What happens when you couple Tammany Hall with social justice? Tammany Hall was the Democrat Party’s political machine.
Tammany played a major role in controlling New York city and state politics by providing social justice to immigrants, most notably the Irish, from 1864 until 1933. Tammany Hall became a facilitator for immigrants, helping them become naturalized citizens.
During the Tweed regime, naturalization committees were established, made up of Tammany operatives. They did the paperwork, provided witnesses, and advanced the fees required for citizenship. Public officials were bribed or otherwise compelled to cooperate. In return, immigrants dutifully supported Tammany candidates.
As a “Mick” myself, it’s hard for me to get too upset with the state doling out money to deserving Irishmen -- like myself! I can easily see that what Tammany did for the Irish was sage politics. A lot of Irishmen, just off the boat, got a lot of help for the meager price of their vote.
So just how, does Tammany Hall corrupt something as noble as social justice?
Imagine that every year, for five years, as an act of Christian charity, you donate $10,000 to your church, but that in the sixth year, you make no donation. Your church, however, has become
dependent on your annual donation. Without it, it will be forced to cut important programs. Does your church have a right to sue you to force you to donate $10,000 in year six? If your annual donation is a “gift,” the answer is, “no.”
Social justice is the Catholic Church’s effort to extend the duty of Christian charity beyond the individual to the society. The state (society) should provide “the conditions that allow ... individuals to obtain what is their due.” Society should act so that “each should receive what he needs from others.” The state should “reduce ... economic inequalities” and eliminate ‘sinful inequalities.” But what exactly is their due? Their needs from others? Excessive economic inequality? “Sinful inequality?
The state’s primary tool to ensure that each receives what he needs from others is income redistribution via taxation. Taxation is also the primary tool to reduce excessive economic equality, and to “eliminate sinful inequality.”
But taxation involves taking money from the one who earned it, and giving it to one who didn’t earn it. And while taxing to provide what is truly needed or to eliminate excessive income inequality can be justified as social justice, taking one cent more is plunder.
There is a selflessness inherent in Christian charity which is soon lost in Social Justice. The state, unlike the individual, has no soul -- has no expectation of heavenly reward. Accordingly, the political parties rather than looking for eternal reward, look instead for something temporal -- votes. Votes may not be a formally bargained for “consideration” -- but votes, as in the case of Tammany, quickly become the anticipated quid pro quo.
Politics and greed sadly have a corrosive effect on social justice. Rerum Novarum never contemplated employers paying living wages to workers who opted not to work. Leo XIII’s encyclical does not deal with society’s duty to provide perpetual welfare benefits to the able-bodied who chose not to work. (I am not referring to the disabled).
What came to be known as a living wage required reciprocity; the worker had a co-relative duty to fully and faithfully perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon.
There are obvious problems with social justice income redistributions. If the state has a duty to make redistributions, the recipient seems to have a co-relative right to receive them. In time, that right comes to be understood as inalienable.
What is due or necessary, in time, always comes to mean more. What is excessive inequality, obtains a more expansive definition as the recipients increase in political power. And the worker is despoiled of the fruits of his labors.
Christian charity is an act of loving one’s neighbor. Today’s income redistribution aspect of social justice has little in common with love of neighbor. It has become the tool with which cynical politicians use other peoples’ money to buy votes.
Jack Kennedy told us, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, 50 years later, say, “Vote for me and your country will give you free everything.”
Posted March 22, 2016 QCOline.com
Copyright 2016 John Donald O'Shea
Social justice is the Catholic Church’s effort to extend the duty of Christian charity beyond the individual to the society. The state (society) should provide “the conditions that allow ... individuals to obtain what is their due.” Society should act so that “each should receive what he needs from others.” The state should “reduce ... economic inequalities” and eliminate ‘sinful inequalities.” But what exactly is their due? Their needs from others? Excessive economic inequality? “Sinful inequality?
The state’s primary tool to ensure that each receives what he needs from others is income redistribution via taxation. Taxation is also the primary tool to reduce excessive economic equality, and to “eliminate sinful inequality.”
But taxation involves taking money from the one who earned it, and giving it to one who didn’t earn it. And while taxing to provide what is truly needed or to eliminate excessive income inequality can be justified as social justice, taking one cent more is plunder.
There is a selflessness inherent in Christian charity which is soon lost in Social Justice. The state, unlike the individual, has no soul -- has no expectation of heavenly reward. Accordingly, the political parties rather than looking for eternal reward, look instead for something temporal -- votes. Votes may not be a formally bargained for “consideration” -- but votes, as in the case of Tammany, quickly become the anticipated quid pro quo.
Politics and greed sadly have a corrosive effect on social justice. Rerum Novarum never contemplated employers paying living wages to workers who opted not to work. Leo XIII’s encyclical does not deal with society’s duty to provide perpetual welfare benefits to the able-bodied who chose not to work. (I am not referring to the disabled).
What came to be known as a living wage required reciprocity; the worker had a co-relative duty to fully and faithfully perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon.
There are obvious problems with social justice income redistributions. If the state has a duty to make redistributions, the recipient seems to have a co-relative right to receive them. In time, that right comes to be understood as inalienable.
What is due or necessary, in time, always comes to mean more. What is excessive inequality, obtains a more expansive definition as the recipients increase in political power. And the worker is despoiled of the fruits of his labors.
Christian charity is an act of loving one’s neighbor. Today’s income redistribution aspect of social justice has little in common with love of neighbor. It has become the tool with which cynical politicians use other peoples’ money to buy votes.
Jack Kennedy told us, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, 50 years later, say, “Vote for me and your country will give you free everything.”
Posted March 22, 2016 QCOline.com
Copyright 2016 John Donald O'Shea
