Indispensable Economics Professor Kmiec: Round Two

Jan 16, 2009

As many readers have no doubt read, law professor Douglas Kmiec, who is Catholic and has pro-life credentials, has taken offense at some criticisms leveled at his pro-Obama stance. If you read his comments, he makes it appear that he has been attacked only by immature, name-calling, right-wing Catholic nuts. Of course, others, like myself on these pages, criticized him on reasonable grounds, he has yet to respond to.

 

Why did Professor Kmiec bring up only the vitriolic criticisms, and not the rational ones? There are, I think, two reasons. First, as a law professor, he is first and foremost a lawyer. Lawyers are trained in debate and one of the ways one can successfully debate is to draw people’s thoughts away from the issue at hand, especially if your arguments on that issue are weak. By not addressing my criticism of his support of Obama, which, as I wrote, placed the “social gospel,” a phrase which the Church never uses, above specific moral evil, he is reversing the role of the Church, turning it from primarily a herald of the right order into a welfare agency. This is aside from the fact that, as a law professor and not an economist, his idea that the Obama administration can do things to help the poor is questionable at best.

 

But the second, and perhaps the most disturbing, fact here is not merely that he was supporting a pro-abortion politician, but that he supported a flaming statist! There was more than one issue in this campaign. And although the life issues are the most important by far, the others are not insignificant. The fact that no one ever brought out that the whole Obama message was that government is the solver of everyone’s problems is very disturbing. It backs up the fact that for generations the Church authorities have been teaching the faithful to see the government at the sole source of the common good (see my article “The Common Good as an Excuse to Reject Human Dignity”), and have ignored the findings of economists in the Public Choice school, if in fact they ever heard of it. We have been moving, with the help of countless Catholics, bishops and priests included, toward an economic fascism, with its concomitant destruction of personal, moral responsibility for economic problems. I have written elsewhere that long-time Catholic support of the Democratic Party has led Catholics into the dilemma of supporting a socialist party which has become anti-life. Well, make your choices! The one goes with the other.