A cogent (and quite damning) response to Rush Limbaugh

I've been waiting for someone to counter Rush Limbaugh's rather shallow proclamation on his show last Wednesday concerning things Pope Francis was alleged to have said in his recently released Apostolic Exhortation:

I gotta be very careful.  I have been numerous times to the Vatican.  It wouldn't exist without tons of money.  But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him.  This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.  Unfettered capitalism?  That doesn't exist anywhere.  Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States.

I wait no longer.

Scott Eric Alt has stepped up to the plate and knocked one out of the park:

What Mr. Lim­baugh had to say was long, so I’m going to be iso­lat­ing the key parts of it and giv­ing my own run­ning response. But as you will see, it’s sad; because he makes it very clear that he does not grasp Catholic social teach­ing, nor (appar­ently) had he read the pope’s words in their orig­i­nal con­text, or at all. At the bot­tom of the tran­script, he cites a sin­gle arti­cle fromThe Wash­ing­ton Post. So this was all very thor­ough show prep on Mr. Limbaugh’s part.

Here’s how it began:

You know, the pope, Pope Francis—this is astounding—has issued an offi­cial papal procla­ma­tion, and it’s sad. It’s actu­ally unbe­liev­able. The pope has writ­ten, in part, about the utter evils of capitalism.

Stop the quote!

Actu­ally, if you turn to the pas­sage in ques­tion—Evan­gelii Gaudium 54—the Holy Father does not use the word “cap­i­tal­ism” once. Here is what he does say:

…some peo­ple con­tinue to defend trickle-down the­o­ries which assume that eco­nomic growth, encour­aged by a free mar­ket, will inevitably suc­ceed in bring­ing about greater jus­tice and inclu­sive­ness in the world.

So Fran­cis is talk­ing about trickle-down specif­i­cally, not cap­i­tal­ism more broadly under­stood. Before I am accused of split­ting hairs here, it is worth point­ing out that trickle-down is a rel­a­tively recent sub­set of cap­i­tal­ist the­ory, dat­ing to the 1980s. It is entirely about tax breaks for busi­nesses and the rich, the the­ory being that the econ­omy will improve and thus ben­e­fit the poor.  Dr. Thomas Sow­ell, in a pub­li­ca­tion for the Hoover Insti­tute (here), says that higher taxes on the wealthy reduces the profit motive, and thereby impede the flow of money in a pri­vate enter­prise econ­omy. That is to say, trickle-down is not itself cap­i­tal­ism, but instead a polit­i­cal the­ory about the ben­e­fit of tax cuts, within the con­text of an econ­omy that is already capitalist.

To return to Mr. Limbaugh:

Up until this, I have to tell you, I was admir­ing the man. I thought he was going a lit­tle over­board with the common-man touch, and I thought there might have been a lit­tle bit of PRinvolved there. But nev­er­the­less I was will­ing to cut him some slack.

Stop the quote!

Really, folks, I won­der whether Mr. Lim­baugh under­stands what a pope is. First of all, the “common-man touch” is not PR but per­son­al­ity. More importantly—and the rea­son I point this out—the pope is not a politi­cian. He is the spir­i­tual leader of Catholics. But so much of what is said about Fran­cis is an attempt to inter­pret his words within the polit­i­cal con­text of lib­eral vs. con­ser­v­a­tive. That is not the con­text in which they should be under­stood. Catholi­cism tran­scends polit­i­cal debates, and you will not under­stand it until you forgo the habit of talk­ing about it politically.

If it weren’t for cap­i­tal­ism, I don’t know where the Catholic Church would be.

Stop the quote!

Folks, the his­tor­i­cal igno­rance in this remark is stun­ning. Cap­i­tal­ism has been around for only ten, maybe fif­teen, per­cent the length of time the Catholic Church has. The word cap­i­tal­ismwas not coined, even, until the mid-nineteenth cen­tury, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary. The Catholic Church has been around, by con­trast, for two thou­sand years; and as I recall, it flour­ished quite well under feudalism.

I gotta be very care­ful. I have been numer­ous times to the Vat­i­can. It wouldn’t exist with­out tons of money.

Stop the quote!

Where does this idea come from, that the money with which to build grand places can only exist in a cap­i­tal­ist econ­omy? Where does this idea come from, that with­out a cap­i­tal­ist econ­omy all the money will dry up and peo­ple will be bar­ter­ing in cows or something?

This is just pure Marx­ism com­ing out of the mouth of the pope. Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism? That doesn’t exist any­where. Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism is a lib­eral social­ist phrase to describe the United States.

Stop the quote!

Yes, and “unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism” is not a phrase that is used any­where in Evan­gelii Gaudium. “Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism” is a para­phrase of the Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, which was the only thing on this sub­ject that Mr. Lim­baugh seems to have both­ered to read.

There is much, much more and I encourage folks to read the whole thing and then do the right thing by passing it along.

I'd like to think Mr. Limbaugh, should he see this, will read, inwardly digest then respond with integrity.

I'd like to.  

There was something else that Mr. Limbaugh said that day that makes me think, perhaps utopianly, that he will:

Now, as I mentioned before, I'm not Catholic.  I admire it profoundly, and I've been tempted a number of times to delve deeper into it. 

Delve deeper indeed Mr. Limbaugh.  Delve much deeper.

Comments

[GatesofVienna]

Rick -

Rush is often guilty of shallow thinking and speaking, which is okay, I guess. One can't be an expert on everything and still run a daily show. But still...still...one wishes he'd stick to things about which he doesn't need to be shallow. And to use the Washington Past as his his source. Oh my. Surely experience tells him that isn't wise.

I haven't been up to being able to go to The Acton Institute website, but I'll bet if you go there you'll find a post or two on the latest message. I know so little that I can't even say if it's an encyclical.

The Acton Institute is well-grounded. I don't agree with all the positions it takes, but it is firmly committed to free market enterprise. Its work in pushing back against the communist liberation theology in South America is worthy of praise. Fundamental education re the rule of law, the absolute necessity for private property in being able to found a true middle class - the whole Northern European ideas of contract law, etc.

If you've the time and health to visit it, you'll be well rewarded. It's where I first found Bastiat. Now there is a thoroughly Catholic economic philosopher that Pope Frances should be reading and quoting.

[Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest]

Listen, I like Rush and have been a fan... to the chagrin of many.

But my recent and most passionate embrace of my Catholic roots trumps my dittohead status (and in fact, has tempered it over time).

I honestly do hope that he'll take the time to go deeper. I believe he'll love what he finds.

I really do.

[Tim Chesterton]

The key quote for me:

'Catholi­cism tran­scends polit­i­cal debates, and you will not under­stand it until you forgo the habit of talk­ing about it politically.'

What he says about Catholicism is, I believe, true of Christianity in general. Real Christianity does not line up 100% with the ideology of any political party, and the attempt to make it do so will only distort it.

[mkfreeberg]

Here's what I get when I go straight to the source. Actually, it's Vatican Press' PDF translated into English, by someone who may have gotten it wrong, since I got it off the Post's website.

But then, if you go to Rush's post, he allows for this in a subtitle "(Unless it's a deliberate mistranslation by leftists)."

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

It looks like Rush got it more or less right here. Where am I going wrong with that?

In fact, to evaluate the Pope's words most charitably, I have to consider maybe the problem is that he isn't writing about the United States. That would excuse passages like "Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting." They're not waiting here. Our poor people are fat. Statements like these make much more sense when viewed in a global context. There still is famine in other countries.

(And a lot of malnutrition stateside, but generally not from anyone having too long without a meal, or from the affluent being indifferent to the poor.)

Can't find a way to charitably interpret the following: "[Trickle-down] which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system." That was just a silly thing to say.

We're applying a pretty fair test to so-called "trickle-down" when we try to reject it, are we not? We make a bunch of rules to ensure that no one has too much loot, and what happens. We get more poor people. Do I need to list examples? Such failed experiments result in "facts," and the facts provide support for the thinking that economic freedom has a lot to do with fighting poverty. That, and this connection does not rely in any way on "the goodness of those wielding economic power."

Speaking just for myself, when I support capitalism, that summation has very little to do with what motivates me. Goodness of those in power has nothing to do with it. We're all sons of Adam, aren't we? Why are we trying to find angels among us when we know we won't find them? To me it's just simple logic: First step to fighting poverty, is to make it okay for people to enrich themselves. Argue that point if you want to, but that's my basis, and it isn't only mine. Pope Francis, according to his own words, has made a mistake in understanding the motives of the opposition. He's arguing like a lib.

I get how there's a linguistic difference between "trickle-down" and "capitalism." But I don't see how it matters. I've gone back to the source, as much as I can, and my finding is that it is Pope Francis who is more guilty of failing to look into things. Now if he wants to start chastising people to evaluate the results of their efforts, their ObamaCare legislation, their voting en masse for one political party, if he wants to scold people for seeing a Detroit debacle right in front of their noses and entirely ignoring the lessons that arise from that, I'll back him 110% there. But that isn't what he said.

[Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest]

Morgan,

Don't know if you've seen this over at National Review but I think it speaks, in part certainly, to your concerns.

And I think you're heading in the right direction when you acknowledge the Pope is the head of all Catholics, not just American Catholics, and that this Exhortation is speaking to the global community, not targeting America.

Any ideology lacking the moral boundaries provided by a vibrant Christian faith is an ideology that leads to inequality, economic or otherwise.

This I believe is what the Pope is getting at.

And for that, he is being villified by people I would normally consider to be partners in the struggle for good, for decency, for what is right.

It's troubling for me. Most troubling.