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In the on-going debate over how to improve the American healthcare and healthcare delivery systems, the professed intent of most of the players has been to increase “access” or “coverage,” by extending benefits to people who currently do not have such access. Ostensibly, this is because “access” and/or “coverage” is priced out of reach for these folks, on account of some combination of raw poverty, and unavailability of employer-provided/subsidized health insurance, which is the vehicle through which most non-elderly Americans access the healthcare system. I spent almost a decade of my life numbered among those without medical insurance, and I’m familiar with the significant limitations of the current model, from the distortions introduced by the prevalence of employer-sourced benefits, to the reluctance – especially among the young – to view healthcare costs as a necessary out-of-pocket expense, similar to food, clothing, or shelter.

In any policy debate, a central component of the debate is the question: Who benefits? Apart from identifying precisely what the need is, and how it might be met, we need to have an understanding both of who should benefit, as well as who actually would benefit under any given proposal. Perceiving that adequate healthcare, whatever its precise definition (which must be defined in order to make rational policy decisions), is a universal necessity for living a fully flourishing life, many public voices have taken to calling for the recognition of a universal right to healthcare, and, not infrequently, of identifying the various “reform” packages proposed by Democratic leadership with such a universal mission.

But what does “universal” mean when used in the current political context? Does it truly mean universal, or does it merely say universal while meaning something else? And if it says one thing while meaning another, what are the implications typically associated with the term that cannot be legitimately claimed under these current circumstances, given the reality of what is actually meant when the term is being used? In short: How can this idea be invoked honestly, and – hence – profitably?

Consistent with decades of Catholic social thought, the Catholic Church, at least in the form of the USCCB, has thrown its moral weight behind the idea of a program of universal access to healthcare (whatever that particular term might mean), but there certainly has not been a single proposal put on the table during this debate that would come close to meeting a catholic understanding of the term “universal.” However, I’ve seen no evidence of anyone in the American hierarchy pointing out that disconnect, with the exception of the particular incongruity confronted in the abortion problem.

To a Catholic, it is a breathtakingly cruel mockery to invoke the character of universality on a healthcare plan that not only excludes a subset of the human race from the scope of said care, but positively persecutes them to a violent death at the hands of those they love the most. Yet, to the progressives behind the current program, abortion is part and parcel of the initiating agenda. It is quite beyond me how the bishops think they can lie down with the whore of misanthropic progressivism, in a foolish attempt to sire a bastard offspring that will manage to obsolete charity through benevolent state power, yet avoid the stink that naturally arises (the public funding of abortion) when they do. The bishops, I trust, will continue to refuse to support any program that is remotely pro-abortion – I would not suggest otherwise – but until the architecture of reform is rooted in a philosophical and political view of the world that is not wedded to the legalized murder of innocents, it strikes me as myopic to think that there could be room for a legitimate cooperation, devoid of complicity in evil. I don’t get their willingness to be strung along.

Nonetheless, other problems remain at the gate. For example, it would be politically impossible to include health care coverage for illegal aliens in our policy implementation, but Catholic social doctrine in no way distinguishes among persons on the basis of citizenry. The Church’s legitimate voice in the argument must speak to the implications of the dignity each human person possesses as a creature formed in the imago dei. Not only does such a perspective transcend the status of citizenry, it by definition also transcends national boundaries altogether.

The truth of the matter is that if the issue is to be framed as one of universal social justice from a Catholic perspective, every right to healthcare ascribed to a “poor” citizen of Anytown, USA, must also be ascribed to non-citizens within our borders, as well as “the least among us” in the far-flung corners of the earth. I’m not proposing this as an ad absurdum argument against healthcare reform. To the contrary, I believe it is in fact entirely true that local illegals and the remote destitute have the same claims as the rest of us to anything that can be construed as a human right, including healthcare. Political rights can be circumscribed by politics, but not human rights.

Nor am I trying to make the perfect the enemy of the good – suggesting that the Church cannot or should not support a plan that partially solves a problem without solving the whole thing. Provided that a plan does actually show promise of making progress toward a legitimate goal (in my opinion, a dubious assertion in this case), it would certainly be appropriate to propose its provisional value. But invoking the symbolism of absolute terms like “universal” upon what is at best contingent is misleading, a situation particularly deleterious when it involves spiritual leaders entrusted with the task of distinguishing the contingent from the absolute. It not only lulls the gullible into a false sense of sanctity, but as in this case of Obamacare, it obfuscates the absurdity inherent in the project of reducing human brotherhood to a political program.

Of course, if the American people had to consider the possibility of tax-payer funding of a system of healthcare (whatever that means) that would serve the whole word, it would be (rightly) laughed down as a cruel hoax that was utterly impossible to fund, staff, administer, or police. But even if we proscribe the vast majority of the world’s needy, and limit participation to Americans, these practical absurdities, so readily evident when we consider the prospect of a genuinely universal scope, are hardly resolved, and common folk know that – as is evident from the steadily growing disapproval of Obama’s project among the American citizenry.

Nevertheless, supposing we get beyond the Catholic bishops’ amalgamation of the Church’s social doctrine regarding the universal dignity of man onto what is (of necessity) a much less ambitious undertaking – that of the forcible redistribution of particular resources among a recognizable elite (e.g. U. S. citizens and documented aliens) – we’re still faced with the hard reality that the finite inputs available to any such system will be far exceeded by the output demands that are implied in the expectations of pro-“reform” arguments calling for the expansion of “coverage” to some many thousands of people who are presently not covered.

Not only does this program threaten to bankrupt the country by redirecting huge sums of money from other needs and uses into the already financially bloated healthcare market, it is counting on the availability of services that often do not exist, both of which influences will only serve to increase the cost of healthcare, defeating the very purpose that the program allegedly seeks to serve. This is pretty basic arithmetic. We do not presently have a meaningful surplus of “health care,” and it will not be possible, within a rational universe, to provide additional goods and services without either increasing their supply, or reducing their availability in some other quarter.

This is precisely the prospect being faced by the elderly dependent upon Medicare, which is expected to lose half a trillion dollars in funding in order to make subsidy dollars available elsewhere. This funding shift can only exacerbate the problems providers like the Mayo Clinic already face with Medicare, and will surely accelerate the current movement by these providers out of the Medicare system. This is a pending elderly healthcare disaster being facilitated by the Democrats, even while the President himself is singing the praises of the very providers finding themselves forced to get out from under the abysmal government system. Incredible.

A knave, at this point, might be tempted to accuse me of thinking that those presently going untreated “don’t deserve” treatment, or some such hogwash, but that is not the case at all. I am merely pointing out what should be an obvious fact: that health care, like all goods and services, operates in a complex economy in which price and availability are strongly influenced by the levers of supply and demand. This influence is not a capitalist invention imposed upon hapless society by mean-spirited businessmen; it is an explanation of how economies really work. You can’t reduce costs by imposing a tax structure that reduces supply, increases demand, and depresses cash flow in the general private sector. And price-controlling healthcare services would ultimately have the same effect on healthcare as rent controls invariably have on housing: it’s a disaster for the poor, and for society on the whole.

I have yet to hear a proponent of progressivist “solutions” admit that this economic reality might possibly pose a difficulty to the healthcare socialization project. In their determination to believe the rightness of their cause, they seem to have convinced themselves that there is no real cost to any of this, that the problem of inequitable distribution is simply one of “unfairness” in which scarcity plays no role, and that they can even achieve better than market-optimal results while actively sabotaging market incentives, such as lowering the payments made to doctors under Medicare. Sheer delusion.

I live in a populous area, just outside of Boston, which is also one of the world’s premier hotspots for health care technology. I suspect the supply-to-demand ratio for health care around here is about as high as it is anywhere, and it’s already not easy getting timely appointments, at least if you are not already a patient. Knowing what we know about the notoriously long waiting periods afflicting patients in Canada and other countries that have socialized their systems, how can we think we are seriously addressing any kind of lack-of-healthcare problem when we’re not attempting to find a way to increase the availability of healthcare itself? Trying to frame the healthcare access problem as one simply of inability-to-pay on the part of a victim class is both wrong-headed and counter-productive – unless your goal has less to do with caring for people than it does with establishing state control of healthcare. Clever slogans might be politically expedient, but they tend to be economic time-bombs.

The Democratic proposals put forth by each Congressional house would significantly raise healthcare costs across the board, fail to provide healthcare consumers with any needed new options outside of government controlled exchanges, destroy market incentives for both third-parties and healthcare providers, discourage providers from serving the elderly and other less affluent segments of society, discourage entry into the healthcare field at both institutional and personal levels, encourage artificial demand for unnecessary services by frontloading costs into taxes and premiums, create the typical government feeding trough and corruption that doling out tax dollars invariably creates, facilitate the continuation of enormous wastes of time, money, and resources as a consequence of medical malpractice law abuse, and, of course, exclude the most vulnerable members of the human race from even the most fundamental of protections. To call these plans “universal” in any sense at all – even provisionally – is an utter farce.

So who benefits? Beyond the advocates for unlimited state control of human society, I don’t see how anyone benefits. Sure, there will be rent seekers of various stripes who line their pockets – it’s impossible to spend $2.5 Trillion without making somebody rich – but the net result to the healthcare system- and the people it serves, will be a certain loss.

George Orwell, in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” said: “Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” There is no more apt description of the political discourse that has defined the “healthcare” issue in this country over the past year. Now that we’ve seen what the Democratic leadership has proposed for legislation, would it be out of line to suggest that someone might owe Joe Wilson an apology?

Of course, it was almost impossible to know much of substance of what was being proposed until the 2,000+ page monstrosities were actually submitted as bills – documents our elected representatives wouldn’t even have read before voting on. For months, the public “debate” consisted of little more than partisan posturing from both major parties – save for some genuine disagreements over public funding of abortion, and the so-called “public option” insurance plan. Despite the constant “healthcare” rhetoric, the real target of political muscle-flexing is the medical insurance industry. Admittedly, questions around requirements for treatment rationing did arise while the public option was still on the table, so perhaps actual healthcare questions may come back into play at some point.

It is impossible to draft coherent policy without a sound understanding of the issues at stake, and it is impossible to understand the issues at stake without coherent definitions of the terms of the debate. The thing that bothers me most deeply about this obvious boondoggle is the almost total lack of interest – among politicians, journalists, or the general public – in making sure the issues are understood before taking a position or making a decision. As usual, we are, collectively, satisfied by an idealism unencumbered by facts, or by any kind of reasoning from ideas to consequences. I fear an economic train wreck coming, masquerading as yet more self-righteous do-goodism, and arrogating ever more power over people’s lives to the state. This is not reform, it’s simply the entrenchment of Big Brother.

The ideal at issue can be summed up as the universal right to healthcare. That sounds great, but what does it mean? In order to get from ideal to sound policy, all three terms (universal, right, and healthcare) need to be understood – not only insofar as their general implications through historical usage would suggest, but also precisely how they are being circumscribed by the current context. We are far from any useful common understanding of any of this. In discussion, this ideal is sometimes modified to propose that everyone has a right to adequate healthcare. The “adequate” modifier is a step in the right direction, recognizing at least that there is not a lately discovered unlimited right to whatever we call healthcare, but at the same time, it really just adds a fourth term to the question requiring resolution. If we don’t know what adequate healthcare is, how can we craft policy to achieve it?

The central term of the debate, healthcare, is so vague and ill-defined that it can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean at any given time, and it invariably does – and you can be sure that trend will continue. Not one of the main actors in this debacle would dare to publicly define exactly what constitutes “healthcare;” they’ll simply proclaim loudly that it must be reformed! It must therefore be noted that the central idea of President Obama’s primary domestic priority is a weasel word which nobody actually understands, or can articulate coherently! This is a textbook example of how a commitment to a vague concept can be abused for unrestricted leverage in policy determination. The point, after all, is not actually healthcare (whatever that means), but “shaping the future of America.”

I am reminded of a saying that I must confess I once accepted as axiomatic (as does virtually everyone on the progressive left): that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. No doubt the poor, like everyone else, sometimes do get poorer, and there are indeed scenarios where the above dynamic would hold true (e.g. with land grabs by the wealthy, or other usurpations of finite resources). But the saying is usually invoked as a denunciation of wealth growth in a capitalist context, where it makes absolutely no sense. As American wealth has grown, all but a tiny fraction of the populace has seen their standard of living rise to levels simply unimaginable to the vast majority of those whom history has called the poor. It turns out that a rising tide does indeed lift all boats, whether the progressives like it or not. The problem is that all boats don’t rise equally, and envy perceives this lack of uniformity in progress as an injustice, despite the fact that the process is actually working for everybody. Thus, it is an envy-occasioned blindness that gives rise to the mischaracterization of universal but uneven improvement as being a case of “the poor get poorer.”

Likewise, the actual problems in our healthcare system, and/or our healthcare delivery system, hardly seem to me to be of crisis proportion (after all, our healthcare system, by and large, is excellent, and the envy of the rest of the world). I agree that is prudent to be concerned about the rate of increase in healthcare costs proportional to the rest of the economy, but a large part of that cost increase is traceable to the technical revolution in the medical field, which is making more and more treatments available to people, yet which do not – and cannot – come free. Twenty or thirty years ago, we spent much less on medical costs, but we got much less in return. I don’t see anyone trying to turn back the clock on medical technology.

Because of the prevalence of third-party payers, whose role ends up encouraging the over-use of medical resources for non-critical and even frivolous problems, and who in turn have to bundle increased usage costs from both non-critical over-use and constantly emerging technological advances into their own pricing structure, consumers encounter premium increases that may not reflect their own usage of the healthcare system, eventually reaching levels that are economically disruptive, and even pricing them out of the market. We can talk about subsidizing these costs, but unless the causal issues are addressed, the costs are merely being shifted from one pocket to another.

The presence of these third-party payers has also distorted the pricing models of the healthcare providers themselves, inflating the pricing of direct payment markets to sometimes ridiculous levels, effectively eliminating the option of patients paying directly for as-needed a la carte care from providers, as had been the almost universal practice until very recently. This is part of what frosts so many young people who would prefer to stay out of the health insurance market (and who are likely to be forced now to take on these spiraling prices of the third-parties, both directly through premiums, and indirectly through taxation), that the costs for services for those without insurance plans are far and away higher than the insured indirectly pay through their third-party payer. Those who are uninsured not by choice are in an even worse situation. Simply requiring open accounting of provider pricing could go a long way in empowering cash customers (i.e. patients) in search of a fair deal.

The fact that the Democrats tried so hard to include a “public option” in the reform package demonstrates clearly that they do not understand the problems inherent in third-party payer systems, fail to see how sound risk management on the part of payers can limit those problems, and somehow still fail to grasp how much more distorted (not to mention corrupt) the market would be with an increased role for public agencies. It’s not that problems don’t exist in the delivery system; it’s that the Democrats seem bound and determined to make them worse in the name of making them better.

If the basic practical problem is that “healthcare” has become too expensive, there is absolutely nothing in the structure of the proposed reforms that will ameliorate that – in fact, all the guilty parties involved in this know full well that costs will increase. The Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has suggested that, with the Reid bill in place, healthcare spending, as a percentage of GDP, will increase from 17% to 21% over the next decade. Nice reform. I also have to assume that this estimate is not assuming overall economic damage, due to the irresponsible tax increases associated with this plan, shrinking the projected GDP, which would almost surely raise the percentage of that GDP spent on government regulated healthcare to an even higher percentage.

If, as it appears, the primary objective is to make “coverage” available to more people, the obvious first step should be to repeal the anti-competitive 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, and the second step should be to set up supports for policy portability. What we get instead are Constitutionally dubious proposals to wreak havoc on the medical insurance industry, which appear so poorly thought out that it makes me wonder if this plan is really intended as a time bomb to get a nationalized program in place through the back door of private sector collapse. OK, that’s paranoid. Still…

And, of course, the one surefire way to realize immediate, significant healthcare cost reductions for everybody, tort reform, is, as always, nowhere on the Democrat’s radar as far as I know, despite the fact that, again, everyone involved knows what a real difference this would make. What a disgrace.

Boy, am I growing weary of the political environment. What George W Bush did for for international relations with his “with us or against us” rhetoric, Barack Obama is doing to the political climate within the country with his treatment of political dissent. Of course, nations actually do operate in an environment of mutual belligerence, which is forever flaring up as actual warfare in some corner or another, whereas nations are supposed to operate, internally, with a civility stemming from civitas, but why split hairs?

Perhaps it’s unfair to blame Obama for the whole mess, but then again, it’s not. He’s the unquestioned leader of the ruling left wing in this country, with the power and ability to set the tone, and he sits back and watches the fissure. Whether that’s because of incompetence, or because he senses political advantage in it, I’ll let the reader judge – we’ll assume he doesn’t enjoy it for its own sake. He may pose as someone seeking unity (show me a politician that doesn’t!), but in the real world, he uses and approves actions and tactics that reveal a very different kind of leader.

So, we have Rep. Joe Wilson being censured by the House for blurting out “You lie!” during an Obama campaign speech before the joint Houses. Can we call it that? Maybe an infomercial? No, he didn’t pay for it. I think “policy address” is the official term – I’m not sure – but whatever it’s called, it was nothing but a powerful man using the bully pulpit available to him to advance his agenda. Nothing wrong with that, but why is it being treated as if it were some kind of sacred religious service?

It’s kind of creepy, really, the way the setting is being portrayed in the public propaganda narrative. I will admit that, for a few seconds, I felt like I was watching British Parliament instead of the U.S. Congress, but the “sacred” halls of American power were built for the rough and tumble of modern liberal politics, not for the circumspect adulation of Divinely appointed royalty that the whole liberal enterprise set out to overthrow. And, like many, I don’t remember a previous occupant of the Pennsylvania Avenue throne whom the public propaganda narrative depicted as deserving of such circumspect adulation. Creepy, I tell you…

But I think what bothers me the most about the whole affair is that Wilson is being accused of introducing incivility into the proceedings. What a load of crap. Undoubtedly, Wilson was absolutely fuming over just having been called a liar in front of both Houses of Congress, on national TV, by the President. Obama set the tone from his pulpit, and Wilson fired back in defiance from the cheap seats. It had been only perhaps 15 seconds before Wilson’s outburst that Obama had accused opponents of his, who included “prominent politicians” (and while speaking to the joint Congress, it’s pretty tough to misconstrue that reference), of lying about the implications of his proposed end-of-life panels of experts: “It is a lie, plain and simple” he stated baldly. Even I was dumbfounded at the time that he would say such a thing, and I’m not even a radio or cable talk show host, nor a prominent politician.

So we see yet again that we reap what we sow. But who is even talking about Obama’s incivility, his tactics of divisiveness and marginalization, or his responsibility for setting the tone of discourse at the level of personal insult? Incredibly, Teflon Barak just accepts Wilson’s apology, and sits back while Wilson gets savaged by Obama’s supporters, even to the point of being slandered as a racist for his outburst. Incredible.

At least there’s people like Scott Harrington over at the Wall Street Journal uncovering the dishonesty of Obama’s characterization of the examples he uses in his demonization of the insurance carriers. All that really seems to matter here to the President is that people’s contempt for, and distrust of, the insurance companies is fed and enforced. President “Hope, Not Fear” is willing to fudge the facts in order to scare people into thinking they need to buy his socialist snake oil to protect them from the ogres of the business world. Disgusting. Disgraceful. And depressing.

Meanwhile, the left wing picks up this theme of the “racist” calumny, which has been, at a minimum, simmering in the pot since the election cycle, and which has ever since been pulled out, time and again, to smear Obama’s opponents, and they bring it to an absolute boil. It’s not just effete TV celebrities and fatuous journalists slinging the slander now, but high-level political leadership among the left wing, including former president Carter, Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Hank Johnson, and undoubtedly many more I could find if I wanted to waste my time Googling for the info.

Suddenly, the air is ablaze with insinuations that opposition to Obama’s policies involves “elements of racism.” The verbal trick here is to morph the idea that racists are opposed to Obama into the idea that people who are opposed to Obama are racists. The trick is made all the more clever by feigning subtlety by referring to “elements.” If racists are opposed to Obama, them some of the opposition to Obama is racially motivated, therefore opposition to Obama is at least partially racially motivated. Hence, the implication is clear: If you are opposed to Obama, you are part of the partially racist opposition, and therefore you are (at least) partially racist. Not that opposition to his agenda has anything to do with his person anyway, but there I go splitting hairs again, and getting off-narrative.

This is shameful, of course – and sinful – to be slandering people with the “racist” label as a means of trying to advance a political agenda. This is so regardless of how corrupt the political agenda is: even a noble cause is irreparably defiled by ignoble tactics. But aren’t such tactics the very warp and woof of progressive political argumentation? It angers me – as it is angering an increasing number of people – to be called a racist for being a political dissenter (as I snicker at the thought of what these same snide and cynical  folks would have had to say about my support for Alan Keyes’ presidential bid in 2000), but in a sense, it’s just the typical fare that is served up for dissenters from the orthodoxy of progressivism. There’s just an assumption at work that if you reject the progressive orthodoxy, you have bad motives.

It’s not because you think the programs are bad, it’s not because you think you have a better idea, it’s not even because you’re mistaken, it’s because of your bad motives. Hence, if you oppose so-called liberal (socialist, really) policies concerning the welfare of the poor, it’s obviously because you hate the poor. It’s not possible that you think those policies will actually be bad for the poor, you just hate the poor. Case closed. “Hate” is a very important word in the lexicon of the left – it explains just about all dissent. How clever.

But this “racism” game is going to run aground before long. There are too many people seeing through the facile “solutions” of the left – and especially of the salesman-in-chief. That means there are increasing numbers of people who are going to be uneasy – if not outright offended – by the mean-spiritedness of the chimerical “racism” slander, and they’re going to push back.

Suddenly, Nancy Pelosi is fretting about the right wing stirring up a frenzy of violent opposition (shades of “right wing terror threats”  in the form of returning Iraq veterans!), but she couldn’t be more wrong. People get violent when they’re angry, and the Rush Limbaughs of the world don’t get people angry (except liberals, that is). What gets people angry – angry enough to fight – is being insulted, having their character and integrity questioned.

Whatever anger is out there on the right is not there because of political activism or talk-radio manipulation, it’s there because these are good people, who are good neighbors, who love their country, and who are fed up with being told they are “haters” of one stripe or another simply because they retain some semblance of conservative moral and/or fiscal values. Nancy Pelosi is too much the stooge of her ideology to see that, but I think Barack Obama is politically astute enough to recognize it. When the violence comes, it won’t come from the right, from those folks “clinging to their guns and religion” who place so much importance on law and right public order, and I think Obama knows that too. What I don’t know is whether or not he thinks he can survive politically without ratcheting down the “hate” speech. I suspect that will depend on what happens over the next few months with his health insurance takeover plan. We shall see.

I don’t agree very often with what Michael Paulson says over at the Articles of Faith blog at Boston.com – he doesn’t even ask the right questions, as a rule – but I had to concur with something he said the other day about President Obama’s address introducing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for Justice Souter’s Supreme Court seat: he said he was struck by “the language he used to describe the role of Catholic schools in offering children a path out of poverty.” Here is the quote from the President’s remarks:

“But Sonia’s mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood, sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman out of the belief that with a good education here in America all things are possible."

You won’t get any argument out of me by suggesting that the way to get your children a good education here in America is to send them to Catholic schools, but I have to wonder what the President’s good friends and supporters in the public school teachers’ unions (never mind management) thought about that remark.

Meanwhile, at about the same time this remark was made, the papers reported that the last Catholic parochial school in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston would be closing next year, due primarily to declining enrollment. And as true as it is that the academic performance is superior, and as important as a sound academic foundation is to the life of the intellect, you can believe me when I say that academics is about the least of the good reasons I send my children to Catholic schools.

It wasn’t very long ago that Catholic families were strongly encouraged by the faith community to utilize the parochial schools as an important element of providing their children a good Catholic upbringing. As the parochial school systems sags and slowly collapses under the weight of indifference, it strikes me that such encouragement is almost wholly lacking these days in parish life. Local sponsorship of the responsibility for Catholic education seems limited to bulletin notices of area open houses, and an occasional fair to provide schools tables from which to hand out marketing literature normally reserved in magazine racks in the back of the church.

This seems to be part of a trend among much of the laity of abandoning anything distinctively Catholic. People just want to fit in – and I don’t understand why the priests seem so disinterested in resisting the trend. Maybe they try harder than I give them credit for, but there is simply insufficient depth to the soil of parish life in the form of supportive and receptive laity – I don’t know. It just seems to me that if so many Catholics want to blend in seamlessly to the larger, secular, culture – without being willing at the same time to abandon their Catholic name, then they can’t possibly discern a necessary difference between Catholicism and the spirit of the age.

Regarding the schools, it is as if people view the parochial schools as nothing more than public schools with incrementally better academics, and unwanted tuition bills. Actually, the parochial schools offer an environment relatively free of the fashionable academic conceit of godlessness, as well as a moral seriousness that not only doesn’t nurture the narcissistic insolence prevalent among too many youth today, but refuses to tolerate it very far. I won’t even mention the sexual mores.

You can’t put a price tag on that, and if Catholics, on the whole, could get their act together around this, there is no good reason why the tuition bill for parochial education couldn’t be at least cut to a nominal stipend, if not avoided altogether. It is widely said that the parochial schools do their superior work while spending less per child than the public schools do. Whether it be through vouchers or some other method, it would only take political will to allow Catholics (or anyone: non-Catholics are at least a significant minority in most parochial schools) to choose to send their children to Church-operated schools instead of government-operated schools, without paying twice.

The easy answer to the acculturation puzzle is to make a distinction between “real” Catholics and nominal Catholics, and to expect the nominal Catholics to find the exits, but I think that attitude does a disservice to those we might call spiritually poor. From the bishops on down, we try too hard to get along, and, in consequence, we fail to make the case to the many that Catholicism has something radical to offer; that being a Catholic is different than anything else. The loss of interest in the schools is just an obvious example of the loss of Catholic meaning through the withering of Catholic culture – although, for all it’s worth, I have little confidence that Justice Sotomayor, if she is confirmed, will demonstrate how a Catholic education can help shape the moral character with Catholic meaning… I hope I’m wrong.

Being not only the day after the day after President Obama’s inauguration, but also the anniversary of the dreadful Roe v. Wade decision, I was thinking quite a bit today about the abortion problem. Being well aware of his earlier statement to Planned Parenthood that could be interpreted to mean that the first thing he would do after obtaining the Presidential office would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, I’ve been warily eyeballing some news sources for the past couple days, waiting to see if the President picks up on the theme. Not that I think it likely too soon – I just can’t imagine the President wanting to roil the waters at this time – but I have little doubt the Congress will drop the bill on his desk for signature in the not-too-distant future, leaving him no choice but to deal with it. And his world will change that day, one way or another.

From what I can gather, he made no mention of it today. releasing instead a canned remark on Roe v. Wade that made the remarkable claim that the decision “stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.”

Last I knew, Mr. Obama was quite supportive of governmental intrusion into the very heart of the family itself through the issuance of licenses of marriage and certificates of divorce, as well as of intrusive governmental oversight of the welfare of children (even to the point of the government taking child custody if it deems it appropriate), and intrusive government oversight of the quality of domestic relations between husbands and wives in the form of applying laws relating to domestic abuse, and intrusive governmental oversight of family finances, in the forms of both establishing and enforcing alimony and child support arrangements, and in the a priori prioritization of massive family expenditures through taxation, and of course – last but hardly least – government control of the education of children.

But perhaps Mr. Obama is suggesting that these other things are private family matters of a lesser sort, as opposed to the killing of children, which qualifies as being a most private family matter – and that therefore he knows to draw the line of governmental intrusion at the killing, because – Ba’al knows – we can’t have governmental interference in the killing of children, except perhaps to pay for it with the money of those who find it morally outrageous.

All the fawning that’s fit to publish…

It’s been a rather surreal two days, focused around the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of these United States. The people around me all seemed to be grounded rather normally, but every time I’ve braved the elements and exposed myself to the mainstream media, it’s as if somebody (me? them?) has entered another world.

I’ve stayed far away from TV for the most part, but I was walking through the living room last night while Joyce had MSNBC playing, and I heard popular historian Ken Burns tell Keith Olberman that, if MLK’s “I have a dream” and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address speeches were 10’s, he would rate Obama’s inaugural address an 11. Aside from vanquishing whatever professional respect I might have had for this made-for-TV intellectual, it was just plain embarrassing. Obama – at his best – is vacuous compared to those two men, and from all other accounts, the inaugural speech was not even vintage Obama.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe’s web site today offered the following tease for an inauguration-related “human interest” story:

Residents were frozen in place yesterday, spellbound by the unifying spectacle on their televisions.

The unifying spectacle? I appreciate that a lot of people are excited about what happened yesterday, but a victory party on the part of those who feel they have won – as much of a spectacle as it may be – hardly constitutes a unifying moment. Unification would seem to require the establishment of some sort of common ground among adversaries, not a simple reversal of political fortune. Those of us, for instance, who see the current abortion holocaust as the gravest moral evil this nation has ever perpetrated (and there is no small number of us) are horrified at the prospect of this man becoming President, because of the positions he has taken, and has pledged to maintain, on matters of the most profoundly serious social morality. I hardly feel like part of the party today, and I’m surely not alone in that.

Beyond the social politics and other policy storm winds of Obama, there is another element to the hoopla I find deeply disturbing. At one point today, I clicked through a few links and was browsing a forum discussing the Event, and a commenter opined that the Event was of almost unprecedented historical importance, because a Black man had been elected President of the U.S.A. He then instructed those who disagree with him to “stop being such haters.” Now, I am getting so completely fed up with the relentless insults coming from the radical left wing and their allies, in the form of accusing anyone who disagrees with them of “hating,” that I almost lost my cool at that moment. But that aggravation aside, I think there is an even more perverse intellectual error going on in this person’s thinking, and it is representative of what I see all around me today.

To a certain extent, I can understand the excitement around the symbolism of a Black man being elected President – especially among those considerably older than me. Having been born in 1960, I don’t really remember the Civil Rights movement of the mid-sixties. I was vaguely aware of the “Black Power” movement that came a bit later, but I came of age in the era of Equal Opportunity laws and Affirmative Action; a time when the Black man clearly became the worst enemy of his own people. Those with longer memories, who remember the systematic mistreatment and the struggle for basic justice and respect (and especially those who experienced it), will understandably place more importance on the symbolism of Obama’s ascent to the Presidency, but I think there is a serious danger in allowing symbolism to overshadow reality, such as we’re witnessing in the media’s interpretation of the “spectacle.”

After all, "a Black man" was not elected President, Barack Obama was. If Colin Powell had been elected President, I would be a much happier camper today. If Alan Keyes had been elected President, I would be happier still. Symbols do not get elected to public office, men and women do, and who those men and women are is of far greater import than what they are. I’m glad the United States has come to the point where a Black man can get himself elected President, but it fills me with a certain shame that the Black man we chose is one who embraces such misanthropic, unjust, and outright evil policies. Not because he is Black, but because – whether out of political expediency or a genuine but perverted moral conviction – he is committed to a radical support of a policy that involves the extermination of “undesirable” human beings. I couldn’t care less what color he is, and I’m disappointed that so many people do care – and care intensely.

But regardless of the motivations behind Obama’s support – and I have no doubt that it is quite complex – there remains this tendency to focus on the symbolic at the expense of the real. Politics is prone to this, of course, and Obama himself was shown to be a master of substituting symbolic language for substantive argument or suggestion during the campaign. Television in particular thrives on it, being as it is so poorly suited for intelligent discourse. As much as I wish people would reject Barack Obama’s politics, and as much as I admire Alan Keyes (albeit with reservations), I genuinely hope that the “spellbound” folks celebrating this inauguration would have been far less enthusiastic if it were Keyes being sworn in, because budgets and policies succeed the inauguration, and these things are crafted by men and women, not symbols. I hope they’re naively celebrating a misguided policy direction, and not a dangerously mindless accretion of the power of public sovereignty and devotion to a symbolic vessel. That, indeed, would be nothing but the most primitive form of idolatry, as Moses very clearly told his people many, many years ago. We do not need to go there.

“O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.” _{(O Antiphon for Dec 21st)}

Natick, Massachusetts has been buried under a stubborn snowstorm over the past 48 hours or so, and it seems to have been a while since the light of dawn has made its presence felt. The feeling intensifies when I open my window to the world, and peer out at what is happening in my society today.

Christ, as the Sun of Justice, not only judges in righteousness, but also illuminates. For the second day in a row, the antiphon references the plight of those “who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:79). This seems strangely appropriate as I look on the spectacle unfolding around Barack Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren to pray the invocation at Obama’s inauguration ceremony in January.

When I first saw the swirling blurbs of a scandal brewing, I immediately assumed that conservative Evangelicals (often wary of Rick Warren anyway) were inveighing against Warren for accepting the invitation, and therein supplying Obama’s image machine with a pretense of mainstream Evangelicalism’s accommodation of Obama’s notoriously radical and unholy social agenda. I will confess to having had some initial pangs of sympathy with that perspective (no doubt partly fueled by my own ambivalence toward Warren, whom I rightly or wrongly see as more of a best-selling promoter of self-help religion than a prophetic Christian witness), but I soon concluded that such reactionaryism was unwarranted – recognizing that the requirement to pray for and honor public leaders is not conditioned upon their policy aims – nor even their character.

How profoundly shocked I was, once I bit on some of the story teases, to learn that the outrage was coming from the left! Warren’s rejection of the “gay marriage” ploy is apparently enough to constitute him as a “bigot” unfit to give such a solemn invocation. But I have to ask, what does that make every other minister who has ever given the invocation for the Presidential office? For that matter, what does it make virtually every single human being who has ever populated this sorry planet?

Shine upon those in darkness and the shadow of death, indeed, O Light of Dawn.

I’m trying not to pay attention to the election results coverage tonight. Not that I’m not interested, but I can’t stand the thought of listening to the television network infotainment blowhards passing their usual gas. To some extent, I will admit, this attitude is sour grapes over the way virtually every TV news media outlet (other than Fox, of all places) has been in the tank for Obama since… well, face it, since the DNC convention in 2004. The conventional wisdom has the journalist class succeeding in this election in getting their man in, but I’m still holding out hope that enough John McCain voters will come out in key states to tip the final tally into the Republican column. But, yes, I’m avoiding the news in a probably vain attempt to stave off depression.

I voted on my way to work this morning, and did not at all experience the kind of long lines that have been reported throughout the day as existing all over the place. I was in and out within a few minutes. Naturally, every vote I cast has come up on the losing side of the ledger in Massachusetts, according to early projections (OK, I peeked). But I felt good voting today for the first time in a while. I’m not a big fan of John McCain, but at least I could support him without serious reservation. It’s been a while since I could vote in a general election without holding my nose.

But whichever candidate ends up losing this struggle, the biggest loser will be the republic, as yet again the blowhards and morons who have anointed themselves the arbiters of American political discourse have succeeded in reducing the most important political process in the world to trite sloganeering and posturing. The candidates are not above responsibility for this situation themselves, but I think the lion’s share of the blame needs to be placed on the shoulders of the journalist class. They are a disgrace. They seem incapable of even understanding that political questions might consist of competing ideas, being instead thoroughly wed to the imbecilic reduction of everything to competing opinions. They are an impediment to intelligent political discourse, not only in how they frame the struggle in reporting and analysis, but even in how they manipulate the candidates themselves. And they are the lens through which almost the entire democracy views the problems to be solved!

Watching the four presidential and vice presidential “debates” was an exercise for me in how not to manage stress. Again, it’s not just how the questioning tended toward addressing controversy instead of meaningful content, but there were even occasions when the celebrity News host was striving to keep the candidates from addressing important matters (such as each other) in order to keep themselves front-and-center in the process. I nearly fell out of my chair at the end of one of them (can’t remember which) when the celebrity host announced that the next “debate” would be on such and such a date, “with celebrity host B” (again, I forget which one – as if I care). Is it even possible that Senators McCain and Obama themselves might star in the next episode of Presidential Debate ’08? No, no. They may be there playing the contestant roles (who cares?), but the star would be Fred Flintstone – or was it Barney Rubble? Or Captain Kirk? Or Oprah? Or was it George Stephanopoulos? No, George would be needed afterwards to analyze the candidates’ facial tics.

The bottom line, as far as I’m concerned, is that these buffoons have to go if American democracy is ever going to rise back above the level of bumper sticker philosophizing. We do need someone to facilitate the public presentation of political process, but these people are incompetent, and we need to find a way to throw them out. Changing the politicians will avail nothing if the gatekeepers remain the same.

But where do we go to find suitable replacements? The universities? Ugh. The public sector? No point giving the inmates the keys to the ward… The religious sector? Can you imagine the uproar that suggestion would cause on campuses and in latte shopppes across the land? But it might actually be the most responsible (and practical) approach. The private sector has clearly failed badly, and the universities are wastelands of trendy inanity. The public sector itself is a non-starter. Maybe the religious leadership in the country could, collectively, provide a balanced framework for serious discussion of serious matters…

But what am I talking about (sorry for stealing your line, Senator Biden)? I’m just thinking out loud – I have no idea how any such thing would work – but I can’t help but think that the folks who might have the best chance to drive our political discussion past the ratings-driven diatribe of controversy and opinioned buffoonery just might be those whose lives are ordered to the transcendent, yet who understand profoundly (pastorally) the sufferings of the world.

Watching the Republican convention last night, I was struck by how poorly some of the speeches were delivered. I’m not saying this to pick on the Republicans – this seems to be a general malaise in our political system. Admittedly, I tuned in and out early the evening, but I was not impressed with what I heard.

I couldn’t even listen to GOPAC chairman Michael Steele, who’s supposed to be good at this kind of thing. Then, the ranting guy who looked so much like Mitt Romney – well, I’m not sure what was up with him. But the worst of the night might have been Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle. She was brutal – pausing for grudgingly offered applause after almost every sentence. It was tedious.

Fortunately, the bigger lights performed well. I could listen to Mike Huckabee anytime. And Rudy Giuliani: as much as I might dislike his cross-over politics, he is certainly a master of the microphone. I really wish I could like that guy more.

The night, of course, belonged to Sarah Palin. And while she lacks the stage charisma of Giuliani, she has a disarming grace about her that exudes a rare combination of confidence, competence, and earthy approachability. She certainly had her audience in the palm of her hand. Even while staying away from the social issues that really would have had the house rocking, there was an excitement evident that I haven’t seen in the GOP since I don’t know when.

The more I think about this appointment, the more brilliant I think it was. Palin brings to the McCain candidacy the one thing it was lacking most: passion. It’s not so much her age, or her gender, or her good looks, or her “Sarah Barracuda” reputation – all of these elements play a role, but there is a magnetism about her (not unlike Barack Obama) that just makes her very easy to like. . . a lot.

That was McCain’s political weakness, as I see it. He’s respected, he’s trusted, but nobody was excited about him. I’d see poll after poll showing, in so many words or less, how much more supportive Obama’s supporters were of him. I tried to think it wouldn’t much matter, as McCain’s supporters – even the lukewarm ones – would eventually end up voting for him. But I did have nagging doubts as to whether too many of the more or less conservative folks would stay home, while the Obama wave crested.

But I think the game is altogether changed, now. The conservative base is thoroughly energized by this woman, and some other folks are seeing the Republican party in a whole new light.

Who would have thought that the future of the GOP would be a “hockey mom” from the tundra? But she just might be. . . and if I were Joe Biden, I would not be looking forward to October 2nd – although I sure am!

Sarah Palin? Even if I had known who she was, I don’t think I would have seen that coming. I had been hearing the whispers of Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman as possibilities, and saw how McCain’s logic might have steered him toward them. He’s never really been conservative, and has always been ready to play the maverick, and I could see how he might consider the constituency-broadening appeal of a pro-choice running mate. I hate to say it, but I don’t think the prospect of a pro-choice VP would have concerned McCain. And it would have built bridges into new voting constituencies that would have made him very hard to beat this year.

Of course, the social conservatives would have been furious, but what could they do? They still would have voted for McCain (this year) – the alternative would be an Obama presidency (enough said). I could really see McCain doing this – it seemed like a move that would be right down his alley. It would have worked in 2008, but very possibly could have fractured the Republican base for years to come. It would have marked a potential parting of ways of the pro-life movement and the Republican party – a marriage that is more circumstantial that intrinsic to Republicanism, anyway.

I think there are a lot of Republicans who would like to be rid of true conservatism – much of what they consider the kooky religious right of the party – in order to pursue unmitigated Republicanism – which is really good old fashioned liberalism, as confusing as that may be to moderns who don’t have a grasp of European history over the last, say, 350 years. Some might argue that Libertarianism already offers that option – which is a pretty good argument, but I think most modern Republicans are looking for a greater level of social conservatism than Libertarianism embraces, even those who could do without the religious framework.

Anyway, so I got to wondering whether the Republican party or the pro-life movement (and traditionalism in general) would fare worse in such a split, if it were to turn radical. I wondered if the social conservative movement was coherent enough, apart from the Republican party, to pull together a political force that could compete for serious political office in this country. I’m not sure it is, but I do think such a scenario would have provided an opportunity to put a political platform together that was not so beholden to economic liberalism as the Republican party is. The idea that the corporate consequence of unmitigated personal greed and self-interest will somehow produce the common good is a rather idolatrous proposal, after all. I also wondered if it might provide an opportunity for the “religious right” to divest itself of the statism particular to political conservatism, which tends toward slavish subservience in the face of any form of state-sponsored violence, and seems incapable of honest, objective evaluations of judgment criteria such as just war theory.

So I saw a potential opportunity for social conservatism in the U.S. to cleanse itself of some dubious bedmates. More specifically, I saw a potential opportunity for the development of a political force that was rooted in Christian values that cut across the lines of modern liberalism and conservatism.

Since I know more than a few of them – including some very dear to me – I often wonder what it would take to get Christians out of the Democratic party, with its unabashed commitment to the destruction of innocent human life, its open hostility to marriage and the family, and its infatuation with using state power to achieve its ends – in a nutshell: with its relentless misanthropy. Honestly, I don’t know what it would take, because they usually think they are taking the moral high ground themselves, standing up for the little guy (as long as the guys aren’t too little I suppose, but we won’t go there, since many of these folks try very hard not to think about that much). Still, to offer them a political alternative that was not wedded to economic Darwinism might be enough to open the eyes of many of them to the innate misanthropy of the Democratic platform.

But all this may have been wishful thinking. It’s entirely possible that a Republican party divorced from its Christian conscience would only join forces with the Democrats in fostering a more and more radically progressive and intolerant form of political liberalism, hostile to any kind of religious values in the public square, and effectively outlawing Christianity as anything more than a privately held neurosis. Given the political vibrancy of the “values” constituency in the U.S., this might seem far-fetched, but one doesn’t need to look far to see its manifestations in countries not too different from the U.S. Making the outrageous claim that marriage is a covenantal bond between a man and a woman just might get you hauled before a Human Rights Commission on hate crime charges in Canada, and convincing a pregnant woman not to subject her baby to a brutal death in an abortion clinic will now apparently get you two years in prison in Great Britain. It’s a brave new world out there…

All of this is moot now, however – at least for the time being. McCain managed to make the kind of reach-across gesture I imagined him doing, but he did it without courting the pro-abortion vote. In fact, in picking a mother of a Down’s Syndrome baby, he picked the anti-Obama, a woman who could be the poster model for true human decency, respect, and dignity. You don’t build a bright new future by killing it one baby at a time, Mr. Obama. I don’t know much about Governor Palin yet, but I really like what I’ve seen so far, and I think this may have been a master stroke of political genius by McCain – a man I didn’t really expect that from. Before she’s done, Sarah Palin may be the first woman president of the United States. I can sure think of worse fates.