What Do We Owe Honduras?

 

I am a Catholic but not a theologian. I recently heard a sermon about my moral obligations regarding the wave of economic refugees increasingly heading our way. It reminded me that much of what I encounter in Catholic moral teaching seems to be infused with defective economics. For example, it is accurate to say that all Christian social teaching tells us that getting attached to material consumption to the exclusion of spirituality, human connections and the needs of others is wrong. But this truism is often followed by a non sequitur that poverty in the Third World is the result of First World overconsumption. 

A consistent defect that permeates this line of thinking is the medieval assumption that resources and material well-being are always a zero-sum game. Two centuries of incredible global growth in material well-being, lifespan, technology, and productivity should have forever dispelled zero-sum thinking but Marxists, peak oil enthusiasts, and the current pope manage to cling to static medieval perspectives.

We in the developed world (and America in particular) are not wealthy because we have aggregated a lot of stuff but because we have a shared economic and political culture that encourages innovation, protects free exchange and property. From within that cognitive, cultural, legal, and political context, we produce things, services, choices and opportunities that did not exist anywhere on earth until comparatively recent times in human history. Some of us really did build that.

Zero-sum moral theology blinds its practitioners to the real causes of poverty. It also insulates these evils from proper adverse moral judgment. Not one Honduran is poor because some American suburban family buys stuff it does not really need. But political corruption, classism, tribalism, ignorance, and lawlessness does impoverish millions in Central America. It is the absence of western bourgeois values, practices, assumptions, and culture in Honduras that makes Hondurans poor, not the presence of those cognitive conditions in the USA.

Foreign aid and private charity do serve humanitarian purposes. But the real wealth that needs to be shared is our free market values (including the rule of law). Mere redistribution of material surpluses is a trivial benefit when measured against the potential value of defective economies reforming themselves in a context proven to work material miracles.

If poverty is an evil to be fought, the real roots of economic failure have to be honestly addressed. Trendy socialist mythologies and primitive economic errors must be expunged if the Church’s moral teaching is to be truly relevant and vibrant. Catholic theologians need to lose their Che T-shirts and dog-eared Peter, Paul and Mary songbooks and find a way to tell people how to make the best use of the truths revealed by the likes of Milton Friedman so that more of us can help others and otherwise build productive, sanctifiable lives.

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  1. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Answer to your question: Nothing.

    Great post!  I have always thought this way, but I like the way you put it.  Thanks.

    • #1
  2. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    The rule of law and private property are the bases of prosperity.

    • #2
  3. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    I like RushBabe above giving you some praise, as I too think this way and agree.

    You are not going to find the Catholic Church ever standing in opposition to the idea that the borders should be open. In many areas of the county, the Catholic Church is relying on vast new waves of immigration to help ease the decline in membership. It is most likely that this decline has occurred,  due to  decades of revelations about the priests’ criminal behavior with regards to the youth.

    But for the sake of argument, let’s say that somewhere along the way, people in power caused grievous problems for those in Honduras. This actually is true of the recent history of Haiti, wherein there was commentary from publications dissing HRC and Bill, including at least several from theNYT’s:

    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/11/hillary-clinton-and-electoral-coup-haiti

    Monday, April 11, 2016
    by
    Common Dreams
    Hillary Clinton and Electoral Coup in Haiti
    by
    Ricardo Seitenfus
    %%%%%

    https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/us/politics/hillary-clinton-haiti.html
    High Hopes for Hillary Clinton, Then Disappointment in Haiti
    By Yamiche Alcindor

    March 14, 2016
    SNIP From the article: In their post-2000 lives as global citizens, Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have been tied to no country more closely than Haiti. As a United Nations special envoy, Mr. Clinton helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the country after its devastating 2010 earthquake. Mrs. Clinton traveled there four times as secretary of state and shepherded billions of dollars in American aid.

    %%%%%

    You never hear anyone who has the ability to sway public opinion on the left stating, “The problems that exist in Haiti or the Honduras have been created at least in part by several families inside the Elite. If remedies and reparation are needed, let’s go after those families.” I am sure that the Catholic Church never critiques the Clintons.

    Instead the constant refrain is to go after the middle class. We are the problem, or so we are told. And we should be thinking about offering up reparations to anyone that any group of people in power across the span of history has injured. Those telling us this are somehow immune to the notion of paying for the damage that they and their Banana Republic coups have done to those  republics for the past 200 years.

    Apparently the only atrocity in history for which middle class Americans are not complicit is that of the Turks butchering the Armenians.

    • #3
  4. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Old Bathos: If poverty is an evil to be fought, the real roots of economic failure have to be honestly addressed.

    It really boils down to the old saying, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach him to fish and he eats the rest of his life.”

    I read somewhere that the Trump administration, through Mike Pence perhaps, is working with Honduras and Guatemala to get their governments to create some sort of civil order and peace. It’s clearly the illegal drug trade that is leading to the high crime rates, especially murder, in those countries. I hope we succeed.

    I feel sorry for the people in those countries. I wonder how much I would be able to do to fix my own country in the course of living my daily life–taking caring of a family and a job. There are only so many hours in a day and so many dollars in my checking account.

    However, it is risky for everyone involved to relocate them in the United States. Just as people who have grown up in dysfunctional families tend to re-create those families when they become adults, so too will people coming here from those countries re-create their present abysmal conditions if they are allowed to bring  entire communities here through chain migration. It’s partly a cultural problem. They hold each other back rather than celebrating achievement. Bringing them here en masse is not a good solution for them or us.

    • #4
  5. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Excellent post, @oldbathos. I’m so disgusted at the organizations that perpetuate this lie in the face of the facts. They refuse to hold the governments of those countries accountable, and imprison their people in helplessness and poverty. It’s a disgrace.

    • #5
  6. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    We spent a great deal of Aid  buying Honduran support in our effort to get rid of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.   They were helpful, did all our bidding at great cost to themselves.   What really caused the Sandinistas to hold elections however was probably our invasion of Panama, which was caused by our ineptitude relative to that situation.  There was very little development to show for all the money we sincerely spent in Honduras or El Salvador.  Oh and the Sandinistas are back.

    A big time Honduran drug dealer linked to the Colombians moved back to Tegucigalpa in the late 80s and began spreading his influence.  To stop the poison we secretly grabbed him  off the streets of Tegucigalpa and put him in one of our jails where he remains.  It had little lasting effect, if any.

    What really caused the deterioration in Central America was Uribe’s and our successful efforts to shut down the Colombian drug cartels and the FARC.   We chased them to Mexico, Venezuela, and Central America.  The drug business is back in Colombia because of other matters going on down there and all over Central America as well.

    The violence in El Salvador was spread by decades of Cuban backed guerrillas, the government’s, sometimes, brutal efforts to deal with them and our often inept, and under Carter hopelessly misguided and self righteous impositions.

    The world is really complex and we always, repeat always, exaggerate what we are capable of achieving and subsequently controlling,  so it really matters that we only get engaged when it’s really important and otherwise on the margins  in a limited cautious way.  Our Foreign Service is better than most of the world’s and better than most of our government bureaucracy, and is unpopular because it tries to restrain really stupid things, at least when it’s at its best, but it’s still a bureaucracy and still run by political leadership.

    In this case we can’t do a great deal  in Honduras and the rest of Central America to change fundaments.  We have to be true to ourselves and clear about it and central to who and how we are is the rule of law, limited government and to have those essentials, and credibly influence others about them, we must have a border we can enforce.  That fact is totally independent of Honduras or any other country.

    • #6
  7. Amy Schley Coolidge
    Amy Schley
    @AmySchley

    MarciN (View Comment):
    It really boils down to the aphorism, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats the rest of his life.”

    I like the Terry Pratchett version: “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day; set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

    As to the point, if you do feel moved to help the people of Honduras better themselves and not simply become dependent on American charity, may I shamelessly plug my parents’ charity: Friends of Education, Honduras. (Facebook page here).  I believe at this point my parents have spent more on putting Hondurans through school than they did on me!

    • #7
  8. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    MarciN (View Comment):

    SNIP

    It really boils down to the aphorism, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats the rest of his life.”

    I read somewhere that the Trump administration, SNIP

    I feel sorry for the people in those countries. I wonder how much I would be able to do to fix my own country in the course of living my daily life–taking caring of a family and a job. SNIP

    However, it is risky for everyone involved to relocate them in the United States. SNIP so too will people coming here from those countries re-create their present abysmal conditions SNIP. It’s partly a cultural problem. SNIP Bringing them here en masse in not a good solution for them or us.

    This entire emphasis on the 140 or 250 or 4,000 Hondurans at the border is not about that country. The PTB   hope they can stir up enough sympathy that everyone will join in with those on the Left and focus on the problems of desperate folks at the border, without any one of us realizing that’s not the issue.

    Rather it’s about the flipping of our society from a society where Western cultural values rule, including the rule of law. The plan is to use humanitarian scenarios so we allow in tens of millions of people. In the ’80’s, we were told in Marin about the Guatemalans and El Salvadorians – it would involve  a few thousand people. Four yrs later, 400,000 new people had arrived in SF area – most of them from barrios of Mexico.

    Ask people in the lower middle income end of things in Marin County Calif why it is that their children must now somehow get scholarships or find funding from relatives in order to attend private schools where English is spoken. (Answer: because once a public  school district is 30% hispanic, the teachers end up being semi-literate people who can’t speak their native language properly, let alone try to teach the 70% of students who don’t know Spanish.)

    Ask health care workers why they should avoid following state law, and look the other way when their hispanic co workers steal, embezzle major retirement funds or abuse the clients. You shut up about such matters, as to speak out is to get a demerit on yr record for racism. I got abused by this system to the point I quit, thinking I’d end up being being unemployed. Instead, I spent the next 4 years naming my price to work in households where the former foreign workers had stripped people of as much as $ 30 k, or physically abused the clients.

    Why is it verbotten for any public school to sing Xmas carols that have a religious theme, but one school district away, public schools get funds to buy the Christmas trees and the hymn books for hispanic kids so they can have  a “proper Christmas”?

    • #8
  9. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    The illegal drug trade might disappear if the market for illegal drugs disappeared.  We are the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs.

    • #9
  10. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Amy Schley (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    It really boils down to the aphorism, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats the rest of his life.”

    I like the Terry Pratchett version: “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day; set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

    As to the point, if you do feel moved to help the people of Honduras better themselves and not simply become dependent on American charity, may I shamelessly plug my parents’ charity: Friends of Education, Honduras. (Facebook page here). I believe at this point my parents have spent more on putting Hondurans through school than they did on me!

    Wow. I admire your parents very much. That’s wonderful. I will try to make a donation. I love this story. Thank you. 

    • #10
  11. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    The illegal drug trade might disappear if the market for illegal drugs disappeared. We are the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs.

    Of course it would.  The question is, is making them legal the right way to go?

    • #11
  12. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Old Bathos: If poverty is an evil to be fought

    Poverty is not an evil to be fought.  It is a sociological-economic state of being to be addressed.  I prefer private religious organizations tackle this problem, because leftist organizations will merely keep the status quo going, and use their misery as a Democrat voter registration ploy.

    • #12
  13. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Old Bathos: I am a Catholic but not a theologian. I recently heard a sermon about my moral obligations regarding the wave of economic refugees increasingly heading our way…

    …Foreign aid and private charity do serve humanitarian purposes. But the real wealth that needs to be shared are our free market values (including the rule of law). 

    It comes up in sermons at our local church, too. One of the refugee relief schemes mentioned is simply donating calendars, so that refugees who are here can write down the schedule of their legal obligations somewhere, something which hopefully does inculcate respect for rule of law.

    • #13
  14. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Old Bathos: I am a Catholic but not a theologian. I recently heard a sermon about my moral obligations regarding the wave of economic refugees increasingly heading our way…

    …Foreign aid and private charity do serve humanitarian purposes. But the real wealth that needs to be shared are our free market values (including the rule of law).

    It comes up in sermons at our local church, too. One of the refugee relief schemes mentioned is simply donating calendars, so that refugees who are here can write down the schedule of their legal obligations somewhere, something which hopefully does inculcate respect for rule of law.

    OMG . . .

    • #14
  15. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    The only people who can help Honduras are Hondurans. Anything/everything we do is highly marginal.

    • #15
  16. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    The illegal drug trade might disappear if the market for illegal drugs disappeared. We are the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs.

    That is certainly part of the problem. We might want to return the favor and dump American addicts in some of these countries. Might as well bring their customers to them, it would probably cause the space rental market to crash in trailer parks across the US. 

     

    • #16
  17. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Doug Watt (View Comment):

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    The illegal drug trade might disappear if the market for illegal drugs disappeared. We are the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs.

    That is certainly part of the problem. We might want to return the favor and dump American addicts in some of these countries. Might as well bring their customers to them, it would probably cause the space rental market to crash in trailer parks across the US.

     

    Good crack, but it isn’t addiction that drives this business it’s the flabby nihilism of our youth.  As long as kids do dumb stuff, which is always everywhere,  there will be people who will make money off of it.   There will be production and supply and it will never have any problem penetrating our border, if there is demand.   We focus on supply because it allows our politicians and drug warriors  to pretend we’re dealing with it without ever having to discomfort their constituencies.  They’re not serious but the problem is. 

    • #17
  18. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Pat Buchanan relates some gory details about how the Muslim immigration situation has overturned the political scene in Germany.

    He then goes on to point out that the Honduran caravan and the “humanitarian crisis that it represents” will threaten our society as well.

    http://buchanan.org/blog/caravan-puts-trump-legacy-on-the-line-130359

    From the article: According to The Washington Post, during FY 2018, which ended last month, a total of 107,212 members of “family units” crossed over into the U.S., “obliterating the previous record of 77,857 set in 2016.” Citing DHS figures, the Post adds, “Border patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September alone, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July.”

    When Trump, under intense political fire, ended his “zero tolerance” policy of separating refugees from their children, this message went out to Mexico and Central America:

    Bring your kids with you when you cross the border. They will have to stay with you, and they cannot be held for more than 20 days. Thus, when they are released, you will be released to await a hearing on your claim of asylum. The odds are excellent that you can vanish into the U.S. population and never be sent back.

    Enraged, Trump has threatened to cut off aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala if they do not stop the caravans and has warned Mexico he will use the U.S. military to secure our border.

    • #18
  19. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    MarciN (View Comment):
    It really boils down to the aphorism, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats the rest of his life.”

    Sorry.  Not to warp this, but:

    I had an instructor in an Army course tell me one time

    Build a man a fire, he is warm for an hour.  Set a man on fire, he’s warm for the rest of his life.

    Off topic, but I can’t help it.

    • #19
  20. Mike "Lash" LaRoche Inactive
    Mike "Lash" LaRoche
    @MikeLaRoche

    We owe Honduras nothing. America first!

    • #20
  21. Mike "Lash" LaRoche Inactive
    Mike "Lash" LaRoche
    @MikeLaRoche

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    It really boils down to the aphorism, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats the rest of his life.”

    Sorry. Not to warp this, but:

    I had an instructor in an Army course tell me one time

    Build a man a fire, he is warm for an hour. Set a man on fire, he’s warm for the rest of his life.

    Off topic, but I can’t help it.

    Ha!

    • #21
  22. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Rush Babe: 

    “The illegal drug trade might disappear if the market for illegal drugs disappeared. We are the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs.”

    Hit the nail on the head.  I have heard of horrific things and crimes in places like Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is also a unbelievable disaster waiting to happen.  The simple reason is DRUGS and the rule by the Drug Cartel.   

    Those Americans who take illicit drugs  of any kind, including the ganja weed,  are effectively putting a gun to the head of dozens in those countries and pulling the trigger. America’s shame is it’s drug use. That said though, we have no business letting in those illegals because of the sins of some ugly Americans.  Stop them at the border at all costs. 

    As a Catholic and a resident of a state ( California) overrun with enormous  social problems caused almost entirely by illegal immigration and ill considered Progressive initiatives all encouraged by the Catholic Church,  I have no problem stating the Catholic hierarchy has thoroughly lost it’s moral compass on most social issues.  

    • #22
  23. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Catholicism as practiced is the opposite of prosperity gospel.  I do now know why this is.

    • #23
  24. Guruforhire Inactive
    Guruforhire
    @Guruforhire

    A shelling by the USS Missouri?

    • #24
  25. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    We don’t have poverty in this nation.  We have sloth but not poverty.  My work has me interact with the poorest people and I’ve yet to meet one without a cell phone and none go hungry. 

    • #25
  26. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Unsk (View Comment):

    As a Catholic and a resident of a state ( California) overrun with enormous social problems caused almost entirely by illegal immigration and ill considered Progressive initiatives all encouraged by the Catholic Church, I have no problem stating the Catholic hierarchy has thoroughly lost it’s moral compass on most social issues.

    Here’s a case study on how it happens on a small scale:

    Secularized American Catholic universities fail every test of honest advertisement: they are neither Catholic nor American, insofar as they peddle heresies and anti-American ideologies, and they don’t even resemble universities. They are more like glorified PC high schools or left-wing adult learning annexes. They are worse than a waste of time and money; they corrode souls and deform minds. A few of them are academically strong in this or that department, but in general they are ghastly messes — sorry products of the 1967 Land O’ Lakes Statement, a baldly heretical declaration cobbled together by Notre Dame’s Theodore Hesburgh, and incidentally signed and promoted by the pedo-rapist Theodore McCarrick, which called on all Catholic colleges and universities to secularize.

    Sadly, Franciscan University of Steubenville, which many Catholics assume is safe from that secularist contagion, is succumbing to it. Both the president of Steubenville University and his COO (who functions as a de facto executive vice president) are “pushing the school to embrace the LGBT agenda,” says an angry parent…

    The Honduras invasion, for such it is, seems to be another Soros project to interfere with our election.

    The connection between the American midterm election and the northbound caravan of Honduran migrants is probably not a coincidence, although liberals in the media will scream “conspiracy theory” at any Republican who points this out. If your cynical hunch is that the latest “refugee” crisis has been manufactured by the Left as an election-year propaganda effort, however, you’re not alone. A Google search for the terms “Soros + Honduras + caravan” turned up nearly 300,000 results Friday. You don’t have to be paranoid to suspect that billionaire George Soros is paying the bills whenever you see any allegedly spontaneous “grassroots” activism on behalf of Democrats. When a left-wing activist was arrested last week for assaulting the female campaign manager for Nevada GOP gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt, it turned out the suspect was on the payroll of American Bridge 21st Century, an organization funded by — you guessed, didn’t you? — George Soros.

    Without regard to whether the Honduran migrant caravan is another Soros-funded project, the timing would seem to indicate it was organized with the aim of impacting the midterm elections. The caravan began heading north just as Democrats were raising alarms about a lack of interest among Hispanic voters.

    The Camp of the Saints, anyone?

    • #26
  27. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    There is another humanitarian reason for us to discourage this type of immigration: it is the able-bodied young people who are usually able to make this arduous trip. Those are the very people who are needed in their home countries to help and protect children and disabled and elderly people. They are needed to build the country up to be a decent place to live.

    This is simply not right.

    • #27
  28. LosPer Inactive
    LosPer
    @LosPer

    • #28
  29. RS711 Member
    RS711
    @

    There is literally no economic theory that is “Catholic” in any real sense.  Many Catholic majority countries or countries with large Catholic populations like Ireland and Australia are more free than the US as rated by Heritage.  Most of the others in the Top 10 are actually not Protestant but rather “Nones”.  I’ll let Pope Francis finish off as he told the US Congress in his address a few years back, “Business is a noble vocation, directed to providing wealth and improving the World.”  

    • #29
  30. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    RS711 (View Comment):

    There is literally no economic theory that is “Catholic” in any real sense. Many Catholic majority countries or countries with large Catholic populations like Ireland and Australia are more free than the US as rated by Heritage. Most of the others in the Top 10 are actually not Protestant but rather “Nones”. I’ll let Pope Francis finish off as he told the US Congress in his address a few years back, “Business is a noble vocation, directed to providing wealth and improving the World.”

    Yes.  Spain was Catholic in the 15th and 16th century when it conquered South America  and imposed it’s pre Scottish enlightenment mercantilism, it’s top down totally controlled system.  Their problems come from this latter, the mercantilist top down collectivist totally centralized control, not Catholicism.

    • #30
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