Comments on: Freedom as a Political Good http://the-american-catholic.com/2008/12/18/freedom-as-a-political-good/ Politics and Culture from a Catholic perspective. Tue, 22 May 2012 13:14:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Donald R. McClarey http://the-american-catholic.com/2008/12/18/freedom-as-a-political-good/#comment-10786 Donald R. McClarey Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:13:57 +0000 http://the-american-catholic.com/?p=2999#comment-10786 State power should always be used sparingly. As Washington noted: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." Government should stop us from wrongfully harming others, one of many reasons why I believe government should ban abortion. Government can and should impose time and place standards of decorum: no parading nude down a public street. In the area of marriage, since the expansion of state power prevents it from being solely a matter for religions, the state perforce must make rules as to how marriages are made, who may marry, and how marriages may be dissolved and what happens afterward. One difficulty we are now experiencing is that the expansion of the role of government over the past 100 years has made it hard to limit government involvement in a plethora of areas which used to be dealt with by other means. For example, the whole area of divorce. Government decrees "easy" divorce. People take advantage of this and a whole host of new problems: child support, visitation, abuse by "step" parents, etc, are created which government must also act to "solve". To what I am sure would be a total lack of surprise to the Founding Fathers, the government "solutions" tend to work poorly, are enormously expensive to administer, and undermine self reliance. At incredible cost we have developed a nanny state, but unfortunately we do not appear to have Mary Poppins running the show, but rather one of Homer Simpson's sisters-in-law from the DMV. State power should always be used sparingly. As Washington noted: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Government should stop us from wrongfully harming others, one of many reasons why I believe government should ban abortion. Government can and should impose time and place standards of decorum: no parading nude down a public street. In the area of marriage, since the expansion of state power prevents it from being solely a matter for religions, the state perforce must make rules as to how marriages are made, who may marry, and how marriages may be dissolved and what happens afterward.

One difficulty we are now experiencing is that the expansion of the role of government over the past 100 years has made it hard to limit government involvement in a plethora of areas which used to be dealt with by other means. For example, the whole area of divorce. Government decrees “easy” divorce. People take advantage of this and a whole host of new problems: child support, visitation, abuse by “step” parents, etc, are created which government must also act to “solve”. To what I am sure would be a total lack of surprise to the Founding Fathers, the government “solutions” tend to work poorly, are enormously expensive to administer, and undermine self reliance. At incredible cost we have developed a nanny state, but unfortunately we do not appear to have Mary Poppins running the show, but rather one of Homer Simpson’s sisters-in-law from the DMV.

]]> By: jonathanjones02 http://the-american-catholic.com/2008/12/18/freedom-as-a-political-good/#comment-10785 jonathanjones02 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:41:17 +0000 http://the-american-catholic.com/?p=2999#comment-10785 The issue about the state restriction of freedom, which Walter Berns advocates for very eloquently and I am sympathetic to, is a rather tricky one. Certainly we should not value freedom as the highest good, but to what extent to trust the state? Given the constant morass of sinful humanity, might it be better to have, for example, something like free speech absolutism where we can argue and shout and make fools of ourselves, and hopefully convince? We have something like this on the Internet, and I think it works well enough (child abuse is the only thing not instant accessible and not tolerated. Everything else is a go....often for the worse, but not without the good. The issue about the state restriction of freedom, which Walter Berns advocates for very eloquently and I am sympathetic to, is a rather tricky one. Certainly we should not value freedom as the highest good, but to what extent to trust the state? Given the constant morass of sinful humanity, might it be better to have, for example, something like free speech absolutism where we can argue and shout and make fools of ourselves, and hopefully convince? We have something like this on the Internet, and I think it works well enough (child abuse is the only thing not instant accessible and not tolerated. Everything else is a go….often for the worse, but not without the good.

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