There is a challenging editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal by Shelby Steele. In it he explores why, for minorities, liberalism frequently has had more appeal than conservatism. In essence, even with a clear record of one policy failure after another, (war on poverty, Great Society, aid to families with dependent children, etc.) liberalism’s appeal is based on the visible hand of government activism instead of the invisible hand of the free economy.
Steele, correctly it seems to me, argues “compassionate conservatism” and “faith-based initiatives” of the Bush years were mere marketers’ ploys and window dressing.
Mr. Steele writes four incredibly powerful sentences that unveil what it was about conservative principles, however, that originally attracted him.
“[Conservatism] neglected me in every way except as a human being who wanted freedom. Until my encounter with conservatism I had only known the racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other–two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior.
“The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society. And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism: human rather than racial dignity.”
But what is human dignity, really? According to the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, the magisterium of the Catholic Church “may be the only significant authority to have looked more deeply into the objective value of common human dignity.” (p. 520)
The Church offers three components of a definition. First, our common origins. Given our probable evolutionary origins, the Church points out we still need to contemplate the origins of the evolutionary process itself. The human body is located in the first cause, or Creator God. God is the author of humanity.
Next, the origins of the human soul cannot be explained by science. Immaterial spirit cannot arise from material origins. God is therefore also author of each human soul. So human beings are composite beings who are both physical and spiritual in nature. “We are the sole expression of all that exists.”
Finally, is our dignity based on our origins or on our ultimate destiny? On this crucial question, the Church has a great deal to say. Think about what attracted Steele to conservatism and this quote from Paul Conner’s Encyclopedia entry on human dignity.
“In brief, a human being exists to develop his or her personal and interpersonal capacities here and now so as to be able to relate forever in the fullest way possible to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This one-on-one friendship or communion between human and divine persons is our actual life-purpose or destiny that confers inestimable dignity upon every human being.”
In this sense, the paternalism of government activism is not wrong because its intentions are bad, but because it is literally beneath our human dignity.
