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Anrakyr
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An example that isn’t a strawman.
If abortion weren't an issue, what would American politics look like?
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Aquinas11
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Well that’s a fair argument. I do respect opposing viewpoints. I grew up in family that supports (B) charity over (A) charity so I’m the lone wolf in the family.
The main point I’m trying to emphasize is all Catholics want to help the poor, needy, etc (read Matthew 25, see what happens if you don’t!) it’s just they disagree on the best means to do so.
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mythbuster1
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Everything is connected. Economic policy and foreign policy could not be maintained intelligibly apart from social policy.
I have issues with Trump on many levels, and did not vote for him in 2016 — I live in a safe state for Trump and I voted for a third party candidate (Evan McMullin) as a protest vote. I intend to vote for him in 2020 because he kept his promise on Supreme Court justices, and if we are to believe the media, he needs all the help he can get, and a popular vote majority — such as GW Bush got in 2004 — wouldn’t hurt either.
Where I differed with Trump:
- Immigration - enhance border security with more personnel and the best technology, only building walls where they are the most needed, document those already here illegally through deferred action and a path to citizenship, and more strictly enforce the law going forward
- Health care - universal affordable insurance, and if “Medicare for all” would be the best way of bringing that about, so be it, you should not have to be “on your own”
- Climate change - do what we can, wisely stewarding the earth if the right thing to do, climate crisis or not, renewable nature-based energy is the best
- Help for the poor - do everything we can
I went to bed that night just assuming Hillary would win, and saying to myself, “it’s the end, they’ve finally taken over, it’s going to be pretty horrible”. I woke up at 3 am, looked at my smartphone, the news alert from The Guardian began “President-elect Trump…”, and I said “well, I’ll be…”.
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Peeps
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We don’t admit it because it’s not true. Check out the list in your parish of all the charities that are supported. In our parish, we take up special offerings whenever there is a natural disaster in the U.S., and of course, when there is suffering in our own city due to a natural disaster, we give money and other practical aid. Our Catholic schools do food drives, turkey drives (our Catholic high school students’ families donate thousands of turkeys to the poor of the city during the holidays), toy drives at the holidays (often holding parties where Santa Claus is a drop-in visitor!). There are jail ministries to help prisoners, a job-training class, a parish nurse, and many many international charities (e.g., Food for the Hungry). We give money to a nursing home in the Chicago area run by nuns. And we have a thriving St. Vincent de Paul Society that is active in helping families find a way out of poverty. Our parish and others in the city help with the local Rescue Mission, which has a huge outreach–last year, they housed several hundred people during the bitterly-cold winter, and they also run a “Safe House” for women and children.
In our city, Catholic Social Services is huge. And we also have a center for children to go before and after school where they receive meals, help with homework, and wholesome recreational activities.
As a convert, at times I have actually been resentful of all the time that Catholics spend helping the poor, the lonely, the prisoners, etc., while at the same time having only a few fellowship opportunities or Bible studies for those of us who are in pretty good shape all-around. In our Evangelical Protestant churches, more time, energy, and resources were spent on the MEMBERS of the church rather than giving it all away to people that we didn’t even know and that had no interest in our church.
But I realize that the Catholic model is more in line with the Scriptures and with Christian tradition than the Evangelical Protestant model of leaving the hard work of helping others to professional organizations, and limiting our personal involvement to just giving lots of money. And just for the record, I do think that Evangelicals have changed a lot since I was younger, and do spend a lot of time and energy reaching outside of their church to serve those who desperately need help. I know that they often spoke highly of the Catholic Church policies of obeying Jesus’ commands to help the poor and disenfranchised. The Catholic approach to stopping abortion opened a lot of Protestant eyes!
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Anrakyr
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You ever been to a Saint Vincent’s as a poor person?
First assuming the vollenteers arent burnt out by people who are abrasive (because they are starving). The food is terrible.
I’m talking boxes and boxes of KD that’s 6 months past best before date. And while best before isn’t a hard cap like an expiration date it is a measure of quality.
6 month past best before KD tastes like stale wet cereal. It’s just eating to fill yourself.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The nutrition value of donation food is really low.
All canned, past best before, stale, just about ready to turn moldy eat right now bread kinda food.
And you can only visit once a month, so even if you can stomach the gruel you run out long before you can get more.
“Thriving Saint Vinny’s” that’s a lark.
While I understand that’s a problem that effects all food banks SV is the worst I’ve ever been too.
The poor can not live on over sodium filled cans of beans and bread that expires as you walk home.
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Annie
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I never knew that there was or had been this type of division between Protestants and Catholics. Considering this clarifies a lot of issues in US history! Thanks for mentioning your observations!
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Annie
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First, Catholics vote along the same lines as the general population, so I don’t think you can generalize along the lines you have here.
Second, a large percentage of Catholics who vote R do so solely because of abortion and would prefer to vote D because of the other social issues.
I myself am like Peeps: I am ok with welfare programs but see that they are set up to keep people down rather than to support them as they move up.
I am ok with immigration but see the support for illegal immigration (by whomever, from wherever) as a problem. Among other things, it is an underhanded way to change our laws.
Etc. I just do not see the Ds of today as the champions of all that is good except for abortion the way others see them.
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Peeps
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I’m sorry things are bad in your St. Vincent’s center.
That’s not the way our parish or our diocese operates. We donate out of our bounty, and we donate good food. Living in Northern Illinois means that there is plenty of good produce throughout the summer months into the fall.
But St. Vincent de Paul Society is more than a food pantry. The volunteers visit those who invite them, assess their needs, and work together with the family or individual to come up with a plan to help them better their circumstances. They work with government (federal, state, and local) agencies to make sure that the family is getting all the aid they are entitled to. They work with various housing organizations, both government and local, to make sure that the family has a safe and comfortable place to live. And they work with health care organizations, hospitals, clinics, rescue missions, and rehab centers to help people who are addicted (right now, there is an opioid addiction outbreak in the U.S., including in our city).
I know several of the people who work with St. Vincent’s, and they are wealthy people who give much time, money, and heart to help others. Please don’t judge all St. Vincent’s and other Catholic charitable outreaches by a bad one in your area.
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TheLittleLady
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My response is based on a lifetime of in the trenches anti abortion work. I began volunteering summers with a national ministry focused in ending abortion in 1979, my early teens. Have traveled this nation in ministry until my mid 20’s, after that worked dilligently in volunteering, political organizing for the Republican party, with national anti abortion political groups. Having stood outside clinics, on stages giving talks, in the consult room of CPCs and across the table from leaders of both sides, believe me, these ideas come from an educated place.
Your experiences may be different, I speak of the women I have encountered. Bank account does not mean someone is not in a crisis pregnancy.
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TheLittleLady
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This is often swept under the rug.
This is an important book that I would suggest to anyone, on any side of the issue:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016RU3YL8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Erikaspirit16
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Easy question. Look at history. Look at other countries where abortion isn’t an issue.
What creates different parties? The haves vs. the have nots. The haves (hi guys! I see you’re here!) try to disguise simple greed by couching it in terms of socialism vs. capitalism or collectivism vs. capitalism, or some such. But it always boils down to this: I’ve got mine, and you’re not going to take it away. So I’m going to create a giant military to protect my wealth, and I’m going to support guns and “law and order” to protect my wealth, and I’m going to oppose immigration to protect my wealth (unless I own a construction company, restaurant, or landscaping business–then I want cheap labor). And I’m going to find every excuse under the sun (anti-poverty programs don’t work, the poor are lazy, there’s too much fraud in welfare programs, etc.) to protect my wealth and avoid helping the less fortunate. I could go on, but you get the picture. It’s all about keeping your own piece of the pie, and who cares about those other guys.
What creates different parties? The haves vs. the have nots. The haves (hi guys! I see you’re here!) try to disguise simple greed by couching it in terms of socialism vs. capitalism or collectivism vs. capitalism, or some such. But it always boils down to this: I’ve got mine, and you’re not going to take it away. So I’m going to create a giant military to protect my wealth, and I’m going to support guns and “law and order” to protect my wealth, and I’m going to oppose immigration to protect my wealth (unless I own a construction company, restaurant, or landscaping business–then I want cheap labor). And I’m going to find every excuse under the sun (anti-poverty programs don’t work, the poor are lazy, there’s too much fraud in welfare programs, etc.) to protect my wealth and avoid helping the less fortunate. I could go on, but you get the picture. It’s all about keeping your own piece of the pie, and who cares about those other guys.
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Yes, and in those countries, evil has triumphed, and there is nothing that can be done to change the law. The only thing that the forces of good have is moral suasion. That’s the situation the pro-choice people would like to bring us to, and we have to fight it as long as we possibly can, and save as many lives as possible for as long as we can. If present demographic trends continue, and if people are not converted, there will eventually be a large majority that supports transforming the society into a secular liberal utopia with the social welfare policies (which is all well and good until, as Margaret Thatcher put it, they run out of other people’s money), support of each other’s grievances, and moral relativism that comes with this. The social policies are attractive; I support many of them myself (universal affordable health care, affordable higher education, etc.). Right now we are just buying time, four years at a time, one Supreme Court justice at a time.
In Canada, the Conservative party had to promise that they would not try to change that country’s abortion-on-demand laws. When I was in Paris several years ago, someone had painted a large sidewalk mural of a fetus, to try to wake people up and make them confront abortion. But that’s all they can do — talk about how wonderful a “choice” that “life” is. Moral suasion and nothing more.
Yes, but add to this, that your hypothetical “have” worked hard, took risks, invested, sacrificed, for the “mine” to which you refer. “Keeping your own piece of the pie” is not a bad thing. Getting rich is not evil, as long as you don’t exploit people, help other people out on your way up (creating jobs is one way of helping people), remember how you got there, and practice charity to the less fortunate.
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Annie
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George McGovern, the Bernie Sanders of his day, wrote a column in the WSJ about how owning a business changed his mind about government regulations on businesses. Here is a link to an article which jas a link to the original, which I can’t access, and excerpts from the column: George McGovern On Why Politicians Who Haven't Built A Business Are Bad At Regulating | Techdirt
There are a lot of reasons business owners (eg, the rich) want to “hold onto their money” (which I have put in quotes because it is the usual characterization of what business owners are trying to do, not because you used that phrase), and a lot of that jas to do with simply being able to continue to keep their business running.
I have known several small business owners. One, who was Catholic, had a small profit-sharing set-up with his employees, and in order to keep his business and family going took a second job. Small changes in the law could have thrown him out of business.
Yes, there are the super-rich, and if we took all their money away, what would we gain?
Here is a list of the net worth of the 100 richest people in the US in order: http://www.getnetworth.com/100-richest-americans/
Roughly adding the value of the top 25 gives us about $500B. If we took that all away from them, it would find half the federal government for one year. Adding in the next 75 would give us less than 2 years’ worth of federal funding, and that would be it.
I do not know whom you consider to be the rich, but even taking all their money would fund the federal government for only a short time.
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yankeesouth
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You would still have the liberal political ideology that goes against the teachings of Jesus regarding contraception, marriage, assisted suicide, and care of the elderly. Also the threat to religious liberty would still be an issue.
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yankeesouth
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Lol…watching videos of election night 2016 is still entertaining TV.
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Erikaspirit16
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I think you’re ignoring the original question: What if abortion was NOT part of the equation. Can’t help yourself, can you?
You know what? I know a lot of people who worked hard, took risks, invested (their effort and time–didn’t have $$), and sacrificed. And where are they now, financially? They’re poor.
If you win a gold medal at the Olympics, it doesn’t mean you worked harder. It might mean that you had access to expensive training facilities, that you had someone pay for your daily needs so you didn’t have to work all day, you could train. And of course, oh yeah, maybe you had good genes. Or, if not genes, then parents or grandparents who were top athletes and who encouraged you (you can do your own poll, but there are LOTS of 2nd and 3rd generation top athletes out there).
True, more or less. The tricky words in there are “exploit people.” Why is Bill Gates so rich today? Because MS sold its products for as much as it could get. They made obscene profits. They exploited people. You can go down the list. Gates is now magnanimously returning some of his gains to the “less fortunate” (which is exactly the term that should be used). But I’m not impressed. He still lives in a huge mansion. He still can buy whatever he wants. He still goes wherever he wants and does what he wants. Now if he gave EVERYTHING away and went to work with the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, I would be impressed. He hasn’t. He won’t.
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Erikaspirit16
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I read your article. It was about regulations, and how politicians don’t understand the implications of regulations. The first comment below the article was right on the money: The implication is that only business people understand the implications, and they should write the regulations. You do know who writes the bulk of legislation, right? Trade associations. Then they give their proposed legislation to Representatives or Senators who they have basically bought, and they introduce the bill. The good news is that there are generally other trade associations on the other side of the issue.
Let’s take a current issue: water pollution. Under Obama, the regulations were extended to cover smaller streams, ponds, etc. that drained into larger rivers. OK. Too much? So where, precisely, do you draw the line? And there has to be a line, unless you just say, “Who cares about water quality! Dump anything you want anywhere you want!” The problems are where the line is, the cost, the effort to police regulations, etc. Now you could have a society that values water quality, and it just wouldn’t occur to them that polluting it was an option. That would be great, but…
If that were true, I’d be with you 100%. There are exceptions, I’m sure, but in general businesses want to grow. They’re not content with making a good living. That’s not good enough. They want to drive competitors out of business, they want more, more, more. Take a look at any business page and read about all those businesses who over-expanded and went bankrupt. Was it because of regulations, or because they got greedy?
Fairness and equity. Seems to me to be a worthwhile goal.
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meltzerboy2
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The problem here is that fairness and equity don’t always mean the same thing. I think it is simply not fair to penalize the wealthy beyond what they should proportionately pay in taxes to distribute the wealth equitably among the masses. In the same way, I am vehemently opposed to NYC’s Mayor de Blasio’s effort to equalize the specialized high schools by setting aside a percentage of seats for minority students (mainly Blacks and Hispanics), while also putting a quota system into effect for the majority of students in these schools (Asians, who are also a minority group). The meritocracy system in these schools has been much fairer although not equitable, and, once upon time, Jews made up the bulk of the student constituency in these specialized schools, while, at another point in NYC history, it was Blacks and Hispanics. Instead, if equity supersedes fairness, as what appears to be taking place now, and not only in NY and in academic institutions, we lose individual liberty in the name of egalitarianism, conformity, and, frankly, the lowest common denominator. The French Revolution and the Reign of Terror was another example in history in which equality trumped liberty. The consequences of this goal are not constructive to either the individual or the society in which they live.
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