Pages

Friday, April 13, 2012

Paul Ryan's Latest Nonsense

Maureen Fiedler: "Then he tried to make a moral case for his budget, saying the government is not responsible for lifting its citizens out of poverty -- rather, that it's the obligation of the citizens themselves.
But who or what is the government, if not the collective action of citizens? When it comes to economic policy, governments are often indispensible vehicles of social justice because they can touch everyone in society. They are one way -- an important way -- that citizens can act to lift people out of poverty."

MSW: "First of all, subsidiarity is not “really federalism.” Federalism is about establishing diverse loci of power, so as to check any one of those loci from being able to perpetrate tyranny. Subsidiarity is rooted in Catholic personalism, the idea that solutions to human problems are best crafted closest to the human person. But, as I have noted before, subsidiarity is a two-way street. While it insists that solutions be crafted at the lowest level of social organization possible, first the family, then the community, then the State, it also insists that when the lower levels of social organization manifestly fail to achieve the basic necessities of human life, such as health care, the higher levels of social organization must step in to guarantee them." 

Steve Thorngate: "In what universe does cutting Pell Grants constitute replacing a culture of dependency with an effort to lift people out of poverty?"

No comments: