More on health care

A liberal colleague of mine, who identifies himself as an evangelical but stands squarely outside 2000 years of Christian tradition on matters of legal and political philosophy, is fond of the Wallisian argument that Christian moral teaching demands single-payer health care. Christians have a moral obligation, he thinks, to employ the state to ensure that disparities in health care are eradicated.

The flaws in this argument are too many to count. But it is important to respond to this sort of nonsense because many liberal Christians, eager for an excuse to vote for Barack Obama, are buying it.

First, this consequentialist account of political engagement simply does not hang together. It is entirely inconsistent with 2000 years of orthodox Christian teaching on jurisprudence and poltical philosophy. The Church has always taught a moral philosophy that is deontological and emphasizes the importance of the Eschaton values -- virtue, the Good -- relative to things of lesser and merely temporal importance, such as human conditions. In short, these Christian consequentialitsts stand squarely outside of orthodox Christianity. Perhaps that is not troubling to so-called "progressive Christians," but it should at least cause them to pause.

That aside, the assumption on which the argument is predicated -- that the justness or morality of a policy is determined by its consequences (the "moral goal," to borrow your oxymoron) -- is anything but self-evident, and liberal Christians have not bothered to demonstrate it. I would love to know they plan to get around the incommensurability problem, which in the last 50 years has caused consequentialist philosophers the world over to abandon consequentialism as untenable. So far, they aren't saying.

As a prudential and factual matter, their claims are simply wrong. "Progressive" -- statist and collectivist -- proposals have never, anywhere, at any time reduced disparity in healthcare (is it disparity to which they object or inadequacy?), reduced waste, or made anyone more healthy. Health care rationing in Canada is now so extreme that doctors are actually dropping patients from their practice lists. I suppose in that sense, Canada's statist system has reduced disparity: everyone is equally unable to obtain adequate health care.

An old joke about the Soviet economy went like this. After ordering his car at a local dealership, a customer inquired when it might be available to pick up. The dealer told him, "You can come by to get it on February 3, two years from now." The customer replied, "I can't. The plumber's coming that day."There's a reason why that joke is funny. It was true.

Indeed, most (though certainly not all) of the failures of the current health insurance system are due to too much state intervention and not enough freedom of market. If insurers were freed from disparate and restrictive state regulatory schemes, a national market would naturally emerge, increasing access and reducing costs.

The tradeoff would be that less affluent people would end up with "Wal-Mart" plans and more affluent people would end up with "Brooks Brothers" plans. In the minds of conservatives, that would be a good thing. Better a Wal-Mart plan than no plan at all. But liberals care more about disparity than about access, so they prefer a single-payer system that rations a smaller quantum of health care on more equal terms.

McCain's plan is, in the minds of conservatives, superior to the statist solution Obama offers for all of these reasons.

Liberal theonomy comes in Catholic variety, too

We have on numerous occasions condemned theonomous reasoning on matters of civic importance (for examples, see here, here, here, and here). Both liberal Christians and conservative Christians can be found arguing that the Bible says x, therefore Christians ought to endorse y policy. Almost invariably one finds that the speaker is a protestant, usually a self-described evangelical.

Today the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island demonstrates that Catholics are not immune to the temptation to indulge in theonomous lines of argument. According to the AP, "Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors." America's immigration laws ought not be enforced, according to Tobin, because they are unjust and immoral.

One of the many problems with the rhetorical tie between theology and public policy is that it is a cop-out. It excuses the one making the assertion from engaging in the rigorous process of reasoning publicly, invoking publicly-accessible propositions and demonstrating proofs. Bishop Tobin doesn't bother to explain his assertion that the democratically-enacted immigration laws of this country are unjust. And the assertion is just that: an assertion. It is anything but a self-evident truth.

The AP author provides a clue, stating, "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has called U.S. immigration policies 'morally unacceptable,' saying they keep families divided and encourage the exploitation of migrants." If that sums up Tobin's concern with current immigration laws, then he has no ground for claiming that the laws are unjust and immoral. The laws may be imprudent. They may result in undesirable (and presumably unintended) outcomes, such as the division of families. They may for these reasons be bad public policy. But that in no way makes the laws unjust or immoral. Unwise perhaps, but not unjust.

And Tobin should know this. As a Catholic bishop, he is aware of the distinction between matters of principle and matters of prudence. The legalization of abortion is unjust in principle. Our current health care laws are unwise as a matter of prudence. Similarly, our immigration policies are prudentially suspect in some respects. But to encourage law enforcement officers to refuse to enforce the law, simply because one has prudential disagreements with the lawmaker, is to thumb one's nose at the rule of law.

Single-payer health insurance as a moral obligation

Two of my "progressive Christian" acquaintances have recently made the claim that Americans have a moral obligation to ensure that all persons have health insurance. To them I have posed the following questions, but they have either declined or proven unable to answer.

(1) Whence this moral obligation? How does one come to such a conclusion?

(2) How extensive is the obligation? Must everyone have full coverage for all medical, dental, and pharmaceutical needs, or will lesser levels of coverage satisfy our putative moral obligation? If the latter, are not free market solutions the most efficacious? I wholeheartedly agree with you that this is a complex problem requiring a complex solution. History teaches that markets produce better solutions to complex problems than governments.

(3) What principled limitation exists on our putative moral obligation? Moral obligations are universal. For example, my moral obligation not to take innocent human life extends both to Americans and to non-Americans. On your reasoning, why are we not also morally obligated to provide health care to the billions of uninsured and impoverished in nations other than our own?

(4) How are we to discharge our moral obligation without infringing upon personal autonomy? Some people simply don't want to spend the money for health insurance, and others (particularly the young and healthy) don't need to.

I am trying to avoid the conclusion that these questions have no intelligible answers and that my acquaintances are trying to foreclose debate by calling names. The conclusion becomes more difficult to resist the longer they fail to answer these simple questions.

Manifesto Destiny

It is not worth speculating on the contents of the so-called "Evangelical Manifesto" that Os Guiness, Richard Mouw, Rick Warren, and other evangelical leaders will release later this week. Various accounts portray the document as either a call for evangelicals to withdraw from political engagement on behalf of conservative causes or an attempt to pull evangelicalism even farther left (and therefore away from orthodoxy) than it has drifted in recent months. Until the mysterious missive is made public, the fragmentary evidence of its argument will not support fair inferences.

However, the advance marketing of the Manifesto itself raises questions. Whether Guiness et al have intentionally created an aura of exclusion and secrecy or merely done so clumsily and unintentionally, they have created a distasteful impression. Like a self-appointed college of cardinals of the evangelical church, they meet in clandestine quarters choosing who will receive an invitation to join their deliberations. Apparently they expect evangelicals to wait with bated breath for the white smoke and the declaration, "Habemus Papum!"

If that was the intent, the effect on this evangelical has been the opposite. I am growing increasingly skeptical and will greet the document not with jubilation but with a critical eye.

St. Thomas and Planned Parenthood

Thomas Mengler, the dean of St. Thomas Law School, has rightly decided not to extend volunteer credit to a student for working at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

"I view myself as responsible for promoting and protecting our institutional identity, including but not limited to our Catholic identity," Mengler said Thursday. "Our law school clearly has a faith mission."

Two aspects of this story, which the author brushes past, seem worth remarking upon. First, note that St. Thomas requires its students to perform volunteer service. The Star-Tribune attempts to bury this telling fact. Service is as prominent a component of the school's Catholic mission as its defense of innocent human life. However, it is a component for which liberal MSM outlets like the Trib are not prepared to give credit.

Second, Mengler's decision is unlikely to earn him friends in the legal academy. Most legal scholars disparage defense of the unborn, as they disparage defense of traditional institutions such as conjugal marriage, as theocratic, dogmatic, and irrational. Kudos to Mengler, who unlike a certain wimpy element within Christendom (against which I often inveigh), cares much more about unborn humans than he does about receiving an invitation to the cocktail party.

Add St. Thomas to my ealier list of law schools for aspiring conservative lawyers to consider. (And while we're at it, throw in BYU in the Mountain West.)

Made for order

Law Prof William Stuntz has cancer. Yet he has maintained his perspective.

This world is messed up, but that's not how it started. We crave order because we were made to live in an ordered world. Then we disordered things by rebelling against the Creator. And the Creator bore our suffering anyway, and invites us to carry His yoke, which is light and easy. That's how a Christian explains suffering.

How do non-Christians explain it? I cannot tell.

God blessed America... through the Catholic Church

Would the United States be the Shining City on a hill, which it most emphatically is today, without American Catholics? Probably not. Leaving aside the many valuable contributions to our Republic from Catholics over the first 175 years of the American experiment, American Catholics unquestionably have preserved the best features of our culture and traditions for the last 50 years or so.

As William F. Buckley's many friends, opponents, and allies eulogized him with glowing enconia last month, we were reminded of the extraordinary influence that energetic and committed Catholic exercised over the course of recent American history. He built the movement that defeated Communism, made world markets freer, and undermined the dictatorship of relativism.

Five of the current justices on the United States Supreme Court are Catholic, and all of them voted last term, in the landmark case Gonzales v. Carhart, to uphold Congress' partial-birth abortion ban. That decision was the first occasion on which the Supreme Court upheld a ban on an abortion procedure and arguably marks a turning point in the Court's abortion jurisprudence.

One of those Catholic Justices, A. Scalia, J., swam for over a decade against the current of constitutional relativism, and did so with panache. His intellectual courage and witty penmanship inspired the conservative legal movement, and he became the most prominent champion of originalism, which has in twenty short years become the dominant mode of constitutional interpretation.

Two of the three most influential intellectual forces for good in the realm of Western moral, legal, and political philosophy -- Robert George and John Finnis -- are Catholic. The third, Hadley Arkes, is Jewish but identifies himself with the distinctly Catholic intellectual tradition of Thomist natural law philosophy. Indeed, Catholic intellectuals have almost alone preserved the natural law tradition in the United States, and the West generally. For this reason, Catholics laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement, the pro-life movement, and the defense of marriage and the family.

It was a Catholic Pope, John Paul II, who without firing a single shot ignited a revolution in Poland and Eastern Europe, which eventually toppled the Soviet Union. Before evangelical relief and charitable organizations proliferated, Catholics were operating orphanages and soup kitchens. Before evangelicals re-entered the political arena in the 1970's, Catholics were founding political journals and organizing the conservative movement. Before evangelicals discovered Francis Schaeffer and Chuck Colson, Catholics offered a comprehensive view of culture, law, religion, and politics that was informed by the truth and grace of the Word of God.

The United States owes much to its Catholics population. We evangelicals, in particular, owe our Catholic brothers and sisters an enormous debt of gratitude. Despite the obvious trangressions that the Catholic Church has committed in the past several years, it has done far, far more good than evil.

For all of these reasons, this line from a press report today is striking. "Before [Pope] Benedict's arrival [in the United States], polls showed most Americans knew little or nothing about him."

Maybe this is yet another example of American ignorance, much like our infamous inability to locate Iran or South Dakota on a map. But I wonder whether the same would be true of other important world leaders. Do most Americans know anything about Gordon Brown, Osama bin Laden, or Kim Jong Il?

While we're on the topic...

of so-called "Progressive Christians," it is appropriate to put that offensive term in its proper light. The Progressive movement is founded on the purpose of using politics to bring about an Eschaton on Earth. Progressives speak of goals such as eradicating poverty, ending war, insuring all persons against health care costs, and enabling all sentient beings to exercise fully their autonomy. As the name of the movement suggests, progressives believe that they are helping mankind move toward an ultimate goal, an evolved state of peaceful self-actualization. For this reason, the Progressive movement is well-suited to the secular worldview, which takes as its presuppositional foundation Darwinian naturalism.

For the same reasons, progressivism is completely antithetical to Christianity. Christians believe that the Eschaton is not a state to be achieved here on Earth, but rather a Person to be desired and pursued, the very Son of God. We also believe that humans do not have it in our power to end poverty, end war, or bring about self-actualization. Indeed, we are not called to do so. Instead, we are called to tend to the poor (whom, Jesus assured us, we would always have with us), preach the Gospel, and lead people to the Good.

A central tenet of Christianity is that man cannot improve upon what God has created. In the orthodox view, God allows us the privilege of helping to redeem what we have corrupted by our own rebellion. To suggest that self-absorbed humans -- much less governments, which are comprised of fallen humans with competing self-absorptions -- have it within our power to effect our own progress is a category mistake.

Furthermore, that suggestion belittles the crucifixion and resurrection of the Eschaton Man. There remains no work to be done, no higher plane to which we must progress, because Christ has done it. Past tense. To suggest that Christ left the job unfinished is to claim that his life, ministry, and death were less than what they truly were.

Conservatism and Christianity, by contrast, fit naturally with each other. Conservative Christians suffer from no internal contradictions in their thinking. We believe that Christ has completed the work of sanctification and that He allows us to participate in His work of redemption in personal relationships with Him and with our fellow man. We have the great privilege of participating in this work by assisting the poor (not taxing the rich), defending the unborn and infirmed, and preserving institutions -- marriage, the public square -- that enable mankind to be fully integrated, to pursue the Good.

The next time an acquaintance identifies herself as a "progressive Christian," ask her toward what she is progressing. You will, I think, find the answer enlightening.

Can Anyone Interpret Scripture?

If I've ever heard a good argument for the Church teaching and interpreting scripture this news article is it.

Good Math

I've been in several conversations over the last few months with friends about the atrocities of religion. The idea I'm usually confronted with is religion's historical role in causing all the great strife in history.

Anyone who claims religion is causing all of our wars, needs a lesson in history. This myth is easy to debunk by listing the names of Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler. These are just names from the last 100 years, you could certainly go further back. Religion has had it's problems, but to claim it is the cause of all the wars and strife is ridiculous and uninformed. Humans are the cause of wars not religion.

As a side note, this post will be my last attempt to defend religion in general. I'll stick with defending Christianity from now on. It's like being a mathematician and trying to defend and explain the benefits of all math, even bad math. In the future I'll refer specifically to math that has the proper sum, the good math of Christianity.