Debating Faithful Citizenship

"Some Tea Party members express an acute hostility to government per se, seeming to deny it any legitimate functions. Other Tea Party members are simply racist. I know, I know. Here come the nasty comments. But, people, the whole debate about the President’s birth certificate, the posters of Obama as a monkey, the posters of Obama as an African witch doctor, the phone calls to congressional offices denouncing the health care reform as “reparations,” and referring to the President using a filthy racial slur, the fact is that a significant part of the Tea Party just can’t swallow the fact that we have a black man in the White House."

I am NOT a tea party Republican, but there has been NO evidence of any of this at a Tea Party Rally. None. There have been at other rallies, but not at Tea Party rallies.

And where's your outcry about the union leader who called Chris Christie "Adolf Christie" and Welcomed people to the "Third Reich" at a labor rally this week in New Jersey?

Moreover where's your moral outrage at the massive scandal involving Fannie Mae and your beloved "progressive Democrats" like Barney Frank? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/opinion/17brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&e...

I hear not a whisper about how these "social justice" types and their immoral back room deals. THAT'S what has the Tea Party up in arms - not racism or social Darwinism. But keep shaking the Pom-Poms, Winters. I guess it sounds better than the truth.

It's amazing the faith, nay the idolatry you put in expanding government at every turn. No mention of the Edwards affair wherein a so-called social justice Democrats broke campaign finance laws that Democrats are always telling us are so damned important to keep the influence of money out of politics; no mention of the Fannie/Freddie scandals that involve ALL the great progressive Dems and their smorgusboard of identity groups - ACORN, Congressional Black Caucus, etc. that ACTUALLY caused the housing bubble; no mention of the exra-democratic measures the Obama administration is taking to keep free trade agreements and new Boeing plants from coming online which would boost economic production for the sole reason that their union masters oppose them - no mention of ANYTHING at all except Ayn Rand and the Tea Party! It's hilarious how far your head is in the sand, or perhaps up the posterior of the Democratic Party. You heap opprobrium on the heads of conservative Catholics that you think incorrectly proof-text their GOP talking point with Catholicism; you need to take a good long look in the mirror.

Faithful Citizenship has never been used as intended. It is at best a Band-Aid on addressing the intricacies of both abortion law and poverty. Until these issues are more explicitly addressed, it will prove caustic as some seize on abortion as a non-negotiable without actually saying what is to be done about it, while others use it as an excuse to ignore the issue altogether. Neither view is correct. We should instead agree to either a realistic program to end abortion through criminal law or admit that it cannot be done and instead agree on an economic strategy to reduce it.

Ah, Southern Catholic, I was tempted for a moment to commit the social sin of analyzing the relative contribution of those two words to your piece, but will not.
Idolatry of the Market, if not worship of Ayn Rand, colors too much of the public dialogue these days.
The sum of private enterprise in this country, let's say of that part of private enterprise which clears each year a million dollars or more, especially after one recent and simplistic Supreme Court decision, has overwhelming economic power which can lead to overwhelming political power. This power is as dangerous to us as would be an overreaching government.
We need a balance between privately controlled Overwhelming Enterprises, and publicly elected government. Only a relatively powerful government dedicated to preventing and punishing the excesses of industry, can ensure liberty in America.
I am old enough to remember America before the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, when the rivers at home were flowing, stinking sewers, and various kinds of air contamination meant cleaning window ledges daily. Heaven knows what we were breathing.
I am politically alert to know that non-performing mortgages can arise from overzealous lending or from job loss or sickness, none of which are primarily the fault of the borrower. And I am economically alert enough to understand that silly lending would never have gone on long without the smoke screen of "derivatives" insured (some thought) by "credit default swaps", both the product of Wall Street, not Main Street. Those devices meant that junk mortgages could be securitized and sold to the unwary. The irony is that now some mortgages can't very well be foreclosed because no one knows where the original note and mortgage are, nor exactly who is the beneficiary/owner of those documents. That too was the doing of Wall Street. Unregulated finance is a time bomb.
Economic time bombs are not the fault of the rest of us, they are the fault of the oligarchs of the finance industry, the fault of the to-some sainted Market.
Christ must weep at the sight of what has happened to economic justice in the United States since the 1970's, and he must be horrified by those who believe that the outcome of that period is somehow reconcilable with what He taught us.