Forget the debate over whether Obama is a socialist.
Now we’re discussing whether Jesus is for big government. Or, to be more accurate, the Pope has started a debate about whether free markets are bad, particularly for the poor.
Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute wrote about the underlying theological issues in an article for National Review, but I hope I also contributed to the secular aspect of the debate in this BBC interview.
Editor's Note: I'm Catholic... Conservative, Traditional Catholic. Mitchell's right; Pope wrong. This is not a matter of doctrine. We are all free to disagree with the Pope. In this instance he's just another dude with an opinion.
The first thing I said was the rather obvious point that there’s a lot more to life than accumulating wealth.
My most important point was that capitalism is the only successful model for creating broadly shared prosperity and I 
used examples from the Pope’s home region of Latin America to show that nations with more economic liberty are far more successful.
But I emphasized that supporters of freedom have a challenge because many people mistakenly associate capitalism with cronyism and bailouts for big business. In reality, free markets are a system based on voluntary exchange and private property, which means no special favors for any industry or company.
To bolster my point that economic growth is the best way to help the poor, I cited Hong Kong as a role model, both for creating growth and for enabling upward mobility.
My second most important point, which came near the end of the interview, was that genuine compassion is when you give away your own money, not when you vote for politicians who will use coercion to redistribute other people’s money. I should have used the opportunity to cite the data showing that Americans are far more compassionate – in the right sense – than their European counterparts.
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I’m sure “Libertarian Jesus” would have agreed.
Now we need to get others to climb on the freedom bandwagon. I suspect that Pope will be more receptive to that message than politicians, though the Vatican sometimes has been very good on these issues and at times very disappointing.
P.S. I was worried I made up a word when I stated that I wanted to make a “theologic” point, but it’s actually in the dictionary, so I got lucky. But even if it turned out it wasn’t a word, it wouldn’t have been nearly as embarrassing as the time in the 1990s when I wanted to say “annals” and pronounced it “anals.”
P.P.S. Thomas Sowell has some insightful analysis on whether Obama is a socialist.
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