Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico “has taken his message into church pulpits and campaign venues alike, citing biblical texts as justification for broader health care coverage, care for veterans, and protections for immigrants,” according to NPR. That distorted message has plagued our nation for almost a century.
When we see someone in need, whose responsibility is it to help? For Christians, it is our moral responsibility as individuals to help. Christ commanded us to love our neighbor and to persuade others, as individuals, to do likewise.
What is problematic is when politicians invoke sympathy and confuse compassion with public policy. With compassion comes responsibility. Without responsibility and a moral compass, chaos will reign supreme in our nation.
Christ’s commandment to love God and to love my neighbor as myself was not directed to Congress. It was not conditioned upon the enactment of a government program. It did not instruct me to determine how much someone else should contribute before deciding whether my obligation had been satisfied. It was personal.
That distinction has become increasingly blurred in our economic and political conversations. We frequently identify a genuine human need and move almost immediately to a public policy question: What should government do about it?
If I oppose a government program because I believe individuals, churches, families and voluntary organizations should care for those in need, another question immediately follows about what am I doing about the problem, if anything. It is difficult to argue that helping the poor is a personal responsibility while personally doing very little to help them.
Economic freedom increases our individual responsibility. Capitalism is extraordinarily effective at creating wealth, encouraging innovation, and allowing millions of people to make independent economic choices. But a free economic system cannot depend solely upon laws, contracts, and markets.
Responsible capitalism requires something government cannot manufacture: a moral compass.
- Government can punish fraud. It cannot create honesty.
- Government can enforce contracts. It cannot create trust.
- Government can prohibit certain forms of exploitation. It cannot create respect for human dignity.
- Government can collect taxes to assist people in need. It cannot make us love our neighbor.
All of the above responsibilities ultimately belong to human beings.
Adam Smith is frequently remembered for The Wealth of Nations and the idea that individual self-interest operating through markets can contribute to the prosperity of society. That is an extraordinarily important insight. But Smith also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments years before The Wealth of Nations. He understood human beings as more than economic calculators pursuing material gain.
We increasingly describe economic choices as though there are only two institutions available: Either the market or the government can solve the problem. But there has always been something between them, a balancing aspect of the equation, and that is a civil society. This third sphere performs functions neither markets nor government performs particularly well.
These distinctions are not arguments against government programs. Material needs are real, and sometimes only government possesses the scale necessary to address them reliably. But meeting a material need and loving another human being are not identical activities. A healthy society needs both.
Catholic social teaching provides a useful concept here: subsidiarity. In simplified terms, responsibility should be exercised at the most immediate capable level.
There is an interesting parallel — not an equivalence — with the structure of the United States Constitution. The federal government was given enumerated powers. The Tenth Amendment states that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.
Read more ICE: Foreign-born judges show us what they mean by ‘giving back to the community’
Those last four words deserve more attention. Not every responsibility that does not belong to Washington automatically belongs to state government. Some responsibilities belong to us, the people.
This does not resolve difficult constitutional questions about federal taxing and spending authority. That is a much better starting point than simply identifying a problem and immediately asking government to solve it.
There is another consequence worth considering. When assistance becomes increasingly detached from human relationships, the people on both sides can become abstractions and distractions from where the core responsibility belongs. One group becomes “taxpayers,” whereas another becomes “recipients.” The argument almost always ends up with one side believing that too much is being taken from them, and the other may begin to believe that too little is being given to them.
Political leaders can encourage both perceptions and resentment. But we should at least recognize the risk of designing systems in which the giver never encounters the recipient, and the recipient never encounters the giver.
To confuse the pulpit, as Talarico has done, with public policy is dangerous and often leads to misguided, misplaced, or absolutely ineffective programs, with harmful unintended consequences for all parties involved.
In the biblical example of the Good Samaritan, he did not petition Rome to establish a roadside assistance program. He used his own resources to aid a suffering person. He accepted personal inconvenience. Most importantly, he became a neighbor.
Government can require me to contribute to caring for my neighbor. Government cannot require me to become his neighbor. Without that human element, the unintended consequences of “feel good” legislation will be lost on all parties involved. In essence, no one benefits.
Those of us who believe that economic freedom produces better outcomes have an obligation that extends beyond defending markets. We must demonstrate that free people are capable of accepting responsibility.
If every social need ultimately becomes government’s responsibility because individuals, families, churches, businesses, and communities decline to accept theirs, government will inevitably grow to fill the vacuum. That leads to an uncomfortable proposition for defenders of economic freedom: The alternative to government compulsion is responsibility. If we want less compulsion, we must accept more responsibility. If we want freedom, we must demonstrate that freedom can coexist with compassion.
For Christians, the commandment was not to finance our neighbor as ourselves. It was to love our neighbor as ourselves. Government can collect taxes and perform all sorts of “government” functions, but government cannot be compassionate for me. It cannot be generous for me, and it cannot love my neighbor for me. That responsibility remains mine and mine alone.
A free society cannot legislate its way to virtue, and responsible capitalism cannot survive for long without it. Trying to solve pulpit problems with government solutions is a recipe for disaster.
Read more Trump, Venezuelan Oil, and National Security
Image via Pxhere.