Principled Perspectives: April 2025

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Pope Francis, the Anti-Capitalist Marxist, is Dead—Good Riddance

Pope Francis, the arch enemy of property rights and individualism*, and thus Capitalism, freedom, and prosperity, is dead. I’m tempted to say good riddance, except that the Vatican will likely appoint another Marxian Communist. Why? Because Francis merely reiterated the Catholic Church’s long-held teachings.

But why would the Church hold to its hostility to a social system that has established the conditions for people to work their way out from poverty? Can Francis really be ignorant of the available facts, empirical evidence, basic economics, or philosophical underpinnings of Capitalism, or of the disastrous history of Capitalism’s antipode in practice, collectivism?

I think not. The Catholic Church, as an institution, has a vested interest in poverty. When the Church ruled for centuries, what we now call the Dark and Middle Ages, poverty reigned, by design. It is only with the arrival of modern capitalism that general living standards exploded. Over the past 250 years, the Church had a front row seat to observe the rising prosperity, backed up by mountains of literature explaining the theoretical and empirical economic causes of the prosperity. How can any Pope deny these facts? Can the learned leader of an institution that has been around for 2000 years and has seen it all really be so ignorant of the reality of free market economics and the bloody record of collectivism? No. So why Francis’ trade against Capitalism? Easy. “The poor” is the Catholic Church's base. Poverty and Church power are linked.

More fundamentally, poverty and Church morals are linked. If handouts to the poor trumps property rights, then the unearned trumps the earned. If poverty is the standard of morality, where does a social system that diminishes poverty based on individual self-determination leave the Catholic Church? Obsolete. The Church doesn’t care about people who work their way up from poverty. They only care about moving the wealth from those who do to those who don’t. The standard of Catholic moral teaching is self-sacrificial giving. If the ranks of those in need are shrinking, who’s left to give to? Who’s left to be the “champion” of? Poverty, not prosperity, is the Church’s moral standard. Given Capitalism’s record in practice, where does that leave the centuries of Church moral teaching about giving to the poor?

Francis is the latest in a line of anti-Capitalist Catholic Popes. His demotion of property rights is not new. When Francis says “the right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods (Fratelli Tutti),” he is reiterating Pope Paul VI in his 1967 Encyclical Populorum Progressio who advanced the totalitarian principle that the “public authorities” must coercively ensure that “created goods should flow fairly to all,” emphasizing that “All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle.” Francis is clear that this is not just moral teachings, but must be legally enforced:

The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant. [my emphasis]

The record of these principles is a record of grinding economic collapse, crushing tyranny, and rivers of blood. How could any champion of the poor subscribe to them? Because the Pope does not want to “help” the “underprivileged people.” He wants to preserve their misery and expand their ranks**. Poverty is virtue, and the most virtuous act one can perform is to take a vow of poverty. That’s why the Church hates capitalism. That’s why Pope after Pope condemns Capitalism. We can explain how Capitalism works until we’re blue in the face. It doesn’t matter to the Church, and never has. Why? Because it’s not whether Capitalism works or how it works. The problem is that it works--works to facilitate man’s escape from poverty.

And they’re smart. No, Francis doesn’t attack Capitalism directly. He just attacks “unfettered Capitalism.” He just attacks Capitalism’s Heart and Soul. He attacks capitalism at its root--profit-seeking, property rights, free trade, individualism, and the ethics of rational self-interest.

Francis is not ignorant. He’s a Marxist (“the principle of the universal destination of created goods,” or, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”) and a communist (“[W]e need to think of ourselves more and more as a single family dwelling in a common home.”) and an altruist (“[I]f one person lacks what is necessary to live with dignity, it is because another person is detaining it.”). Francis knows exactly what he is saying. And he means it. Francis and the Church are not misguided souls. They are Capitalism’s—and thus the poor’s—arch enemies as much as Communism is. This fact must be explicitly acknowledged by Capitalism’s champions.

* [“Individualism does not make us more free, more equal, more fraternal. The mere sum of individual interests is not capable of generating a better world for the whole human family. Nor can it save us from the many ills that are now increasingly globalized. Radical individualism is a virus that is extremely difficult to eliminate, for it is clever. It makes us believe that everything consists in giving free rein to our own ambitions, as if by pursuing ever greater ambitions and creating safety nets we would somehow be serving the common good.”—FRATELLI TUTTI, P. 105. Note Francis’s disdain for “safety nets” as any kind of solution. Clearly, he’s not satisfied with mixed economy welfare statism. What’s the alternative? Full blown totalitarian socialism.]

** [C. Brad Thompson concurs: “Christian empathy and guilt are also wrapped in a curious paradox: if alleviating poverty and suffering are the goals of Christian ethics and if capitalism (the system based on self-interest) is the economic system that makes that possible, what then is left of the Christian ethic if the ethic of self-interest and capitalism eliminates poverty and much suffering? There would then be no need for the Jesus’s moral teaching. It would seem then that Jesus’s moral teaching is thus stuck between a moral rock and a political hard place. Capitalism reduces poverty and thus reduces the need for the Christian ethic, while socialism increases poverty and thus incentivizes and fulfills the Christian teaching.”

Friday, April 4, 2025

Trump’s Trade War Begins: Disaster to follow

My Facebook comments:

Trump has declared world trade war, disrupting business plans, abrigating contracts, upending consumer budgets, rendering $billions of productive investment useless, hammering Americans’ retirement portfolios, and killing jobs. It’s much worse than expected, which was already bad. For the first time, an American Administration is deliberately trying to engineer a global recession—or worse. And it’s based on discredited poverty-inducing 17th Century economics. It’s pre-Adam Smith. It’s primitive. And it’s also based on unimaginable paranoia. What does it even mean when Trump says “other countries have been ripping us off” and other such nonsense? Countries don’t trade. Private individuals do. When a foreign company exports its product to the U.S. to offer for sale, and an American decides to buy it, both sides win. Trade is WIN-WIN. Who's getting “ripped off?” Nobody.

Economically, Trump’s collectivist premise that this will “make America wealthy again” really means make the government wealthier. The money raised by the tariffs—which will be much less than Trump dreams—will not enrich the average American. It will be sucked out of American consumers to enrich the government. Somebody’s getting ripped off, alright—American consumers, American businesses that depend on global trade, and foreign companies that supply the goods that enrich Americans’ lives. Trump cares about America, in the same sense as a big government Progressive—but he doesn’t care about Americans.

Trump’s trade war is not only economically destructive. It is immoral. It violates the inalienable individual rights of Americans to freely trade with other people. Economic freedom is fundamental to Americanism. Trump is trampling all over the American Dream.

Too many Americans have been flipping out over a few Federal workers losing their jobs and some spending being cut. But this is penny-ante stuff—and in principle positive. The real danger is in Trump’s trade war. I hope Congressional Republicans get a backbone, join with Democrats—as 4 rational Republicans just did on Canada tariffs—and outlaw Trump’s whole tariff scheme, and curb the presidential power to impose tariffs willy-nilly by executive order—a power no president should have. No, it’s not the end of the world—not yet. Perhaps the hope that this is all a negotiating ploy, and things will ultimately work out, is still alive. But we’re in dangerous territory. Make no mistake. Trump has led our country into taking the first step down a road that ends in World War III. Congress must stop Trump on this issue. That would really be Putting AMERICANS First.

At this posting, the stock market is experiencing a massive coronary.

But there is one potential silver lining developing. Trump’s unconstitutional power grab may be jolting Congress into growing a spine. The Washington Post reported . . .

A bipartisan bill that would give Congress final approval on tariffs imposed by a president was introduced Thursday by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). The bill seems to have little chance of passage but underscores the unease among some Republicans with Trump’s tariffs plan, which sent shock waves through financial markets and rattled business owners around the world on Thursday.

I’m not holding my breath. Maybe enough Republicans will join all Democrats in stripping Trump, and the presidency, of it usurped power to impose tariff taxes, which Constitutionally belongs to Congress. Unfortunately, too many Republicans are blind Trump backers, Democrats have their own protectionist problems. But “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”