The conservative Republican-controlled House of Representatives is preparing to tackle government spending, including social programs such as Social Security. Liberals are up in arms. President Barack Obama warned Americans ominously that social security checks would stop coming if Republicans have their way. The rhetoric is melodramatic and masks an even deeper issue that has been overlooked by both liberals and conservatives.
The debt is not just unsustainable, but disastrous. The time to act is now. While some may see that disaster in terms of dollar signs, they miss another dangerous consequence—massive state spending and monopolization of power that leads to bankruptcy and collapse. That collapse is not just relegated to the issue of economic structure, but to the concept of human individuality, self-autonomy and love.
What does love have to do with the financial crisis, social security reform and the devolution of power from the federal government back to the people and the states to which it was originally vested?
The nation was founded on the premise that human rights are derived from God and not the state; the role of the state is to protect God-given human rights which are an embodiment of love for all citizens. Where freedom and self-autonomy flourish, love among citizens also flourishes.
God is pure love and the source of love. It was His love of creation through which the world was created. It was His love for us—and the love of His son—that enabled mankind to be saved. It was God’s love that enabled mankind the freewill to exercise reason, faith, and love for others. Indeed, there is no greater action arising from human freedom than an act of love. Love–a deep and genuine affection and respect for another –can be manifested in an infinite number of ways. Family, embraces, protection, and charity, are just a few of those ways. Love is the greatest extension of and act associated with freedom because love cannot be forced. Love of others is completely voluntary.
We are frequently told that when calls are made for limiting funding to state-sponsored social welfare program, those making the calls are heartless and that there is an absence of compassion and love. It is claimed that only the state can love justly and craft the perfect society. Acts of charity are unnecessary and unneeded.
But where the state is omnipotent, human love is vanquished, not cherished and grown. Individuals are simply part of the faceless conglomeration known as “the poor” that must be catered to, rather than tended to. Instead of a local food shelter and nightly meals prepared by caring volunteers, the State offers a check.
Pope Benedict XVI, writing in Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), explains that “Love… will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the state so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such.” The all-powerful state does not see neighbors as neighbors, but rather as mere categories to be dispensed with. “There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help,” Pope Benedict writes. “There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable.”
The objective reader will argue, the state does care. After all, it provides massive funding for the poor. But Pope Benedict cautions, “The state which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person needs: namely, loving personal concern.” The poor are not just the poor—they are not individuals who have fallen upon personal suffering which no monthly check can compensate for. Yet where the state handles all acts normally associated with love –replacing a helping hand through a social program–individuals lose their self-autonomy and individuality. And those, whose funds make such a program possible, lose their ability to commit an act of love through personal choice. Their human freedom is stripped away by the state, making their freedom a dutiful obligation–and not an act of human love.
“We do not need a state which regulates and controls everything, but a state which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need,” the pope elaborates. For example, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan—who oversaw the greatest peacetime economic recovery in human history—the federal government divested itself of power and undue responsibilities. Free will and the entrepreneurial spirit flourished, and charitable giving grew at a rate of 55 percent ¬faster than it had over the preceding 25 years. Charity is an act of love. People, not government, can better care for other people.
Without the presence of an omnipotent state, what is the ultimate course of action? Religious organizations as forces are an option, as Pope Benedict notes. “The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the spirit of Christ,” he writes. “This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support.” Acts of kindness, compassion, and charity can only be manifested through human voluntarism, through human love.
The assumption that acts of love can only be properly ordered by the state—and that individual acts of love are unneeded –is also incorrect. “In the end,” the Pope explains, “the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; c.f. Dt. 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.”
The claims by progenitors of the state that stripping the state of its all-encompassing responsibilities is to strip away love, is a claim that is itself nonsensical. It is also a claim that denies the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States of America. Quite simply, a less intrusive state, as our Founding Fathers stated, allows for better, more loving and compassionate citizens.
-Joe Vigliotti is a writer and essayist residing in Maryland. His Website is: www.jvigliotti.com
