Friday, January 6, 2012
Gerson, Santorum, and Catholic Social Thought
Michael Gerson writes, in this op-ed, about former Sen. Santorum and "subsidiarity" here.
. . . In this view, needs are best served by institutions closest to individuals. When those institutions require help or protection, higher-order institutions should intervene. So when state governments imposed Jim Crow laws, the federal government had a duty to overturn them. When a community is caught in endless economic depression and drained of social capital, government should find creative ways to empower individuals and charities — maybe even prison ministries that change lives from the inside out.
This is not “big government” conservatism. It is a form of limited government less radical and simplistic than the libertarian account. A compassionate conservative approach to governing would result in a different and smaller federal role — using free-market ideas to strengthen families and communities, rather than constructing centralized bureaucracies. It rejects, however, a utopian belief in unfettered markets that would dramatically increase the sum of suffering. . . .
As Rob Vischer and Patrick Brennan (and many others) could explain better than I'm able, subsidiarity is not entirely about the "local v. central / big v. small" question; it is, as I understand it, more importantly a principle about pluralism, and "social ontology." Still, I'm happy to have the idea discussed in the Washington Post and elsewhere.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/01/gerson-santorum-and-catholic-social-thought.html
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The irony with Santorum is that in him we have a Catholic who on paper should be received more warmly by Catholics on the left than they receive other Republicans, because if you list all of his positions, sure there are some that the left still can't accept but there are many others where he is closer to them than are other Republicans; meanwhile, some issues of difference like war and government overreach in fighting terrorism are a wash in the upcoming race, since he's not fundamentally worse than Obama who has adopted and exceeded Bush's positions (starting a new war, accepting indefinite detention, etc etc etc), as secular left wingers now admit and are upset about. But, Santorum is staunchly pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-religious-freedom. So he is "them" from the gut perspective of the Catholic left. They have already begun railing against him more fervently than they otherwise would, not less, because they know their already implausible excuses for supporting an abortion-monger like Obama become moot precisely because Santorum is more "compassionate" on at least some of those issues. The more "centrist" a republican is, while still being fervently socially conservative, the more the Catholic left will oppose him.