tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4992542558446504317.post5989260816274973977..comments2020-07-31T08:27:59.130-07:00Comments on Skrignov's Corner: A Quick Word on Herman Cain, Other Republicans, and Picking Political Candidates to SupportSkrignovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17628791954692813183noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4992542558446504317.post-21035587860471642062011-10-17T15:07:46.314-07:002011-10-17T15:07:46.314-07:00Ananke, where do you get the time to post/reply? (...Ananke, where do you get the time to post/reply? (So asks the man who is supposed to be working on his paper, which is suppose to parse through the religious and non-religious factors surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict; oh yeah, the paper’s due tonight.) <br /><br />Good point about the poor and economics. Even as I was hastily writing the first draft, I realized how much the considerations I proposed overlapped. However, I think I meant something more specific when I referred to the “economic policies” of candidates. Here I mean the overall financial plan, i.e. Will the plan be better for the country as a whole, economically speaking? This is separate from the preferential option, which asks a much more specific question: Will the plan be better for those in financial hardship? <br /><br />As Catholics, although we need to consider (and probably agree with) the overall economic policies of the candidate, we should be initially concerned with how those policies will affect the poor.<br /><br />I agree with most of your more vehement points. And although it annoys me when a Mendham elite voices these thoughts, it discourages me a heck of a lot more when a good, practicing Catholic does. I can even see the eye-rolling now. I dare to sound Marxist or overly sociological when I say that this has to do with us being raised in an upper-middle class Catholic America. <br /><br />By the way, now that I’ve mentioned Mendham, let me make a point about their politics. Mendham parents (and you learn this through what they teach their kids consciously or through osmosis) are basically concerned with their own money. One of their biggest, if not biggest, concern is how the candidates’ proposed policies will affect their own personal monies. This is their bottom line in politics. <br /><br />Although this makes sense in a Hobbesian, Darwinian political world, I operate with a belief that the deepest impulses of man are relational – and so my thought need always be with my neighbor, especially if he needs help more than I do.Jonashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01907857891682323709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4992542558446504317.post-86178729426864336042011-10-17T13:35:16.531-07:002011-10-17T13:35:16.531-07:00Wonderful, politics!
Two thoughts stemming from ...Wonderful, politics! <br /><br />Two thoughts stemming from the post, the first leads to the second (and then right back around).<br /><br />First. Poverty IS an economic issue by definition. It doesn't make sense to discuss care for the poor as something separate from general economic policy. The two are necessarily connected—even more than connected. “Preferential treatment of the poor” is, in moral language, a way of saying, “particular economic policies”. I will admit that the upholding of human dignity is not an solely economic issue (Mother Teresa). Where the concern isn't about bringing people out of poverty but loving them, or in my case helping them to achieve some amount of justice. However, what a politician is able to do for the poor, a president especially, is about 5% that, and 95% economic. One also wonders what better treatment of the poor would do if the economic policy of the country is not only stifling but downright hostile towards the impoverished.<br /><br />Second. I liked you line about the general Republican nonchalance towards the poor; the resigned “the poor will always be with us” attitude. I think the current political climate is much worse than that. We have moved from convenient (or misguided) resignation to the inevitability of the the poor, to a downright willingness to lash em together to form a makeshift lifeboat. The willingness, from the Republican camp to intentionally gut, tax, and all around rape and pillage the vulnerable as an economic policy is startling, to say the least. One has to start wondering, even if maintaining/reducing taxes on the wealthy, etc, etc is a sound economic policy, whether the cost to the vulnerable alone disqualifies it. Which I now see as a possible valid reason for separating the two concerns in your post...Monastic Panichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17746312340359549943noreply@blogger.com