Lux Lucet

Leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden thinks Americans have an “obligation” to foot the medical bills of illegal aliens.  Now where did he get that idea?  AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta 

“I think that anyone who is in a situation where they’re in need of health care, regardless of whether they are documented or undocumented, we have an obligation to see that they are cared for.”

    – Joe Biden, 2020 Presidential Candidate

It seems like only yesterday that Antifa thugs were smashing windows in Washington D.C. to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration, and here we are talking about the 2020 presidential campaign. My, how time flies. And here I am, a year and a half before the November 3, 2020 vote talking presidential politics.

Not that I mind terribly much. As readers of this space know, I’m a bit of a political junkie. Always have been. In fact, politics is one of the ways the Lord led me to faith in Christ. That probably sounds a bit odd, so let me explain.

Growing up, I would read various politicians and political commentators, some from the left, some from the right. And each side seemed to make a very powerful case to further seemingly very different political programs. For example, I’d read an article about how the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson were failing badly. A liberal would look at the situation say, “This just goes to prove that we have spent enough money and have given enough authority to the administrators of the anti-poverty programs. If we could just increase the budgetary outlays and pass more laws, we’d be able to eliminate poverty.”

On the other hand, a conservative or libertarian minded person would look at the same situation and say, “The obvious failure of the Great Society is simply proof that we never should have started these programs in the first place. Not only do Johnson’s Great Society programs not reduce poverty, studies show that they actually increase poverty by subsidizing destructive behavior.”

As logic tells us, both these positions can’t be right. It’s possible that they’re both wrong. But one cannot be right without the other being found in error.

“So,” I’d ask myself, “how do I know which, if either of these positions, is right?” It was the drive to get an answer to this question that was, in part, responsible for leading me to faith in Christ.

I had some inchoate inklings that the conservative/libertarian arguments were the better of the two. For example, in an old copy of the Bible I’d received when I was in Middle School I wrote a note in the margin of Matthew 20 next to the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard I that reads, “A case for capitalism.”

The key line in that parable is the comment the vineyard owner makes to the grumbling workers. When they come to him to complain about their wages, his response to them was, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?” The obvious implied answer, “yes,” shuts down the complaints of the workers. The vineyard owners response is among other things, a defense of the institution of private property.

But while that note I wrote many years ago was correct, it wasn’t until much later than I came to a more mature understanding of how firmly rooted both capitalism and its political counterpart, limited government, are in Scripture. That more mature understanding came through my exposure to the work or Gordon Clark and John Robbins, whose writings are central to the mission of this blog.

At any rate, these long-running questions that I had – “Who was right, the socialists or the capitalists?” and “How do I know?” – were definitively answered only by an appeal to Scripture. Because of this, I see no great separation between Christian doctrine and politics and economics. Indeed, the philosophical sub-disciplines of economics and politics really should be viewed as sub-disciplines of theology. Just as we know Christian doctrines such as Justification by Belief Alone through revelation in the 66 Books of the Bible alone, so too do we know that limited constitutional government and capitalism – what John Robbins called constitutional capitalism in his 1999 book Ecclesiastical Megalomania – are God’s systems of civil government and economics respectively.

The Bible does not leave us to guess as to what system of government and economics are best, but rather tells us explicitly. And if constitutional capitalism is God’s prescriptive will for the ordering of human affairs, then any system that opposes it is an ungodly error. Further, those who advocate for political and economic arrangements contrary to the Bible’s instruction on these subjects are themselves sinning against God in their doing so.

This brings us to the specific subject of today’s post, the socialism of leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Free Healthcare for Illegal Aliens

Earlier this week, Breitbart ran a hard-to-ignore headline that read “Joe Biden Claims U.S. ‘Obligation’ to Give Illegal Aliens Free Health Care.”

As the piece goes on to quote Biden’s own words,

“I think that anyone who is in a situation where they’re in need of health care, regardless of whether they are documented or undocumented, we have an obligation to see that they are cared for,” Biden said. “That’s why I think we need more clinics around the country.”

The former vice president added that we need to “tone down the rhetoric” against illegals and that worries over illegal immigration are meant to “create fear and concern” about “that other, the immigrant.”

Now Biden didn’t quite get around to saying who the “we” are who find themselves under the “obligation” to provide health care to illegal immigrants. That said, the most reasonable conclusion, since he made his remarks as a presidential candidate, is that by “we” he meant the American people.

If I’m right about this, and I’m pretty sure I am, this is an outrageous call for theft for the federal government to steal the resources of the American people and give them to those who are illegal in the country, those who are not even citizens of this nation.

And Joe Biden is billed as a moderate? “Vote for me and I’ll steal you money and give it to foreigners who have violated our immigration laws.” Stripped of its veneer of altruistic morality, that’s exactly what Biden is saying. This is far for the vineyard owner’s rhetorical question “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?” In Joe Biden’s world, the answer is, “No, it is not lawful for your to do what you wish with you own things. It is actually quite selfish of you to think that, for you have an obligation to provide for the needs of illegal aliens. In light of this, I promise to take of your things and give them to the illegals, whether you wish that to happen or not.”

The proper name for Biden’s policy prescription is theft, which is prohibited in the Eighth Commandment.

If all this weren’t bad enough, the Breitbart article goes on to quote a speech by Biden from 2014, in which he showed himself wholly incapable of making the basic distinction between American citizens and non-citizens.

You know, the 11 million people living in the shadows, I believe they’re already American citizens. Teddy Roosevelt said it better, he said Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed or a line of dissent. It’s a question of principles, idealism, and character.

These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to be able to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already American [emphasis mine].

This is what the Democrats are today: confused, socialistic and treasonous.

But while it’s important to point out the foolishness of Biden’s political rhetoric, this alone is not the whole story. It’s important also to ask and answer the question of where it is he gets his ideas.

Joe Biden and Pope Francis.  Biden publicly defended the Pope’s socialist economics by rebuking Ken Langone, the Roman Catholic founder of Home Depot, who took issue with Francis’ open calls for more governmental interference in the economy.  It would seem that Langone is more Protestant in his thinking than perhaps he realizes.  Photo:  Osservatore Romano/Reuters

Joe Biden and Catholic Social Teaching

As this 2014 article in Buzzfeed reported, Joe Biden went out of his way to defend the very socialist Pope Francis from attack by Ken Langone, the Roman Catholic founder of Home Depot.  Langone had criticized the Pope for his socialism by saying that the pontiff’s criticism of capitalism and capitalists would hurt the church’s fundraising efforts. 

Given Biden’s clearly expressed admiration of Roman Catholic Social Teaching, his rebuke of Langone should come as no surprise. In a 2007 interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Biden explicitly stated where he gets he political ideas, “My views are totally consistent with Catholic social doctrine.”

Much has been written in this space on the Social Teaching of the Roman Church-State – Click here to view them – and it is not my intention here today to go over the topic again in detail.

Rather, I would like to focus on the key point that Biden brought up in the quote from the Breitbart article. Said Biden, “I think that anyone who is in a situation where they’re in need of health care, regardless of whether they are documented or undocumented [n.b. documented and undocumented are politically correct terms for legal and illegal aliens] we have an obligation to see that they are cared for” [emphasis mine].

In particular, I would like to draw your attention to the two keys words highlighted in the quote above, “need” and “obligation.” The unbiblical idea that need somehow creates a corresponding obligation on the part of others to give up their property is known as altruism. And the altruism of Joe Biden is drawn from the Thomistic doctrine of Roman Church-State (RCS) of which he is a member. The name of that doctrine is the universal destination of goods UDG.

According to official pronouncements by many representatives of the RCS, the needy have a moral claim on the property of those who have surplus goods. For example, in a 2017 speech San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy remarked, “This stance of the church’s teaching [Rome’s open advocacy of socialist policies] flows from teaching of the Book of Genesis, that creation is the gift of God to all of humanity. Thus in the most fundamental way, there is a universal destination for all the material goods that exist in this world. Wealth is a common heritage, not at its core a right of lineage or of acquisition.”

AP News quoted Pope Francis saying much the same thing in November 2018, when he commented, “while the wealthy few feast on what, injustice, belongs to all. Injustice is the perverse root of poverty.”

The Biblical answer to the altruism of Bishop McElroy, Pope Francis and Joe Biden is that God did not give the Earth to all men collectively, he gave it to individual men individually. The original economic order or the world was not, as the Pope, Bishop McElroy and Joe Biden think, communism, but rather capitalism. The Bible’s defense of private ownership of the means of production runs from Genesis – Where did Cain get his farmland or Abel his pastures for grazing? From Adam, who, as John Seldon remarked, gave them to his children “by donation and assignation, or some kind of cession” – through the Law of Moses – “Thou shalt not steal” – through the condemnation of Ahab for stealing Naboth’s vineyard – “Have you murdered and also taken possession?” asked Elijah of the wicked king – and through the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard – “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?”

It cannot be emphasized too much that the Roman Catholic view of private property – that it is a matter of man-made legal convention rather than a right from God – is radically at odds, not just with the teaching of Scripture, but with the common view of private property held by most Americans throughout the nation’s history.

Strangers No Longer

Worth noting is that Biden’s remarks about “needs” of illegal aliens and the American’s “obligation” to meet those needs can be found in an official 2003 document issued jointly by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and their counterparts in Mexico. The title of that document is Strangers No Longer (SNL). In this document, which I have written about extensively, the bishops write openly about the obligation of nations to support migrants. As with Biden, the bishops are less than honest about who actually has the obligation, but it is clear from the context that they mean the specifically that the citizens of the United States of America have a moral obligation to financially support migrants from Mexico and other nations.

Here are a two quotes from SNL,

• “Nevertheless, he [Pope John XXIII] stressed the obligation of sovereign states to promote the universal good where possible, including an obligation to accommodate migration flows. For more powerful nations, a stronger obligation exists.” (30)
  
• The Church recognizes the right of sovereign nations to control their territories but rejects such control when it is exerted merely for the purpose of acquiring additional wealth. More powerful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows.” (30)
  

When Biden speaks of American’s obligation to pay the medical bills of non-citizens, even those who are in the country illegally, he is not speaking from his own resources. Biden is not an original thinker. Rather, he is echoing the Social Teaching he imbibed as a member of the RCS.

Put another way, he is treasonously elevating the unbiblical doctrine of the Antichrist popes over the Constitution of the United States.

The Catholic Question

If Biden wins the Democratic nomination in 2020 – as of the time of this admittedly early writing, he is by far the leading candidate – he will become the fourth Roman Catholic to lead a major party ticket.

When in 1928 the Democrats nominated Al Smith as first Roman Catholic presidential candidate, many expressed concern that his Catholicism would undermine his ability to carry out his constitutional duties as president. In a well-known 1927 open letter published the Atlantic, Protestant Charles C. Marshall raised a number of important questions about Smith’s fitness for office. Marshall expressed the concerns of many Americans when he wondered if Smith’s Catholicism was, “irreconcilable with that Constitution which as President you must support and defend, and with the principles of civil and religious liberty on which American institutions are based.”

In his response to Marshall, also published in the Atlantic, Smith insisted that Marshall’s implication that there was a conflict between his Catholic faith and his loyalty to the United States not true.

The second Roman Catholic presidential nominee, John F. Kennedy, ran into these same questions when 33 years later he conducted his ultimately successful bid for the presidency in 1960.

When one reads about Kennedy’s 1960 run for office, it’s common for current day writers to dismiss the public’s uneasiness with his Catholicism as “anti-catholic prejudice,” much in the same way that Smith dismissed the concerns of the public in 1927.

But the concerns people had about Smith and Kennedy were not a matter of mere anti-catholic prejudice, but real, substantial, and sound forebodings about what a Roman Catholic would do once put in the highest office in the land.

The Social Teaching of the Roman Church-State is very clearly at odds with the American system of constitutional capitalism, and yet this is the system of thought that Roman Catholics are obligated to profess and work to implement in their official duties as elected officials.

Many Roman Catholics, embarrassed as they are by certain teaches of their church, attempt to deny this obligation by stating that the popes of Rome speak authoritatively only on matters of faith, and that when it comes to politics and economics, they are free to do as they please. This is nonsense. As John Robbins noted,

The popes have expressed their hatred, not only for Protestantism (a hatred perhaps muted recently, not by a change of mind, but by the relativism of the Church-State influenced by a postmodern culture), but also for the political and economic expression Christianity: capitalism. In the pages that follow, the reader will find scores of such statements from the Magisterium of the Roman Church-State. They are part of a system of thought that is one of the most impressive systems yet devised by men. They are not disjointed statements, but the logical conclusions of premises accepted in Roman theology. They are offered to the world by the Roman Magisterium as part of a package deal, and we are not at liberty, as some American Catholics would prefer to do, to accept the Church-State’s theology and reject its economic and political philosophy. That flies in the face, not only of the claims of the Church-State itself, but of reason as well (Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 24).

Closing Thoughts

In 2019, there is no higher value, no greater good, than tolerance. The most astounding absurdities must be accepted – the notion that a man can become a woman, for example – on pain of being ostracized from polite society.

In such an atmosphere, it is impossible for anyone who opposes a Roman Catholic candidate on the basis of his Roman Catholicism to get a hearing in any mainstream publication. No article such as the one written by Charles C. Marshall would ever find its way into a 2019 issue of the Atlantic or any other major journal of opinion.

In our own era, the only people whose motives are ever questioned are those, who, in the past, dared to question the compatibility of Roman Catholic Social Teaching and Roman Catholic presidential candidates who espoused such teaching with our republican institutions. Although they are dismissed today as bigots, very clearly theirs were not idle concerns.

For proof of this, we need look no further than Joe Biden’s presidential bid. Here we have a candidate, who not only has openly avowed Roman Catholic Social teaching, but also has shown that he means business by his rhetoric, in which, echoing the Catholic bishops writing in SNL, believes that the American people have an “obligation” to pay the doctor bills of illegal aliens.

When Biden speaks this way, he is simply playing the part of ventriloquist dummy for the bishops and popes of Rome, whose economics and politics are unbiblical, unconstitutional and destructive to our republic.

Voters have every right to be suspicious of Roman Catholic candidates, presidential or otherwise. This is not a matter of bigotry, but rather of prudence.