We Get Letters

Got an interesting email that I'd like to share. But I need to set it up. Somewhere I had made the point that the idea of Miers being an evangelical Christian didn't neccessarily mean that she'd share my views because Ted Kennedy is a Catholic and he sure doesn't.

My correspondent writes:

Personally, I don't think evangelicals "get" christianity. Literal translation of the bible is ridiculous. I think I understand why they are obsessed with literal translation of the Constitution. They do not afford humans the benefit of intellectual lattitude.

Catholics are not conservative. I think the only issues Catholics have in common with "conservative values" are those that deal with preservation of life. Catholics are the biggest proponents of charity and care of the rich for the poor. If I remember correctly, Ted [Kennedy]is of the Paulist catholic faith, which like the Jesuits, are considered a more liberalized form of the church.

I'm going to leave the first paragraph alone as I don't consider myself qualified for that sort of argument. Evangelicals can feel free to do battle amongst themselves on that issue in the comments. And who knows, maybe our WMD Resident Preacher will ahve a word or two to add...

The second paragraph is the one I found especially telling.

A significant portion of the Catholics I know are conservative. That goes all the way back to my days at a Catholic elementary school in urban Dayton, OH. That's not to say that I don't know some liberal Catholics, because I do, but to say that Catholics aren't conservative is a bit of a stretch in my experience.

The most obvious "shared" value between Catholics and conservatives is the protection of life. I'll give my correspondent that... But to suggest that conservatives aren't supportive of charity and caring for the poor is just absurd. Jesus taught us to teach a man how to fish so he could fend for himself. Honestly, which is more compassionate? Providing said man with the temporary solution of giving him a fish or showing the man how to feed himself.

I was being flip with the Kennedy comment in the first place so I'll leave the Kennedy/Jesuit/Paulist stuff to the reader to judge for themselves as I don't really have an argument for that...nor do I want one...

I think this is an interesting discussion and I don't want to give anybody the impression that I am disparaging the e-mailer...and I ask that you, gentle readers, don't do so either. Stay with the issues and I think this could be an fascinating topic or two...

2:30PM Update

A clarification from the WMD Mailbag:

The point I was trying to make about conservative values and Catholics was not that conservatives care about the poor and Catholics do, but more along the lines that the Catholic church believes in subsidiarity to the degree that if the church cannot effectively care for the poor, then the government should. I think that the economic positions of modern day conservativism, in their most unbridled form, generally exclude this possiblity.

Okay...I don't think that's a dogmatic thing...

I believe that the government should provide a safety net, not a lifestyle. I don't think I've heard any serious conservative say anything any differently. The conservative argument for such action is that by providing the net, we don't have to support the lifestyle. And seriously, such action is better handled locally anyway, be it through the various churches and charities or government. All federal involvement gets you is red tape...I think we can all agree on the level of compassion in that... :)

Mark's Remarks

Yes, the rich should care for the poor. That is what the CHURCH AND CHARITIES are for. Jesus said nothing about, "the government shall give the people bread, and they shall bow down and elect liberals for it."

The correspondent says that evangelicals do not "get" Christianity, that a literal reading of the Bible is ridiculous. Oh, so it is OK to murder, to rape, to steal. Tell me where you live, and we shall see what you think about a literal interpretation. I think it is the correspondent who does not "get" evangelicals.

Evangelicals do not discount the wonders of human intellect or the virtue of it. However, they alo know that human curiosity and intellect has led to some bad decisions. Thus, they believe that there are some absolutes. They believe that there are some rules that should not bend with the wind. Liberal people like the correspondent choose to think God will overlook sin because he is really a sweet person and understands that we are imperfect and is willing to overlook a little white sin. Of course, one person's little white sin is another's big sin and vice versa, so who is to judge? That leaves humans in charge of judging bad behavior, and that just leads to a downward scale of morality and culture until there are no rules anymore, and total chaos. In other words, the correspondent is someone who believes that humans may indeed be God's creation, but that God does not want us to take His rules seriously because they were written a long time ago and you know, we have like evolved beyond them and stuff. I don't buy it.

Evangelicals are not people who believe that winged demons are coming at the endtimes. They do not believe that literally some of the stuff happened. They understand the use of metaphor in the Bible. What they are saying, with their idea of a literal translation of the Bible, is that on the most important parts--salvation, human nature, redemption, sin--that there are some absolutes and rules of nature.

If you subscribe to the correspondent's view, then quite frankly: abortion, eugenics, murder, adultery should be no problem, because these rules are outmoded and subject to change somewhere down the road if a Court decides to change the rules.

4:40PM Update

Correspondent:

The church recognizes that man must govern man so that peace and be preserved and anarchy avoided. I too, have never heard such things in a homily. I think that the church infers this. By working to eliminate poverty, we create an environment where crime is less likely to flourish. This results in an overall better society. Here's the rub. In a poor economic environment where the church and charities are not in a position to give, what then becomes of the poor?

Instead of sending missions to Asia and solving the ADIS crisis in Africa, perhaps we should consider doing something about these folks. I have always thought that Americans should help Americans first, but we can never lose sight of what is going on in the rest of the world. We are the last superpower and with that status we have super-responsibility.

What responsibility does the American poor carry to help themselves out of thier plight? I'm asking because I know there are no easy answers to this question.

We do have the richest poor. We have the greatest country. Should we be satisfied that we outdo the poor of countries such as Sudan? No, we must always strive to be the best. The United States has been the most innovative, charitable, and prosperous nation in the world for quite some time now. There is no point where we should be satisfied that the lowest-class people in the nation are adequately taken care of.

That wasn't my point, but the answer to solving poverty lies not with handouts, but rather securing that person's self-sufficiency. If you can do that with a government program, I'd love to hear about it...

I don't do redistribution of wealth. There will ALWAYS be people who have less. That is the way it is. It is access to opportunity that must be equal...

Do I believe that there is government waste? Absolutely. I have heard many people in public talk about how they cheat the system to receive more entitlements. It's frustrating, but for every one person who cheats, there are ten others who are disabled, handicapped, and simply incapable of caring for themselves. People cheat on their taxes. Do we penalize everyone in the nation for that? No, we go after the cheat. We should do the same for welfare cheats.

Welfare fraud is a HUGE problem. I applaud my correspondent for recognizing that. However, I wonder if there are enough of that kind of liberal that would stand up in defense of those who would go after such waste. Who on the left side of the aisle will stand up when groups like the NAACP starts making noise?

FDR did it best. During the Great Depression, he wouldn't stop at handing out entitlements. He wanted to put people to work and give them back their dignity. I'm a fan of workfare and housing/transportation subsidies. Ronald Reagan spoke of welfare queens in their limousines. I have never seen someone on welfare riding in a limousine, but I see plenty of them washing them.

FDR intended welfare to be a temporary program. A safety net. Not a lifestyle.

As my research shows, Reagan refered to a welfare queen as driving a Cadillac, not a limo...but your point is well taken. And the welfare queen Reagan was referring to was in fact not a real person. The point of the story was to illustrate that there was serious abuse of the system and that the program needed to be fixed. Would I have preferred Reagan used a real example? Sure...but that doesn't fix the problem of real abuse.

Again, I think most conservatives support a system that functions as a safety net. The journey to capturing the American Dream can be rocky at times. And sometimes bad things happen to good people. But none of that is an excuse for a government sponsored program that encourages a whole class of people to adiopt a lifestyle of dependence.