too often see political decision-makers responding to popular immediate demands or vaguely good sounding initiatives.

   Eighth, governmental programs do not have a roaring success rate—even when more and more money is poured into them. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic, it is hard to point to one Great Society initiative that had was truly effective in the long-run.

   Ninth, government programs eat up more and more money as time goes on, irrespective of whether they work. Also, once they are in place, they are hard to dislodge or even substantially change—partly because of the clientele they build up and partly because of governmental and bureaucratic inertia. What better example could one think of than American public school systems?

   Tenth, government programs to “take care” of people often have the effect of diminishing personal and family responsibility. This has been much discussed with reference to numerous social programs and, of course, is a logical result of weak human nature. To be sure, even if there were a healthy, vigorous civil society, there would probably still be the need at least for a limited “safety net” for those who truly cannot care for themselves. That is hardly the situation in the U.S. or other Western countries today, however.

   Eleventh, when government takes on a task it means it is going to be carried out by bureaucrats. In fact, as government and legislation become more complex legislators defer more and more judgment and even law-making authority to them. Bureaucrats often have their own agendas, however—both political and in terms of perpetuation of their agencies and jobs. These may not coincide even with the expectations of the legislators who enacted a program, and of course unelected bureaucrats are not directly accountable to the public.

   The twelfth problem is related to the eleventh. As Pope John Paul II said, the bureaucratic agencies of the contemporary welfare state, are often “dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients” (Centesimus Annus #48). Procedures, often unreasonably inflexible, seem to take precedence over the public benefit an agency is supposed to be providing.

   Finally, the basic reality of government is that it is coercive. If private entities are providing something, they at least cannot attach a range of conditions—some unreasonable—that can be backed up by the full force of the law. The consequence of government programs, in short, almost inevitably is a diminution of liberty. When government benefits are provided, there always seems to be a quid pro quo nowadays. Just ask the private, even religious, colleges and universities who take part in the federal student loan program.

   Man is a social creature, and depends on others in part for securing his well-being. This does not mean, by default and across-the-board, reliance upon government. What is said here should make clear the folly of such an attitude.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

]]> http://skrason.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/reasons-why-government-should-be-turned-to-only-when-necessary/feed/ 0 scssblog http://skrason.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/thoughts-on-immigration/ http://skrason.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/thoughts-on-immigration/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 02:08:20 +0000 Stephen Krason http://skrason.wordpress.com/?p=139 ]]> Neither Left nor Right but Catholic

THOUGHTS ON IMMIGRATION

by Stephen M. Krason

     The immigration question, of course, has been a contentious one within the U.S generally and the Catholic Church in the U.S. What do the social encyclicals and other leading papal statements actually say about the subject, so as to guide sensible national policies?

     While one can glean a preference in the Church’s teaching for a relatively liberal international immigration regimen (and, for that matter, relative ease of movement among nations), there is no question at all that nations must have “open immigration” policies. Pacem in Terris says that one has the “right to emigrate” when “there are just reasons for it” (#25), and that “as far the common good rightly understood permits” nations have a duty to accept immigrants (#106). The concern about people being able to make a sufficient livelihood for themselves and their families has been important for the Church, even as she has made clear that economic development should occur in poorer countries so that people are not motivated to immigrate. The Church has emphasized that the human dignity of migrant workers and immigrants be respected and that the rights of a nation’s indigenous workers apply to them also. For example, sweatshops—which, amazingly, still exist in the U.S.—are no more acceptable for immigrant workers than for others.

     What does all this mean for public policy? Immigration has always touched a chord for Americans, since our country was “a nation of immigrants.” This is even more the case with Catholics, since most of us are the descendants of later arrivals. Still, we must always make reasoned judgments and keep the common good uppermost in mind when thinking about immigration, as any area of policy. All too many in the Church have  given into the temptation to false compassion—which has a lot more to do with secular liberalism than Christian charity—on immigration and on other domestic policies. We must start with what to do about the millions of illegal or undocumented immigrants in the country. We cannot ignore the basic fact that they, or their parents if they were brought here as children, broke the law. While one can certainly make the case that the U.S. should loosen up on legal immigration, it cannot be said that current U.S. immigration laws are simply unjust. While the Church favors relatively liberal immigration, she also stresses the need for the rule of law. People as a matter of legal justice have the moral obligation to obey a law, unless it is clear by sound, careful ethical analysis that it is unjust. It is also patently unfair that illegal immigrants should be put on par with those who followed all the rules in coming to the U.S. (“jumping ahead of others in line”). As some have said, most of our ancestors would not have come here if they had had to break the law to do so.

     To look askance at the problem of illegal immigration is also to grant a kind of perverse favoritism to those who are undocumented. Why is this area of the law any different from all the others? Why, one might ask, do the rest of us have to follow the tax laws, the fairness of which can perhaps more easily be questioned, when others don’t have to abide by the immigration laws?

     Still, there are many immigration questions that have to be grappled with. What about the status of those brought to the U.S. as children who have grown up here and lived responsible and law-abiding lives? Should they just be deported when they are found out? Should we enact “Dream Acts” to enable them to receive in-state tuition at state universities and other citizen benefits? Are not the children born here of illegal parents American citizens? Is it right to keep people out by building physical barriers along our borders?

     It is certainly difficult to consider people who grew up here, even if illegal, in any real sense citizens of a country they never knew. Still, we cannot be impervious to the fact that the law was violated. The solution is likely to be somewhere along the lines of these people having to remunerate the community in some way if they are to remain and be regularized—by extra tax payments, special community service, etc. Both social and distributive justice would be affronted without some kind of remuneration. Dream Acts should be applicable only if this has been done (although one wonders that if certain benefits are for citizens, whether any non-citizens, even if legal, should share in them). For the sake of family unification, which the Church has also strongly stressed, perhaps the same opportunity for regularization on specified terms for their parents should also be available if they have been here for a long period of time. The “anchor baby” problem is another thing. The Washington Times recently reported that some pregnant women have even started to time trips to the U.S. for their due dates, so their children can automatically become U.S. citizens. Somehow, one thinks that this may not quite be what our Founding Fathers had in mind by “natural-born citizens.”

     While one might shudder at the fortress-effect created by building walls along our southern border—where most illicit entry occurs—if that is what is necessary to stop the flow of not just illegal immigrants (many smuggled by exploitative human traffickers), but also of criminals, drug gangs, and even terrorists, then so be it. Indeed, we can expect nothing less. As Rerum Novarum says, “the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is government’s whole reason for existence” (#35).

     Another serious concern in thinking about immigration nowadays is the weakening of what ethicians call the civic bond, the socio-political principles that hold a people together. In recent decades, the presence of many who seem to have no allegiance to the U.S. and her principles and the ideologically-driven balkanization of various groups in the population has threatened our historic national aim of “e pluribus unum.” Moreover, the obliviousness in certain circles to the need for a common national language is deeply troubling. Keeping intact ethnic heritage is good, but the examples are abundant of how the absence of a common tongue—at least in the realm of affairs—breeds division.

     All this said, those who want to take a tough stance on immigration might just consider that the present laws and procedures are rife with the contradictions and bureaucratic inanities spread throughout the federal government these days (such as the difficulty an American man marrying a wife from certain countries has even getting her into the U.S.). They should also note that many proposed solutions would require a further expansion of already-overweening governmental power, which puts further in peril such principles as the rule of law and subsidiarity.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Co-Founder and President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.