Claudia had her ETWN Catholic Radio streaming this morning, and I heard some women in a conversation about Pope Benedict's retirement. What I picked up on was their discussion about somebody on MSNBC who was hassling a Catholic guest (I didn't pick up on who the guest was or who the MSNBC host was) about Pope Benedict's possible successor.
It was the narrative we can expect from the Left Wing people who dominate the MSNBC lineup. Harrass the Catholic guest about the need for the new Pope to be more "moderate". The ladies were reacting to the host's caricature of Pope Benedict as a "Conservative", and that host's insistence that the Church should be more flexible and elect a "moderate" or "liberal" replacement.
The ladies were saying that the Church doesn't care about today's divisive labels like "Conservative" or "Liberal". The Church holds to the teachings of Jesus Christ, which do not change along with popular secular values. Where I thought they went off the rails a bit was when they used an invalid assumption to argue that the Church is not "Liberal" because they care about the poor, just as they are not "Conservative" because they honor the sacrament of marriage.
They've fallen into the popular culture trap that suggests that Liberals have the exclusive franchise for the characteristic called "Caring for the Poor". That suggestion is so ingrained that I don't think the ladies have the slightest awareness of how terribly untrue it is.
Liberal socialist government gains and holds power by creating dependency among the highest possible number of citizens. So now we hear that somewhere around half of the total United States population gets a check or some other form of subsidy from Washington every month. Did that happen because they "care" more about poor people than conservatives?
No. It happened because the most important goal of a liberal politician is always to gain office, then make sure he or she stays in that office in perpetuity. They create massive new programs under the guise of "helping the poor" which simply allow them to hire lots of their friends into overpaid positions in the bureaucracy, where those friends are empowered to write all the rules and regulations about who qualifies, how much they get in their check, and often what they can use the money to buy. The goal of these programs is not to move people back to self-sufficiency; rather it is to continue to grow the rolls of beneficiaries so they can hire more buddies and write more rules.
Meanwhile, Conservatives actually find ways to help people with their actual problems. Rather than a monthly check with strings attached, a conservative prefers to deal with a poor person one at a time. Find out who the poor person is, and what he needs. If he needs a meal, a conservative feeds him through his church's soup kitchen or food pantry. If he needs a job, a conservatives refers him to placement agencies. Overall, the conservative rejects the centralized monthly check approach in favor of helping the poor person solve whatever problem is standing between him and self-sufficiency.
So the only government program a conservative might support to deal with the poor would be an agency designed to meet the immediate need, prepare the poor person through education to be able to find and hold a job, then transition that poor person into a life of self-sufficiency. No strings attached, other than a message to the person that was helped that they should show their appreciation by contributing to help others benefit from their experience.
I'm tired of this narrative that Liberals are the only ones who care about the poor. Who cares more about a poor man? The one who demands the government levy higher taxes on somebody else so they can send the man a monthly check, keeping him poor and helpless his entire life? Or the one who prefers to go out and help the man escape his poverty and become successful, independent, and free?
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