"Taking the jab is the Christian duty of loving your neighbor."
"Forgiving student loans is the Christian duty of forgiving debt."
"Raising taxes to provide for pregnant women, maternal care, and early childhood 'education' is a pro-life Christian duty."
What these bright policy ideas have in common is that they represent a turn away from personal responsibility and towards the state as an ideological entity capable of solving all ills, and they leverage faith in Christ to achieve it. Their proponents opportunistically use the good will of Christians to inflict serious harm on our already reeling polity.
Not coincidentally, each of these political notions masquerading as religious precepts promotes socialism, the doctrine that the state, and only the state, can administer to its citizens the actions it has deemed appropriate, and whom it regards as fair game for its ambitions.
I say "administer" because each requires a bureaucratic structure which will, once established, be impervious to recourse from the citizens it inflicts its designs upon. When the inevitable inequities arise from the very remedy sought, no normal political process, among the many we are the increasingly ungrateful inheritors of, will be effective in undoing the damage or removing those to whom power was imprudently given.
The state ought to insure freedom, in justice, for good people to act -- for the good. The state's role is to preserve the common good (those immaterial goods not owned by anyone nor attainable by any one person, but shared by all) and to defend the innocent from evil.
When a free people give the state permission to override bodily integrity, private property, and marital bonds, they will soon find that they are no longer free.
Perfectly stated.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more, Leila!
ReplyDeleteI remember, years ago, Rush Limbaugh discussing an article written by a Catholic (whose name I can’t recall) who was explaining that at some point the Church began to accept the welfare state as a substitute for charity. Fighting for the government to take care of the poor became your charitable duty—over and above taking care of the poor yourself. So—“Why should I give to that charity? I pay my taxes!”
ReplyDeleteFrom the moment I heard masks being proposed as a way to protect others (“I wear my mask for you, you wear yours for me” was the literal argument!!) I knew we were in trouble. The Christians that have been feeding on emotional highs for years are going to feel good about that and feel ashamed to argue with it!!
And all of this ties back to that actor’s assessment of TLM vs NO—one is selling you a used car (a feeling) and the other is the visible, audible, sensible Mystery revealed to anyone who desires to participate. One is a bad sales job. The other just IS.
Everyone wants a revolution but no one wants to do the dishes.
ReplyDeleteI constantly hear about how we should help victims of domestic violence... But then I show up at the shelter with barely enough volunteers for day to day operations. People find out I volunteer at a SANE clinic "oh wow I have always wanted to help victims in some way" but t they never show up.
They talk about privilege but never get their hands dirty, instead opting to pay someone else (government) to do the charity work for them.
I am surprised and confused to see student debt relief listed here, Leila. It seems incontestable that higher education is (for better or worse) necessary for gainful employment in most places and for most people, and that the cost of this education is extortionist (an increase of 169% in just 20 years, according to one source!), requiring young people to take out loans with equally extortionist rates of interest. Unfortunately, wages have not kept pace with either the cost of education or the cost of living, and an entire generation is now saddled with debt they took on in good faith but which they are now well and truly unable to pay off. The impact on the economy is clear. From a purely financial angle, student debt relief benefits everyone -- it is a tide that raises all ships. And from a religious angle, it wasn't the debtors Jesus chastised, but the moneylenders. I just can't see how supporting a practical measure with life-changing effects is "capitulation."
ReplyDeleteShould we then "forgive" mortgage debt contracted during housing market highs? Surely it is evil and un-Christian to let people lose their houses because speculators speculate, and a house is more essential than a college education. Indeed, why should anything essential cost any money at all.
DeleteAnd what about the people who made the sacrifices necessary to honor the conditions of their debt, because a contract is a contract and upholding the rule of law is more precious than sentimentality?
And what about those who understood the situation was untenable and started making a living without going to college? What should they think now, and how likely are they - or anyone else - to make more rational choices in the future, given how the government is choosing to distribute its rewards? There is also injury added to insult, in that these people's tax money will now be used to pay for the "forgiveness" of other people's college debt - while they themselves may earn a lot less than the forgiveness threshold.
And what about the long-term consequences of this act: does anyone believe it will not encourage colleges to hike their prices even more? It was guaranteed government loans in the first place that made colleges think they could get away with any price, imagine now that the government is "forgiving" debt.
What about other consequences we are blind to right now, while we bask in the generosity of the act? The War on Poverty helped the poor, but made them fall in the trap of perpetual government dependency and for a long time discouraged marriage. Who will be the other silent victims of the War on College Debt?
Leah, the reasons for college debt are myriad and not solved by government imposition on taxpayers. Remember that no one "forces" anyone to go to college! Nor is education exclusively identified with institutions whose practices are to some extent incentivized by government policies in the first place.
DeleteIt's a policy matter and should be rationally addressed -- this has to do with the virtue of justice.
My post is about manipulating the faithful by hiding policy matters behind blanket statements about charity. If Christians wish to be charitable, they ought to be free to choose how -- not direct others or participate in the state directing others to do so, in a way that will have unintended consequences (or perhaps not unintended, but unforeseen by those who naively support such decisions).
Anonymous:
DeleteWell, the government did bail out major lenders during the housing crisis. This was done on the understanding that these lenders were "too big to fail" without widespread economic collapse. Surely that same logic can be applied to an entire generation of individuals who, due to impoverishing debt, are unable to participate fully in society, cannot afford to marry or have children, and will likely be unable to take care of the older generation as a result?
As for the people who have managed to pay off their student loans, what possible motivation would they have for wanting to prevent loan forgiveness? This feels like the argument that unjust wars ought to continue in order to honor the sacrifices of those killed. An unjust war is still an unjust war, and an unjust social policy is still an unjust social policy. To use another example, my sister is a lawyer and spent a great deal of time and money preparing to take the LSAT. Now many law schools are planning to do away with the LSAT altogether. While she's understandably frustrated -- if only she'd waited a few more years to go to law school! -- she supports the measure. She doesn't believe that others should struggle just because she did, and for no other reason. That would be deeply unChristian.
As for colleges hiking their prices, I am actually a professor and can tell you that enrollment is dropping precipitously. Whether this will have an effect on the extortionist cost of higher education is unclear, but that cost is -- for better or worse -- truly unaffected by these sorts of social policies. (Believe me: I've sat in many a department meeting on the topic.)
I am also wary of slippery slope arguments, as it is hard to imagine how making young people less financially precarious would also make them more dependent on government intervention. My students and my peers all yearn for independence -- the ability to pay their bills, have families, and someday support their parents. Right now, I know very very few people for whom these goals are achievable, and the blame rests squarely on their student debt (and, more to the point, the usurious interest on that debt).
Leila:
DeleteThank you for your response! It's true that no one "forces" anyone to go to college. It's also true that no one "forces" anyone to benefit from another person's college education.
With that in mind, I suggest that those who oppose student loan forgiveness stop patronizing any medical professional, lawyer, accountant, businessperson, or skilled laborer. You should also stop going into buildings designed by architects and using transportation designed by engineers.
This would probably be very difficult to do, as these people are all integral to society, and we all benefit enormously from their labor. But that labor comes at a cost: the cost of an education. How is it just that the costs of that education (if they are unpayable) should be shouldered by an individual alone when the benefits of their educated labor are enjoyed by society as a whole?
Again, the causes of the high cost of education -- which in your context means actually a path to certification -- are myriad.
DeleteThey are not going to be solved by an across-the-board "forgiveness" (really transfer) of debt. In fact, they will be enabled and worsened.
Many of the categories you mention aren't the targeted ones for this measure. And part of the reason that professionals are paid more for their services than "highly skilled laborers" you mention is because the former need more formal education (the latter do not -- they need apprenticeship and are the ones who are going to be burdened by the policy).
Many of those who are in debt are not pursuing anything lucrative or useful to society. Your premise really is that every degree is worthwhile to others, and that is not really founded. I am very happy to forego whatever "benefit" it is that those getting degrees in LGBT or any of the other abundantly represented leftist studies are offering.
Additionally, higher education is now disproportionally populated by women. Debt incurred by women is indeed discovered to be a burden because the majority don't want to become full-time professionals, but they have been propagandized to pursue it. However, again, no one is forcing them to get into debt for a dubious dream. Why should I, a housewife who left college precisely to avoid more debt, pay for a housewife who incurred a lot? Even given that I consider housewifery to be of paramount value to society?
Keep in mind that
Ignore "keep in mind that" -- don't know where that came from!
DeleteDoing away with the LSAT is a poor example in this context: here we are talking about a debt contracted personally, which will now be placed on the shoulders of the community. Eliminating the LSAT does nothing of the sort, it doesn't transfer anyone's financial obligations on anyone else. That it could be impoverishing debt was known at the time it was contracted, it is not a surprise now - it was still agreed to, because there was the expectation that future income would take care of it. This was a prudential calculation, much like the one many small entrepreneurs make when they open a new venture, without expecting society to pay on their behalf if it doesn't go as expected. Yes, well-connected businesses will be "saved" by the government, but the whole of society pays a bitter price for the double standard, so I would not want to see it extended according to our own preferences. You have college debt in mind, how about small farmers who've been in deep trouble for a long time? Shall no one forgive their debt? Are they more expendable than college graduates? There is also more than one way to become a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, etc. - there are ways that are entirely respectable, and they don't come at the price of debilitating debt. The way a particular individual decides to pursue a career is a prudential decision of that individual, a choice he makes out of a rose of possibilities. This is what I am talking about when I speak of people who decided to accept the sacrifices necessary to make sure they would be able to repay their debt, like the sacrifice of accepting a less prestigious but more affordable school. It is very hard that the economy is not right now in condition to guarantee the income someone might have counted on, but the state of the economy is very bad for a lot more people than educated professionals. We can well agree that the college "market" is in need of desperate correction, hopefully it will happen soon enough.
ReplyDeleteOh, you misread -- I wasn't drawing a direct, absolute parallel between every facet of getting rid of the LSATs and forgiving student debt! Rather, I was using this example in a limited sense, to demonstrate how inaccurate (and unChristian) it is to argue that those who have paid their debts would or should be offended by student debt forgiveness.
DeleteYour example of small entrepreneurs, on the other hand, invites inevitable comparisons to the quarantine-era small business loans and debt relief which were passed with little objection and much fanfare. Indeed, many prominent Republican politicians and conservative figures took these loans. How can we justify debt relief for corporations and not for individuals?
As for small farmers, I agree that comprehensive agricultural reform is needed, but that isn't what we're talking about. It isn't as if taxpayers are being forced to choose between debt relief for small farmers and debt relief for students -- and unfortunately, the latter category so dwarfs the former in size that, thinking purely of net economic benefit, student debt relief would still make the most sense.
You say that there is more than one way to become a lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc. I would like to push back on that. Again, I work in higher education and have my entire career. I currently have an administrative post at a well-regarded institution and teach one class as an adjunct, but I was previously a full-time professor. My job now is to help students secure funding for their degrees. Believe me when I tell you that such funding is extremely limited and that securing it is extremely complicated, competitive, and time-consuming. The students who have the resources to pursue this funding are not those working part- (or full-) time while in school or who are first-generation and need to support their families -- in other words, the people who need it the most.
I also want to push back on your assertion that people ought to know what they are getting into when they take on debt. The market crash of 2008 profoundly transformed our economy in ways that could not be fully understand immediately. The same is true of the COVID epidemic. Between these two crises -- when many of those now in need of debt relief graduated -- the discrepancy between a young person's income and their expenses (housing, food, and yes, debt) skyrocketed. There has never, in all of American history, been such a massive divide between what young people are earning and what they owe -- and yet young people are still encouraged to go to college, and a degree is still necessary for the majority of jobs (and certainly not just those held by "educated professionals!"). Again, all people benefit from the labor of these young people -- and the purpose of government programs like student debt relief is to effect measures which benefit everyone.
I agree that far fewer young people should go to college, and that institutions should be held to account for their extortionist attitude toward education. But your talk of prudence and sacrifice does nothing to address the reality of an economic crisis. It's also very nice to say that people ought to pay off their debts, and in theory I agree, but in this fallen world, and in this fallen time, that is not the situation we find ourselves in. I leave it to God to decide whether these debtors abdicated their personal responsibility. For myself, I believe that God's design of marriage, child-rearing, and taking care of the elderly is best served by ensuring that it is possible for the younger generation to pursue it.
Dear Leah, I want to end this discussion quite amicably, especially because I think we agree on a lot of things. You are clearly caring and affected by the plight you witness - but do not paint me like an insensitive Scrooge, I have young people in my life too, I deal with these problems first-hand, I am not insulated from them. I merely wanted to point out that it is not possible to say that the transfer of student loan debt is a measure all Christians should get behind, and that through it the government is about to wreck more havoc, not less.
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