The season inspires many of us to consider the plight of those less fortunate. At this time of year, we also remember fondly those who have passed on before us - the parents, teachers, public servants, clergy, neighbors, friends and sometimes utter strangers who, through guidance and good example, enabled us to succeed and to thrive as children and as adults. Their love and their efforts are a constant reminder that none of us is alone. They also remind us that each of us became who are because others took the time to help us along life's road, and that each of us is an indispensable member of a broader community of citizens and human beings who, through the civil institutions we have created and sanctioned, mutually nurture, teach and contribute of the well-being of one another.
It is thus remarkable that today, in the midst of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, a number of public figures and aspiring public figures in the GOP has chosen to eschew the central message of Christmas - that through the power of example and good works mankind can find hope and redemption. Instead, their message emphasizes the singular virtues of self-reliance and continued self-sacrifice on the part of the many. Equally disturbing, they continue to deny the efficacy of concerted action by citizens, through their elected officials and public institutions, to ameliorate poverty and suffering and to ultimately improve the conditions of life for everyone in our society.
Perhaps the most striking example of this re-emerging paradigm of selfishness is Newt Gingrich. His entire life has contradicted the ideology he claims to profess. A long-time supporter of the garrison sate, Gingrich avoided the Vietnam War through a combination of student and family deferments. A serial philanderer and adulterer, he now professes to be devoted to family values. A proponent of frugality, while a member of the House of Representatives, he wrote and bounced 22 checks on his Congressional House Account, most of which were supposed to pay the chauffeur who drove him around Washington, D.C. in a Lincoln Town Car.
Gingrich also orchestrated the impeachment of President Clinton for his sexual peccadillo with Monica Lawinsky while he, himself, was exacting quid pro sex from a House staffer whom he subsequently married after he divorced his second wife. Later, Gingrich was censured and forced to resign as speaker for repeated ethical violations. After his resignation and to the present, Gingrich has continued to earn millions of dollars as a influence peddler and door-opener in Washington, D.C. for gaggle of well-heeled, special interests.
Gingrich now assures us that he is a changed man. He claims that he was drawn to the Catholic Church because it is the faith of his wife and that he now shares its world view. But there is little evidence that he understands traditional Catholic social philosophy. Rather, he continues to espouse the political ideas that emerged only in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation - the kind of individualism that was emphasized in the works of thinkers like John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith. These thinkers, by and large, defined freedom and rights broadly and negatively, as the absence of restraint, and as a necessary check upon the exercise of power by government. They viewed government as something alien and dangerous, and almost always in conflict with the interests of individuals.
The political ideas that Gingrich continues to endorse are not, in fact, conservative - in the Catholic or European sense of that term - but rather are based upon those antiquated 18th century liberal notions. He is thus a right-wing, classical liberal parading as a conservative. Witness, most recently, his comments that child labor laws should be relaxed so that poor children could learn the value of hard work.
By contrast, the Catholic conservative tradition is very different. It traces its lineage from Aristotle, through Thomas Aquinas, to Catholic philosophers today. It is thus fundamentally at odds with the kind of anti-social individualism that dominates current U.S. political discourse. It is also very radical. Aquinas, for example, insisted that, "It is lawful for a man to hold private property" but that "Man should not consider his outward possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need."
In that broad Catholic tradition, the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno has emphasized that "man does not live alone; he is not an isolated individual, but a member of society...Reason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, the distinguishing mark of man, is a social product." The French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain has declared, in stark contrast to the myth of Horatio Alger that Gingrich continues to peddle in Iowa, that "[T]he primary reason for which men, united in political society, need the State, is the order of justice....As a result, the primary duty of the modern state is the enforcement of social justice."
Had Gingrich read Pope John XXIII's encyclical, Pacem et Terris, rather than the writings of Ayn Rand, he would have discovered that much of Catholic social teaching is far more dangerous to his professed politics than those of the anti-colonialist, Kenyan socialist president whom Gingrich and his evangelical followers dislike. As John XXIII observed, "Individual groups and intermediate groups are obliged to make their specific contributions to the common welfare. One of the chief consequences of this, is that they must bring their own interests into harmony with the needs of the community, and must dispose of their goods and their services as civil authorities have prescribed, in accord with the norms of justice, in due form and within the limits of their competence."
Lastly, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, Rerum Novarum, stands in stark contrast to Gingrich's professed contempt for child labor laws, labor unions, minimum wage legislation, universal medical care and a broad range of safety-net programs that promote the general well-being: "Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice."
In this season of hope, Newt Gingrich's politics promise not a better, more prosperous future for citizens in this country, but rather the introduction of the work-houses, debtor's prisons and the kind of intractable social inequality that Charles Dickens condemned in Victorian England. When this troubling vision is combined with Gingrich's promise to permit evangelical fundamentalists to impose their religious beliefs upon the rest of us, fear rather than hope becomes the operative word.
It is thus remarkable that today, in the midst of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, a number of public figures and aspiring public figures in the GOP has chosen to eschew the central message of Christmas - that through the power of example and good works mankind can find hope and redemption. Instead, their message emphasizes the singular virtues of self-reliance and continued self-sacrifice on the part of the many. Equally disturbing, they continue to deny the efficacy of concerted action by citizens, through their elected officials and public institutions, to ameliorate poverty and suffering and to ultimately improve the conditions of life for everyone in our society.
Perhaps the most striking example of this re-emerging paradigm of selfishness is Newt Gingrich. His entire life has contradicted the ideology he claims to profess. A long-time supporter of the garrison sate, Gingrich avoided the Vietnam War through a combination of student and family deferments. A serial philanderer and adulterer, he now professes to be devoted to family values. A proponent of frugality, while a member of the House of Representatives, he wrote and bounced 22 checks on his Congressional House Account, most of which were supposed to pay the chauffeur who drove him around Washington, D.C. in a Lincoln Town Car.
Gingrich also orchestrated the impeachment of President Clinton for his sexual peccadillo with Monica Lawinsky while he, himself, was exacting quid pro sex from a House staffer whom he subsequently married after he divorced his second wife. Later, Gingrich was censured and forced to resign as speaker for repeated ethical violations. After his resignation and to the present, Gingrich has continued to earn millions of dollars as a influence peddler and door-opener in Washington, D.C. for gaggle of well-heeled, special interests.
Gingrich now assures us that he is a changed man. He claims that he was drawn to the Catholic Church because it is the faith of his wife and that he now shares its world view. But there is little evidence that he understands traditional Catholic social philosophy. Rather, he continues to espouse the political ideas that emerged only in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation - the kind of individualism that was emphasized in the works of thinkers like John Locke, David Hume and Adam Smith. These thinkers, by and large, defined freedom and rights broadly and negatively, as the absence of restraint, and as a necessary check upon the exercise of power by government. They viewed government as something alien and dangerous, and almost always in conflict with the interests of individuals.
The political ideas that Gingrich continues to endorse are not, in fact, conservative - in the Catholic or European sense of that term - but rather are based upon those antiquated 18th century liberal notions. He is thus a right-wing, classical liberal parading as a conservative. Witness, most recently, his comments that child labor laws should be relaxed so that poor children could learn the value of hard work.
By contrast, the Catholic conservative tradition is very different. It traces its lineage from Aristotle, through Thomas Aquinas, to Catholic philosophers today. It is thus fundamentally at odds with the kind of anti-social individualism that dominates current U.S. political discourse. It is also very radical. Aquinas, for example, insisted that, "It is lawful for a man to hold private property" but that "Man should not consider his outward possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need."
In that broad Catholic tradition, the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno has emphasized that "man does not live alone; he is not an isolated individual, but a member of society...Reason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, the distinguishing mark of man, is a social product." The French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain has declared, in stark contrast to the myth of Horatio Alger that Gingrich continues to peddle in Iowa, that "[T]he primary reason for which men, united in political society, need the State, is the order of justice....As a result, the primary duty of the modern state is the enforcement of social justice."
Had Gingrich read Pope John XXIII's encyclical, Pacem et Terris, rather than the writings of Ayn Rand, he would have discovered that much of Catholic social teaching is far more dangerous to his professed politics than those of the anti-colonialist, Kenyan socialist president whom Gingrich and his evangelical followers dislike. As John XXIII observed, "Individual groups and intermediate groups are obliged to make their specific contributions to the common welfare. One of the chief consequences of this, is that they must bring their own interests into harmony with the needs of the community, and must dispose of their goods and their services as civil authorities have prescribed, in accord with the norms of justice, in due form and within the limits of their competence."
Lastly, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, Rerum Novarum, stands in stark contrast to Gingrich's professed contempt for child labor laws, labor unions, minimum wage legislation, universal medical care and a broad range of safety-net programs that promote the general well-being: "Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice."
In this season of hope, Newt Gingrich's politics promise not a better, more prosperous future for citizens in this country, but rather the introduction of the work-houses, debtor's prisons and the kind of intractable social inequality that Charles Dickens condemned in Victorian England. When this troubling vision is combined with Gingrich's promise to permit evangelical fundamentalists to impose their religious beliefs upon the rest of us, fear rather than hope becomes the operative word.