14. The purpose of the state is not to restrain evil or to secure rights, but to redistribute wealth and to administrate social services. Ending poverty, not national security, is the primary job of the state. No single state or nation has the moral authority to act in a sovereign manner, only the collective deliberation and moral weight of the United Nations should be entrusted with martial and judicial authority.

On Economics

15. Budgets are moral documents, forcing us to prioritize our collective value system through legislative debate. In this debate, we must emphasize that Americans always spend too much on defense, and too little on domestic social pro-grams and foreign aid. Raising taxes on “the rich” to expand the welfare state is always our primary political end.

16. Marxism is morally superior to capitalism. Capitalism is evil. Socialism is but an incremental step along our path to-ward the moral high ground of communism. It is better to have no rich and no poor, than few rich and many poor. As the progressive tax rate reveals, it is morally acceptable to steal from the rich and to give to the poor. Tax rates on the rich can never be too high, and those on the poor can never be too low.

17. Poverty causes both crime and terrorism. End poverty, and end both crime and terrorism.

On War and Peace

18. All violence is immoral, even in self-defense. Jesus teaches us to love our neighbor as our self. As pacifists, we be-lieve this love of neighbor never requires a use of force on the neighbor’s behalf – there’s always an alternative to violence, since violence only begets more violence. Peace is a higher value than justice. Better to live as a slave in peace, than to live free in war.

19. The United States has never been involved in a just war. All wars are immoral. Christians ought not volunteer for military service. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and peacemakers are pacifists. Our only hope in dealing with those who seek to do us harm is to participate in multilateral negotiations with them at the U.N. A truly moral and enlight-ened people prefer the path of appeasement that leads to surrender than the immoral path of military confrontation that leads to victory.

So, how’d you do on the quiz?

Good, well-meaning, pure-hearted, sincere, compassionate and loving people can be wrong – especially on the big things. Take poverty, for example.

What’s more loving, to empathetically feel someone’s pain or to actually implement policies that eliminate the pain?

Even if a doctor is well intended, he’s a bad doctor nonetheless if he doesn’t know the medicine he’s prescribing is what is keeping the patient sick. Doctors are supposed to know better.

Pretty words like “love, compassion, caring, and support” have their place. They’re nice. But, when it comes to actually doing something to solve problems rather than just talk about them, I’m far more interested in policies that actually work. Aren’t you?