On the “Charity” of Collectivism

According to Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Libertas the freedom that really matters is that which allows us to follow the natural law. That is, that freedom which opens the path to doing good. Freedom is a means to an end and that end is virtue.

There is no virtue in doing good with property that you forcibly took from others and there is no virtue in being forced to give up your property for the benefit of others. Virtue requires freedom as its prerequisite: our society can only be virtuous if it chooses to act virtuously. The bigger the government, the harder that becomes and the harder that becomes the less reason that society will have to continue. Eliminate virtue and society will find that it has very little to live for: hedonism fills the void left by charity and that bloodless creed degrades into nihilism. And, once society believes nothing (or everything) that is the moment in which society must inevitably collapse. You may ask, but what about the poor? Eliminate virtue and its only a matter of time before everyone is poor. Our greatest weapon against poverty is Christian love, not government; let us remember that before it is too late.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over 100 Million Americans are on Welfare

“The sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal of equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation.” – Pope Leo XIII on socialism.

Over 100 Million Americans are on Welfare. That’s one-third of the population. In the wealthiest nation in the world. One out of every three Americans. Stop and think about that for a moment. This extends far beyond simply providing a safety net for the impoverished and unfortunate; the welfare state is, in fact, nothing more than government bribing Americans with their own money. But, with one American in three living off of hand-outs taken from the other two for how much longer do you think politicians will be able to hand out these “free” benefits before they drive the other two-thirds of Americans into poverty as well? After all, this data point alone should convince anyone that our nation is governed by socialist principles, and history, economics and the Catholic Church have made it very clear that collectivism can lead only to destruction.

the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from about 17 million in 2000 to 31.9 million when Barack Obama took office to 46.4 million today.

The federal government spent a staggering 71.8 billion dollars on the food stamp program in 2011.

The number of Americans on Medicaid grew from 34 million in 2000 to 54 million in 2011.

Medicaid was supposed to help the poorest of the poor get medical care and back in 1965 only about one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, about one-sixth of the entire country is on Medicaid. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls. But projections like that are usually way too low.

Entitlement spending alone constitutes nearly 50% of the federal budget. The next largest money pit is military spending as a result of our aggressive military adventurism abroad. Both need to be scaled back drastically – and soon.

Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.

That comes to approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

And that’s just Medicare alone. In the face of such demands the rich will soldier on – and government will probably help protect them – but the weak will be left in the cold, defenseless and unable to meet their “debt to society.”

Socialists condemn advocates of a free-market and reduced government spending as “greedy” but we as a nation are addicted to government money – which is to say that we are addicted to other people’s money. What’s more greedy than that? When we demand entitlements we say its because we’re entitled to food and housing and medical care – it is our “right.” What we’re really saying, however, is that we are entitled to the fruit of other people’s labor and we can use force to take it from them. Their “debt to society” is a debt to me. Productive Americans “owe” it to everybody else. With incentives like those soon there won’t be any producers left. You can work 16 hour days in a fishery up in Alaska or you can sit at home and receive a check in the mail from the government. Which would you choose? What happens when enough people choose the latter?

Government benevolence programs are illegitimate, an economic disaster and usurp the rightful role of the Church and private charity. There is a fundamental difference between living in a welfare state and having a safety net for the poor. The law cannot force people to be charitable – it can only forcibly take their belongings and give them to others. This only serves to pit Americans against Americans, to sow contempt where otherwise there would be none. We do have a safety net available to us that does not involve force of law or pitting neighbors against each other: its called charity. We are the most charitable nation in the world and we donate enough, not only to provide for our own poor, but to help countless around the world. By giving back to the American people what is theirs and restoring an anemic economy sucked dry by government “legalized plunder” private charity can only grow and, as a result, charity in the hearts of the American people can grow again as well.

With that, I will end this article as it began, with a quote from Pope Leo XIII:

“At the present day many there are who, like the heathen of old, seek to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity. They would substitute in its stead a system of relief organized by the State. But no human expedients will ever make up for the devotedness and self sacrifice of Christian charity. Charity, as a virtue, pertains to the Church.”

Pope Leo XIII on Capitalism and Socialism

In response to attacks against religious freedom the American Catholic bishops have risen in defense of the church. However, many of the bishops, and many Catholics, have come to accept along the road the basic socialist principles that it is the government’s role to feed, clothe, house and provide medical care to its citizens. Thus, much of the Catholic community talks about how Obamacare’s attacks on religious freedom are wrong, but there’s some really good things in there too! Much of this sentiment is a reaction to our unfortunate corporatist system (which, sadly, too many Catholics – like Paul Ryan – support as well) in which the rich and the government cooperate to take from the poor and benefit the wealthy. The problem, however, is that the only way the government can provide services to the have-nots, either directly or indirectly, is through coercion, plunder and the destruction of liberty. This view is not in defense of the rich; socialism is not wrong primarily because it takes from the rich but because, like corporatism, it brings down society at large and harms the underprivileged most of all.

In The Law, 19th century political economist Frederic Bastiat explains that, if the privileged classes use the government for “legalized plunder”, this will encourage the lower classes to revolt or use socialist “legalized plunder” and that the correct response to both the socialists and the corporatists is to cease all “legalized plunder”. Bastiat also explains that the law cannot defend life, liberty, and property if it promotes socialist policies. When used to obtain “legalized plunder” for any group, he says, the law is perverted and turned against the very thing it is supposed to defend.

While many Catholics embrace socialist principles thinking that “capitalism has failed” they fail to recognize what capitalism even is. I think that many of our bishops make the same mistake and its not scandalous to say so. After all, they are priests – not economists – and while we would do well to always respect their authority we must also recognize their limitations. Those are the areas, not for rebellion, but for discussion. “Capitalism” is a broad term that refers to any economic model based in the individual ownership of property, a non-capitalist economy in contrast finds its basis in collective (that is, government) ownership of property. “Capitalism” may refer to both “good” and “bad” economic models: there’s corporatism mentioned above which probably best describes the United States (it is also the worst form of capitalism, combining the worst aspects of capitalism with the worst aspects of collectivism) but there’s also a hundred other variations like the classical liberal economic model embraced by Bastiat and even Chesterton’s distributism is fundamentally capitalist even though some distributism beg to differ (in fact, I would argue that distributism is even more capitalist in nature than many other capitalist models like corporatism in that property rights are more jealously protected for everyone, whereas corporatism demands systematic government seizure of property from the non-privileged).

So, while we must defend capitalism for the sake of our rights, we need not defend our nation’s particular model of capitalism. This idea, however, that we must embrace capitalism and reject collectivist models like socialism (or corporatism which is a rather special case, combining both capitalist and collectivist aspects) is not purely secular, it is not amoral and it certainly is not immoral or in any way contrary to Catholicism. While the American bishops have suggested that capitalism may be at least in part contrary to Catholic social justice teaching, Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum, had the following to say on capitalism:

“Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.”

“Man’s needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body.”

“Private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature.”

“They assert that it is right for private persons to have the use of the soil and its various fruits, but that it is unjust for any one to possess outright either the land on which he has built or the estate which he has brought under cultivation. But those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced.”

“As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labor should belong to those who have bestowed their labor.”

“The laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquillity of human existence.”

“Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State.”

“Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity.”

“”It is lawful,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence.”"

And here’s what he had to say on socialism:

“the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. “

“The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.”

“The sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation.”

“Class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth.”

“At the present day many there are who, like the heathen of old, seek to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity. They would substitute in its stead a system of relief organized by the State. But no human expedients will ever make up for the devotedness and self sacrifice of Christian charity. Charity, as a virtue, pertains to the Church.”

Corporatism has failed. Every flavor of centrally planned government around the world has failed. Capitalism remains largely untried.

Short-Term Missions: Missionary Work or Religious Tourism?

According to an article in the Huffington Post the number of U.S. Christians taking part in trips of one year or less leaped from 540 in 1965 to an estimated more than 1.5 million annually, with an estimated $2 billion spent yearly, according to Dr. Robert Priest, a missiology professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

That doesn’t surprise me considering that Americans give more to charity and volunteer more service hours than anyone else in the world. We’re very generous and show a lot of concern for the less fortunate of other countries; good for us. However, before we pat ourselves on the back we need to ask ourselves a potentially painful question, painful because we probably will not like the answer: is it effective? Are we actually accomplishing anything and if so is it worth the cost?

Now, I don’t ask this to call into question the importance of charity itself; donating our time, our money and our talents so that others less fortunate may benefit is one of the most important things we can ever do – and that’s exactly why we must question our methods, because the issue of charity is too big for us to ever allow ourselves to be wasteful.

Joann Ven Engen, in an article published in Catapult Magazine, gives an example of a typical short-term mission trip:

Take this example. A group of eighteen students raised $25,000 to fly to Honduras for spring break. They painted an orphanage, cleaned the playground, and played with the children. Everyone had a great time, and the children loved the extra attention. One student commented: My trip to Honduras was such a blessing! It was amazing the way the staff cared for those children. I really grew as a Christian there.

The Honduran orphanage’s yearly budget is $45,000. That covers the staff’s salaries, building maintenance, and food and clothes for the children. One staff member there confided: the amount that group raised for their week here is more than half our working budget. We could have done so much with that money.

A simple cost-benefit analysis makes it clear: the cost of such a trip are very high at $25,000 while the benefits to the native people are almost non-existent. Meanwhile, that same $25,000 could have kept the orphanage operating for over six months representing an investment in a long-term endeavor that very clearly provides very important benefits. Now, perhaps the loudest and most common objection I hear to this argument is that what the students on the mission trip gain is “priceless.” After all, as one student testified the trip was a “blessing” and she really “grew as a Christian there”! I don’t deny that the students benefited and such a sentiment does not surprise me because, as a missionary friend of Van Engen put it, “Short-term missions benefit the people who come, not the people here.”

Van Engen continues,

Short-term mission groups almost always do work that could be done (and usually done better) by people of the country they visit. The spring break group spent their time and money painting and cleaning the orphanage in Honduras. That money could have paid two Honduran painters who desperately needed the work, with enough left over to hire four new teachers, build a new dormitory, and provide each child with new clothes.

Even medical brigades are difficult to justify. The millions of dollars spent to send physicians to third world countries could cover the salaries of thousands of underemployed doctors in those countries, doctors who need work and already understand the culture and language of the people they would serve.

Short-term groups are also unable to do effective evangelism, which is a main goal of many groups. Since most group members do not speak the language or understand the culture, their attempts are almost always limited. I know of one group that traveled all the way to Senegal to distribute copies of a video to people on the street, but could not hold even the most basic conversation with these people.

Mission trips, when not done right are at least usually benign but sometimes they can even be destructive. Looking at the examples Van Engen provides above its easy to see how such interventions, in which Americans swoop in thinking that they’re saving the day, stay for a week or two and then leave never to return, can mess with a region’s economy. Most of these impoverished regions suffer from low wages and unemployment and when Americans come in and do the native people’s work for them instead of investing in long-term relations, projects and capital, the problems of low pay and unemployment are aggravated.

Its imperative that we accept the reality that such “mission trips” aren’t about helping others but helping ourselves and that this kind of missionary work is no missionary work at all. Now, while I am saying that such mission trips do little to help others I am not saying that for students to go on such trips is selfish: we cannot help others until we help ourselves. These short-term mission trips provide a lot of awareness: students from the richest country in the world are removed from their bubble and see up front different cultures and living conditions, but at $2 billion per year shouldn’t we be trying for more than simply awareness?

There exists several legitimate missions alternatives that we can strive for which provide real benefits at reasonable costs:

#1 Long-term missionary work abroad. This is the traditional missionary work that comes to most people’s minds when they think of “missionaries” where missionaries live for years in one region, learning the culture, building relationships, establishing or building upon the necessary foundation for effective mission and providing real, long-term benefits. For anyone willing to stick it out for the long-haul long-term missionary work can have a profound positive impact.

#2 Continuing mission work locally. This is where mission starts and we are all universally called to serve in this way. While we can’t all spend a year volunteering in Africa, we are all capable of building relationships and investing our time and resources locally. There’s more than enough physical and spiritual poverty within our own country and communities to keep us busy.

#3 Providing the sacraments. Another argument I’ve heard in favor of short-term mission trips is that many of these regions are without a priest and in need of the sacraments. True; so, if the goal of the mission is to provide the services of a priest, instead of sending 20 students and one priest once per year at $25,000 a trip why not use that $25,000 to send a priest to the region once every month or two. Find a more economical way to meet the spiritual needs of a community; $25,000 to send a priest to central America for one week is just wasteful when you can do it for $2,000.

#4 educational missions (for the people on the mission trip, not the natives). Most short-term mission trips come closest to this category, in which the greatest benefit is awareness. If that is the goal of the mission then that needs to be made clear; emphasize that the goal of the trip is exposure, not to save the world and plan the trip accordingly. Don’t waste time on token projects like painting a wall; talk to mission partners and native residents: learn about the unique problems the region faces, its culture and its history. Follow-up with the mission participants upon return to the states.

In closing, Van Engen provides some good advice:

One good rule of thumb for short-term missions is to spend at least as much money supporting the projects you visit as you spend on your trip. Invest your money in people and organizations working on long-term solutions. If you are interested in evangelism, support nationals who want to share the gospel. If you are concerned about health issues, support programs that are seeking to address those problems. Better yet, find programs that minister to people holistically by meeting their spiritual, physical, social, emotional and economic needs.

Liberty: a Prerequisite to Virtue

“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

Government is essential for the good health of any society – however, as John Adams indicates above, standing alone it is a wholly insufficient institution to the establishment of a free and prosperous community. When the government of a given society forgets this fact, encroaching beyond its natural function then liberty, and, consequently, virtue, is put in imminent danger. This is what differentiates good government from bad government.

So, what is the appropriate role of government? And when does a “good” government exceed or neglect these functions and thus become “bad”?

The role of government is to protect liberty and here is why:

Classical liberalism, better known as libertarianism today, considers the protection and promotion of individual liberty as the sum of good government and the route to a free and prosperous society – and the classical liberals are correct. However, many libertarians and their critics forget one crucial aspect: that liberty, while good in itself, serves largely as a means and not an end in and of itself. Liberty is the means to virtue – and it is virtue that we want to ultimately protect and promote within a society, but that only comes through the protection and promotion of liberty.

Often, we see government attempt to “promote” virtue within a society through the implementation of such benevolence programs as minimum wage laws, unemployment benefits, FEMA and more.  Instead, and in addition to doing a poor job at something free market could do better, these types of programs essentially rob people of the opportunity to be virtuous. Virtue only comes through the free volition of the individual. When a man or woman is coerced by their government to pay taxes to provide benefits to the unemployed or to pay a “just wage” to government union workers above market price then that man or woman is not practicing virtue in any form and is only lessened as an omnipotent government takes their money so that a faceless bureaucracy can hand it out to someone whom they have never even met. The economy of virtue is reduced to a zero sum game.

Thus, liberty (that is, the freedom to exercise free will and choose freely) is the bedrock upon which virtue must stand. Certainly, some people will choose not to share their good fortune in the absence of government coercion. However, this is the price of promoting a right and just society. If we are to enable people to freely choose to be good brothers and sisters to their fellow man then we must also allow them to make the free choice to not be their brother’s keeper.

Instead of lowering the entire citizenry to the level of the most vile scrooge government should serve to raise the bar for society, creating conditions favorable to practicing virtue. Entitlement programs do the opposite by inhibiting and de-incentivising virtue, not just for the recipient, but for the taxpayer as well by depriving him of opportunities to serve his fellow man freely.

Ultimately, virtue is a social experience requiring the cooperation of three distinct sources: the first is God, from whom stems the grace that makes human greatness possible, the next is government, whose role it is to promote and protect liberty, and, finally, is the person in question who, when given the graces that make virtue possible and the liberty that enables it , is responsible for the volition that produces the final product of virtue. Habitual virtue leads to the development of traits like courage, faith, mercy and others, and it is this personal growth that, when added to the actions of all the other members of the community contribute to the growth of society as a whole.

Many people have accused the study of economics as being an unjustly cold and calculating science. As if other sciences like chemistry or physics were not cold and calculating in their explanations of reality. However, the value of sciences, including economics, come from their contribution to society of how the world that we live in works. Thus, economics does not have to be cold and calculating when it informs social justice teaching because economics is a means to the end of social justice.

As Thomas Storck put it, “Economic activity is meant to serve the more important aspects of life, our spiritual, family, social, intellectual and cultural lives.”

Reducing government primarily to the role of protector of the governed and their liberty will surely leave a void but it would be a void that government was never meant to fill in the first place. Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum that would inevitably be created by the elimination of, for example, our current vast federal benevolence programs would be filled by private charities, religious organizations and, most notably, the Catholic Church – after all, aiding the less fortunate is Her rightful jurisdiction. One of the greatest steps that can be taken in favor of the economy of virtue is for government to stop marginalizing religious institutions and relinquish its ill-fortuned wards to the rightful heir: the Church.

The Economy of Virtue

“All the gold which is under or upon the earth

is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.”

 - Plato

I abhor entitlement programs. From welfare, housing programs and minimum wage to Medicare and Medicaid, they all must go. I don’t say this because I despise the less fortunate or minorities or because I don’t believe that every person has a moral obligation to help those in need. I say this because, no matter how good the intentions might be, these government interventions meant to redistribute wealth and establish economic equality have grave, unintended consequences that specifically harm minorities and the poor.

However, in addition to robbing taxpayers only to set up the less fortunate for failure such government programs rob you of, not just dollars, but occasions of virtue. What do I mean by that? Well, contrary to the assertion that we need government-mandated universal healthcare or welfare in order to meet our moral obligations I believe that such programs in fact rob us of our very ability to meet said obligations. Charity, mercy, compassion, these are virtues and for a person to practice virtue requires an act of free will. The height of virtue is when a man or woman chooses to be virtuous fully of their own volition, without prompting, even at their own expense.

Contrast this with welfare in which you, as an American taxpayer, are forced to pay substantial taxes or face severe penalties, essentially robbed, so that the government can take from you, who are presumably well enough off to do without, and give your money to the designated poor. You are coerced to practice virtue. Except its not virtue because you had no choice; you were a static source of income that faceless government bureaucracies utilized in order to subsidize faceless masses that you’ve never met.

How sterile. Sure, some people will not aid the poor unless coerced but that is the danger of virtue. If you can choose to practice virtue then you can choose to refrain from practicing virtue. But instead of letting us make our own choices, allowing those of us who readily recognize and embrace our moral obligations to our brothers and sisters in Christ to “produce” virtue, the government eliminates vast opportunities for virtue by robbing us of any choice in the use of our finite incomes, instead effectively lowering us all to the level of the petty scrooge who does not freely share his wealth. Production of virtue is stunted and consumption swells. Virtue is rationed. The soul of America suffers.

Legislating the corporal works of mercy ensures that society will be less inclined to perform them. After all, why should I leave the comfort of my home to feed the poor when food stamps do that? I pay my taxes and my taxes pay for welfare; the entire “work” part is done for me! As a nursing student about to graduate I’m lucky to be part of a profession so conducive to performing corporal works of mercy but as a whole our society faces a severe drought when it comes to exercising social justice with, not just solidarity, but subsidarity.

While virtue will always be with us, as will the poor, is it the government’s place to limit the opportunities for virtue? Is that a cost worth paying in order to redistribute wealth (even if it did work)? This only serves to bring society down, to stifle generosity and create a juvenile sense of entitlement among the citizenry. If our government is to truly fulfill its role of promoting the common good then it must allow for the conditions necessary to create an environment that encourages the practice of virtue among its citizens – not rob them of personal responsibility and mandate virtue, as if such a thing were even possible.

March for Life 2012

 I will be taking a brief hiatus in writing on Democrazy as I will be heading down to Washington, DC today for the annual March for Life. For those of my readers who may not be aware, every year the March for Life takes place in Washington, DC on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in protest to the Supreme Court ruling that mandated legalization of abortion in all 50 states. Last year there were an estimated 400,000 protestors present at the march. The sheer volume of that number boggles my mind; however for a visual you can watch this hour and a half video of the march condensed into a one minute time lapse.

Blessed John Paul II said the following in addressing America on defending the weak. In its original context I believe he was speaking specifically on abortion but I think it speaks to all acts in violation of the culture of life, whether it be attacks on the weak in the Middle East or third world countries, abortion, capital punishment, or the inhumane treatment of prisoners:

“America you are beautiful . . . and blessed . . . . The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most defenseless. If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life.”

The most dire, however, is abortion. Since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 over 52,000,000 abortions have occurred in the United States alone making America the greatest purveyor of violence, not just abroad as Martin Luther King Jr. boldly pointed out, but domestically as well (to say nothing of the increases in domestic violence and rape in that same time period). In order to combat the open disregard for the lives of the weak by our own government requires a far more comprehensive movement than merely convincing a majority of the 535 federal legislators to vote in our favor, restoration of the soul of America requires a cultural movement that begins with each individual at home and how we live and treat others in our personal lives. Blessed John Paul II recognized this in his encyclical, Evangelium vitae, when he stated:

We need to begin with the renewal of a culture of life within Christian communities themselves. Too often it happens that believers, even those who take an active part in the life of the Church, end up by separating their Christian faith from its ethical requirements concerning life, and thus fall into moral subjectivism and certain objectionable ways of acting. With great openness and courage, we need to question how widespread is the culture of life today among individual Christians, families, groups and communities in our Dioceses. With equal clarity and determination we must identify the steps we are called to take in order to serve life in all its truth. At the same time, we need to promote a serious and in-depth exchange about basic issues of human life with everyone, including non-believers, in intellectual circles, in the various professional spheres and at the level of people’s everyday life.

I ask that those who will not be present at the March for Life to take the time tomorrow to please be present in the spirit of prayer as we continue towards nurturing a true culture in support of all life here in the United States.

The War on Drugs and Catholic Charity

The War on Drugs is a tricky issue. On the one hand, drug abuse is dangerous and wrong just as murder or assault is wrong and therefore it makes sense for our government to intervene. However, some people such as Congressman Ron Paul and the late economist Milton Friedman argue that the War on Drugs does far more damage than good and therefore must be repealed and drugs legalized. As a senior nursing student I am well aware of the adverse health effects of drug abuse and have witnessed their effects first-hand in some of my patients. However, I also believe that Ron Paul and Milton Friedman make a strong case in favor of legalization so I would like to present their argument and how, as I Catholic, I think this dire issue can be resolved.

First, its important to establish that the War on Drugs, like any government intervention, has unintended consequences. Since drug prohibition is likened to a war I would first like to compare it to Catholic just war doctrine to ensure that this really is a just war. The principle of proportionality states, “The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms.” Therefore, if the harm created is disproportionate to the sum of harm prevention and good brought about than the war is unjust. Sure enough Milton Friedman does argue that, indeed, the unintended consequences of the War on Drugs far outweigh any good that it may have done. I’m being somewhat facetious of course; just war doctrine doesn’t really apply to drug prohibition but my point is illustrated.

Friedman argues that drug prohibition is hardly any different than the prohibition of alcohol that was repealed in 1933. Alcohol was readily available during prohibition and bootlegging was common – just as illicit drugs are readily available today. Worse, however, prohibition of alcohol fueled organized crime leading to Al Capone and the mafia and an era of hijacking and gang wars – ultimately, prohibition was a bad deal that lead to more harm than good.

Criminalization of drugs has had the same effects today. Interdiction essentially drives people from mild drugs to strong drugs. The reason being that mild drugs like Marijuana are bulky, difficult to smuggle and easy to interdict. More potent drugs, however, are less bulky, easier to smuggle and thus more profitable (and, additionally, far more dangerous). Marijuana was made more expensive which creates an economic drive to make more potent marijuana and a drive to market more potent drugs like heroin or cocaine. In fact, Friedman argues, crack never would have existed except for drug prohibition which made cocaine more expensive thus necessitating a more potent version.

Friedman continues by offering his expertise in economics by predicting that legalization of drugs would result in half the number of prisons, half the number of prisoners, 10,000 fewer homicides annually, inner cities in which there’s a chance for poor people to live without fear for their lives, the assurance of quality of drugs (illicit drug use kills less than 1,000 people a year – compared to 40,000/year from alcohol – but with higher quality drugs that number may drop even lower), and no criminalization of otherwise respectable citizens. Also note that the 10,000 fewer homicides Friedman mentions is within US borders. Legalizing drugs in the states would bring drug cartels in Mexico to their knees, a huge blow to the Mexican drug wars, drastically reducing violence outside US borders as well. Also not mentioned, legalization of drugs would drastically reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.

So, lets take a closer look at some of Friedman’s claims. Most arrests are of possession by casual users (often marijuana) – these people are imprisoned where they are exposed to inmates convicted of violent crimes and these people who were, prior to imprisonment, respectable citizens come out and are much more likely to become violent criminals themselves. According to Friedman, criminalization of drugs helps drug cartels by making the business excessively costly. Only massive drug cartels have the capital to run an effective business model. In turn this leads to drug wars between cartels – competing illicit businesses each fitted with essentially their own private armies. As with any war, there is collateral damage and it is in no way uncommon that the neighbor kid minding his own business down the street gets shot. Additionally, by keeping goods out and arresting local growers authorities keep costs high in the favor of the drug cartels – what more could a monopolist want?

The only possible negative feature to drug legalization that Friedman notes, is that there might be additional drug addicts. However, despite the prohibition, more than 40 percent of Americans over age 12 have tried marijuana and were subsequently willing to say so on a survey – so its hard to argue that the War on Drugs is even reducing drug use now. Additionally, Friedman points out, a drug addict is not an innocent victim – it is immoral, he argues, to inflict hefty costs on society – costs in lives in addition to capital – in order to protect people from their own choices. This is not an economic problem but a moral problem – the economics is only tertiary. Its about the harm that the government is doing by enabling drug cartels, causing an additional 10,000 homicides a year and making criminals out of otherwise respectable citizens. Fundamentally, the case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong as the case for legislating overeating – except that overeating causes more deaths per year than all drugs combined. Ron Paul had this to say on the War on Drugs:

On the issue of drugs, we have spent nearly five hundred billion dollars on the War on Drugs, since the 1970s. Total failure. Some day, we have to admit it. Today, we have the federal government going into states that have legal medical marijuana, arresting people–undermining state laws–arresting people who use marijuana when they’re dying with cancer and AIDS, and it’s done with, as a compassionate conservative. And it doesn’t work.

What it does, it removes the ability to states to do their things, and also introduces the idea that it’s the federal government that will get to decide whether we get to take vitamins, and alternative medical care, or whatever. Most of our history, believe it or not, had no drug laws. Prohibition has been an absolute failure for alcohol. Drug addiction is a medical problem. It’s not a problem of the law.

However, while legalizing drugs would save lives, reduce the cost of our justice system and law enforcement agency, and create an additional estimated 75 billion dollars in government revenue there is one issue that Milton Friedman does not address, although I think Ron Paul hints at it. As Catholics we have an obligation to promote the common good within our society which means that, while drug abusers are not innocent victims, we have a responsibility to reduce drug abuse and help those who abuse drugs. Drug abuse is a disease and can be debilitating and even deadly. So, how can we avoid the terrible consequences of the War on Drugs and actually help those suffering from addiction? Instead of inflicting draconian punishments on drug users we can save money and lives AND help people overcome addiction by instead offering these people community support and medical intervention (according to one report, jail sentences do nothing to help addicts while treatment is the most effect way to reduce drug use). The War on Drugs has proved to be a direct obstacle to people getting help and this needs to change. By removing harsh prison sentences and redirecting the additional revenue from drug legalization to rehabilitation and prevention of the disease of addiction we can promote the common good without having to sacrifice thousands of lives and billions of dollars to do so.

Daniel Wolfe, director of OSI’s International Harm Reduction Development Program stated that “the global war on drugs has devolved into a war on individual drug users and their communities. While the drug trade continues to thrive, families across the globe are being torn apart by HIV, draconian prison sentences, and wholesale police abuses.” The War on Drugs does not care about public health issues, its job is not to promote the common good. The job of the War on Drugs is to wage war on individuals, arbitrarily selecting them from other criminals. We as Catholics are not called, however, to wage war against our fellow man. We’re called to promote the common good for all our brothers and sisters in Christ to benefit and that means that, in the context of drug use and abuse, we help these people seek treatment, not accelerate their journey down the path of ruin and vice.