"Catholic Randians and Prudential Judgments"

Our MOJ colleague Eduardo Penalver has this post, over at Commonweal, about the always-tricky "what are the obligations of Catholic politicians" question.  As we all know, when answering this question, it is often emphasized that the resolution of some / many / most policy questions depends on reasonably contestable prudential judgments and so, with respect to these questions, there is rarely a so-clearly-correct resolution that it would be warranted to criticize a professedly Catholic politician for not embracing it.  Eduardo asks, though, "[w]"hat are we to do when a Catholic politician seems to reject the principle underlying the prudential judgment?"  (For example, it is clear to me that, say, Nancy Pelosi's views on abortion reflect her rejection of the "principle" that underlies the Church's clear teaching that the political community should not exclude unborn children from the protection of laws against violence.)  This is, I believe, a very important question.

Eduardo is also right, I think, to say that we should "hold political figures to some standard of plausibility in the empirical assertions underlying their prudential judgments"; what's more, the plausibility of a politician's claim to embrace the principle can fairly be connected to the plausibility of the "empirical assertions underlying their prudential judgments."  (Eduardo then says that "if a Catholic pro-choice politician says that he accepts the Church’s teaching on abortion but that he believes that legally prohibiting abortion will increase the abortion rate and so opposes legal prohibition for that reason, pro-life Catholics would argue that he is acting within the boundaries of a 'legitimate diversity of opinion.'"  It strikes me that, in this example, such a politician might be confused about what the relevant principle is, or that he is, at any rate, mistaken to focus entirely on the "rate."  An aside, for present purposes.)

But, although I share Eduardo's lack-of-love for the work of Ayn Rand, I think the argument, in the rest of the post, that the Ryan budget clearly reflects a rejection of the relevant principle is unconvincing.  I think it is entirely plausible to think that budgetary and fiscal policy is in desperate need of re-orientation toward reduced debt & deficits and increased, sustainable growth, and that such a re-orientation (supplemented, of course, by adequate and appropriate social-welfare programs) serves well the interests of the poor and most vulnerable.  Notwithstanding what sounds like Ryan's unfortunate attachment to Rand's books, I think there's evidence that he thinks about his budget in these terms, and not in terms of Rand's "objectivism." 

To say this is not to say that, all things considered, Ryan's proposed budget should be adopted in its entirety (I am, I suppose, more sympathetic to its basic outlines than is Eduardo, but that's not the point.)  It is only to say that Ryan's budget proposal is unlike, in important ways, Rep. Pelosi's abortion-related policy views.