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Redistribution: The Unconquerable Delusion
“A Pope that mentions Dorothy Day is a pope that rocks,” tweeted Neera Tanden of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Tanden might have wished to reel back that praise if she had known that Day, though a prominent pacifist and socialist, was also a fervent opponent of abortion, birth control, Social Security, and the sexual revolution.
It’s fitting that Pope Francis should have invoked Dorothy Day among his pantheon of great Americans – she’s a symbol of where leftists always go wrong. This Pope is going wrong in the same way. The left’s delusions of “social justice” seem indomitable – impervious to evidence.
The Pope lauded Day, for “her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed [which] were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.”
Let’s assume that Dorothy Day’s motives were as pure as Pope Francis described: Does having the right motives excuse everything?
Day’s interpretation of the Gospel led her to oppose the US entry into World War II, which would arguably have led to a world dominated by Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. How would that have worked out for the poor and the oppressed?
Though her social views were heterodox for a leftist, Day was a supporter of Fidel Castro, and found very kind things to say about North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh. She visited Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin, and lent her moral support to other communist regimes despite their persecution of Catholics and others.
Of Castro, Day said, “I am most of all interested in the religious life of the people and so must not be on the side of a regime that favors the extirpation of religion. On the other hand, when that regime is bending all its efforts to make a good life for the people … one cannot help but be in favor of the measures taken.”
According to the Black Book of Communism, between 1959 and the late 1990s, more than 100,000 (out of about 10 million) Cubans spent time in the island’s gulag. Between 15,000 and 19,000 were shot. One of the first was a young boy in Che Guevara’s unit who had stolen a little food. As for quality of life – it has declined compared with its neighbors. In 1958, Cuba had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Today, as the liberal New Republic describes it:
The buildings in Havana are literally crumbling, many of them held upright by two-by-fours. Even the cleanest bathrooms are fetid, as if the country’s infrastructural bowels might collectively evacuate at any minute.
Poverty in Cuba is severe in terms of access to physical commodities, especially in rural areas. Farmers struggle and many women depend on prostitution to make a living. Citizens have few material possessions and lead simpler lives with few luxuries and far more limited political freedom.
This left-leaning Pope (who failed to stand up for the Cuban dissidents who were arrested when attempting to attend a mass he was conducting), and our left-leaning president have attributed Cuba’s total failure to the US.
It’s critically important to care about the poor – but if those who claim to care for the poor and the oppressed stand with the oppressors, what are we to conclude?
Much is made of Pope Francis’s Argentine origins – the fact that the only kind of capitalism he’s experienced is of the crony variety. Maybe. But Pope Francis is a man of the world, and the whole world still struggles to shake off a delusion; namely, that leftists who preach redistribution can help the poor. Has this Pope or President Obama taken a moment to see what Hugo Chavez’s socialist/populist Venezuela has become? Chavez and his successor (like Castro, like Lenin, like Mao) promised huge redistribution from the rich to the poor. There have indeed been new programs for the poor, but the economy has been destroyed. The leader of the opposition was just thrown in jail. Meanwhile, the shops have run out of flour, oil, toilet paper, and other basics.
If you want moral credit for caring about the poor, when, oh when, do you ever have to take responsibility for what happens to the poor when leftists take over?
We know what actually lifts people out of poverty: Property rights. The rule of law. Free markets. Not only do those things deliver the fundamentals that people need to keep body and soul together, they accomplish this feat without a single arrest, persecution, or show trial.
Published in Economics, Religion & Philosophy
To be fair, he was addressing British pacifists specifically. After all, Americans didn’t depend on British sailors for their food.
Also, this essay was written in 1942, when Britain and the US were already in the war. As far as I know, he didn’t write against nations which maintained their neutrality, or against activists which opposed their nations entering the war.
Rather, his argument was that those who maintain their pacifism even after their country goes to war are de facto aiding and abetting the enemy.
I would say that belief directly contradicts Biblical teaching (see comment #90).
Whoa. Really? You really endorse the view that ANY form of government taxation is legitimate and just?
I can agree that the scripture grants governments the authority to impose taxes, and that the faithful are commanded to submit to the civil authority.
I do not agree that means every tax is legitimate and just, I do not agree that means the faithful are prohibited from opposing the civil authority, and I do not agree that it prohibits me from disagreeing with clergy who advise the civil authority to increase taxation.
By your interpretation of the passage, it appears that Christians may never oppose the civil authority in any way.
I read “an error of explanation” as acknowledging it was his own fault for sometimes explaining things poorly.
He’s often not very clear when speaking off-the-cuff, especially when compared to his immediate predecessor.
This is the crux of my discomfort.
It can be argued he has been ambiguous (I am skeptical that he doesn’t mean what he says), though he may not have intended it and these statements are being used to influence peoples’ opinions in support of policies with which I disagree. Either those of us that do not like this trend stand up and call him and his supporters on this or we let it go and watch the country continue to move left.
And for the record I do not go to Mass every week, but I am much more than a CAPE (Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter) Catholic.
No, you’re putting words in my mouth again. I’m merely arguing this:
It seems to me that if scripture grants governments the authority to impose taxes, then the categorical statement “taxation is theft” is contrary to scripture.
If I read that passage in isolation I might reach that conclusion, that’s why it’s important to balance it against the rest of scripture as a whole. I think the document I quoted in comment #82 explains it nicely:
Civil authority comes from God (“there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God”) and is therefore subordinate to God, and God’s laws. When civil authority impose laws that contradict divine law our first duty is towards God’s laws, so we have the right, in some cases even an obligation to civil disobedience.
Martin Luther King, Jr. explained all this better than I ever could in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
I gotta say, upon reading that passage, I don’t see how you can come away without being convinced that scripture grants the civil government the authority to impose any tax, not to mention any law. You’ve managed to convince me that St. Paul was a totalitarian, and that the American Revolution was a sin against God. I don’t see how that passage allows for any opposition or rebellion against the civil authority.
Am I the only one who listened to the speech today and thought “Wow. There’s a lot I didn’t know about Doris Day.”?
Ah, but you see King George was a Protestant heretic and a usurper and thus clearly not a minister of God. Now had Bonnie Prince Charlie been restored to his rightful place on the throne it would have been a sinful rebellion indeed!
(I’m kidding BTW. It’s getting late and this thread needed a dose of humor.)
Count me in on someone who has learned more about Dorothy Day (I know you were being funny)
I have largely judged her by her fans (most of my uber lefty Catholic friends) and by the anti-war activism of The Catholic Worker.
Since pacifism is a quality I judge harshly, I am still no fan. Although I admit there were qualities and beliefs of Dorothy Day I find admirable.
Regarding the Pope’s speech today before Congress (which I plan on listening to again) I was very disappointed that he specifically condemned the death penalty while never saying the word abortion.
Regarding all the condemnation of “materialism”, I don’t get it and I don’t see it.
(On a personal note, I take it as a point of pride that our Catholic newspaper The Tidings stopped printing letters to the editor after I responded to a ridiculous article about the immorality of $300 sneakers. If memory serves, my reply was that unless someone stole the sneakers or spent the milk money on them, they were not immoral. Caused quite the firestorm.)
While I agree that there is a spiritual hole in many, I don’t see what that has to do with materialism. I see that hole in people with abundance who want more and I see it in people with little who want more. And I see it with people at all levels who don’t want more.
When the Pope and others speak of the evils of materialism, are they talking about a rich guy with a private plane and a mansion? Or a poor family with a wide screen TV and cable who avails themselves of welfare and free school lunches?
Whatever they are speaking of and whomever they are speaking to, I wish they would add some specifics. Because when it is spoken of vaguely there is not a person in the world who will hear a comment and say: hey! that’s me! I’d better go to church and change my ways.
When I was an undergraduate at Xavier University, I minored in Peace Studies. I took a course titled “Social Justice,” taught by a kind priest who was orthodox of Church teachings like abortion and the priesthood, but hard, hard left on economics. The concept of subsidiarity was presented, but it was curiously isolated from everything else I was taught in that class, which was pretty much left-wing socialist dogma. I thought the concept made a lot of sense when I was an undergrad, and I still do (it’s a very conservative concept), but I don’t see a whole lot of Catholics educators or social justice activists applying it.
Fundamentally wrong and absolutely not what I said. If you find a suggestion of “equal outcomes” in my words I’ll kill myself. Promise.
Those things are not leftist. Excesses and abuse of those things are leftist.
The American list of left/right issues is artificial and senseless.
Well, I can’t agree that it’s senseless. We are a two-party system, after all, and those two parties reflect two basically different notions of the role of government in the common good, two different sets of concerns and values, policy preferences, etc. And when I read Dorothy Day’s writing, I find things in it that are too leftist for my taste, including a naivety about the evils of communism, pacifism, and an excessive critique of capitalism and property rights, for instance.
But, I agree with you that in the deeper more important sense of leftism, viz., a pseudo-religion that “pulverizes the individual” (in Karol Wojtyla’s phrase) and tries to achieve justice through force, she was not a leftist, she was, rather (like this Pope) a fierce opponent of leftism. She cherished each and every individual, and she cherished freedom. Even politically speaking, she was often at odds with the American left. She thought welfare bad for the poor, for instance.
Reagan met with Gorbachev. So he was a communist?
Jesus sought every sinner on the planet. Terrible man?
Bad guys end up in power. If you are in power you will have to meet them. You have to sit in private and speak to them to avoid having to call the military to kill them.
Pontifix means bridge builder. Look at his message about dialogue. The word is used about a dozen times in the speech.
Your criticism of his meeting with Castro was actually addressed right in his speech:
“From this perspective of dialogue, I would like to recognize the efforts made in recent months to help overcome historic differences linked to painful episodes of the past. It is my duty to build bridges and to help all men and women, in any way possible, to do the same. When countries which have been at odds resume the path of dialogue – a dialogue which may have been interrupted for the most legitimate of reasons – new opportunities open up for all. This has required, and requires, courage and daring, which is not the same as irresponsibility. A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism. A good political leader always opts to initiate
processes rather than possessing spaces (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 222-223).”
Well, you’re right. A lot of Catholics, especially left-leaning Catholics, are wrong about Catholic Social Teaching. In truth, it’s far more consistent with conservatism than they think. On the other hand, it challenges the right too.
Here is a great John Allen article, hitting the nail on the head:
Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Where is the equivalent statement from Francis to the Castros? In any context?
Jesus: He sought out sinners and then challenged them to follow him. I don’t see Jesus seeking out murderous tyrants like the Castros, then shaking their hands and getting his picture taken smiling with them, never once challenging them. The two encounters Jesus had with secular authority (Pilate and Herod) did not go nearly so swimmingly.
Bad guys end up in power: That doesn’t mean you tacitly recognize their legitimacy by limiting yourself to friendly dialog with them. No one ever got the impression from Reagan that he thought Communist dictatorships were legitimate no matter how long they had been around.
Pontfex means bridge builder: How about building a bridge to the Cuban people instead of their enslavers?
“On his first full day in the United States, he drove home the same point with two major speeches chock full of something for both left and right, all drawn from the wheelhouse of Catholic social doctrine.”
The thing is, his “something for the left” is clear, explicit and straightforward, like his endorsments of climate change hysteria and immigration, while his “something for the right” is at best coded and only implied. He made some vague statements in defense of the family, but did not explicitly challenge gay marriage. He made some statements in defense of life, but only explicitly mentioned the death penalty. I don’t think I’m being unfair in supposing that he’s more passionate about the things he explicitly speaks about – e.g. climate change – than the things you have to tease out by implication – e.g. gay marriage.
Manny, I don’t see how capitalism can be a cause for any of the bad outcomes in your list. I will admit they all exist together, but the the same bad outcomes exist alongside socialism. Let’s stipulate that the reason for the bad outcomes is sin. And let’s not either, as conservatives, pretend that capitalism is a magic bullet that makes all the bad stuff go away.
But as others (including Mona) have said more eloquently than I, capitalism is better because it works better, and the alternatives kill the soul.
You’re right. He should have taken out a knife and plunged it into Casto’s neck.
Good grief.
So every person in the world who didn’t say “Tear down this wall” was a sympathizer? I didn’t see Reagan tear down the wall.
The sophistry on Ricochet to bash the Pope has been disappointing.
Questions for Catholic theologians. I’m very serious. I hear these things and do not really understand them.
What is the difference between delegation from above and subsidiarity? Decentralization and subsidiarity?
What does Solidarity mean in modern Catholic doctrine?
And of course what does social justice mean?
Social means collective of some sort and justice has to do with equality before the law, or impartial execution of the law, or perhaps treating individuals according to God’s law. How do these fit together in ways that do not involve the state, the collective. If Pope Francis is speaking to individuals about individual responsibilities he gets applause and I want to read him this way. If he’s speaking about the State doing these good things then he doesn’t get a pass, he deserves the invective.
IIUC, Dorothy Day maintained her pacifism even after the US entered WWII. In this she did differ from the CPUSA, which was pacifist up until Hitler’s attack on the USSR.
After WWII The Catholic Worker had extensive connections with the Christian Peace Conference and the World Peace Council, both of which were widely and correctly known to be instruments of Soviet policy.
Ah, but the civil authority that St. Paul was referring to was pagan Rome.
(Insert levity here.)
And, on the other side of the coin, South Korea has had massive waves of conversion to Christianity that coincided with the adoption of a free-market system and massive increase in prosperity. Christians have gone from 8% of the population in 1950 to approximately 29% when measured recently. Simultaneously, it has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to the world’s 12th largest economy.
Reagan met with Gorbachev and gave him the gears when necessary.
Jesus sought every sinner and told ’em God loves ’em without minimizing the fact that they were, indeed sinners.
Pope Francis appears to fraternize with murderous dictators without any accompanying admonishment.
Or, in brief, if Catholic social justice would not lead to state-imposed income redistribution, what would it lead to? If you’re saying it would just lead to greater charitable giving, then why use the words “social justice,” which are so easily (mis?)construed to mean that somehow unequal distribution of wealth is necessarily unjust?
You make it sound obvious that isn’t the case when it’s very far from obvious.