ConNiPtioNs

Late-night TV...

I was flipping through the channels at two o'clock this morning and came across Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on EWTN.

The show was from 1956 and he was speaking about economic systems. He started by defining the two extremes of monopolistic capitalism and authoritarian communism. Being at the height of US anti-communism, I thought that this would be a rant about the evils of communism and praise for capitalism. Instead, Sheen explained that every person is entitled to property enough to live and care for his family, anything beyond that he owes to the poor.

It was a very interesting lecture.

Our right-wing conservative Christian Republican friends today believe that each person should amass as much wealth and property as possible and that the poor are poor because they are lazy. Not only do they think that they don't owe anything personally to the poor they also think that society owes nothing to the poor. These people like having a big strong military and it takes tax money to support the military, yet they are outraged that a tiny fraction of the amout of the tax money spent on bombs and tanks is spent to feed poor children.