OK, I Really Promise, This is the Last Response to Greg

Thanks to Greg for summing up our recent exchange.  I agree with his main point that we all need to test our assertions about social/economic policies -- market or not -- with empirical evidence.  Three quick comments.  First and most important, as an empirical matter I have a much bigger affinity for Britain and Ireland than for France, because the former, unlike the French, take the game of golf seriously.  Second, although avoiding demonization of a country like France was part of my point, I was also saying that we ought to recognize that some nations' stronger safety-net policies help them do better than the U.S. on certain measures relevant to Catholic social thought.  That, I think, was a response to Greg's original post asserting only the failures of welfare programs and regulations, and was not a changing of the subject.  Third, some of us manage to believe both in school choice (to say nothing of the imporance of education) and in the idea that government benefits and regulations can promote human capacities, not just retard them.  Or to take another example, some of us believe both that government should ensure a substantial safety net of services and benefits and that many of those should be delivered through non-govermental providers.  So in terms of the Left and Right interpretations of Catholic social thought that Greg describes, I suspect that a lot of us, even on the blog, have some combination of lefty and righty views.

Tom