This is a response to a podcast I listened to on CatholicVote.Com. They preface this to say that they are not trying to disparage Ben Shapiro, but 'take the conservative hat' off for a bit. One could call this being a hypocrite in the classical sense, as allusion to how actors in the classic Greek theatre wore masks to pretend to be the persona of the character that they are not. This is all fine, but the argument by Stephen Herried seems a bit out of place, especially when he talks about not watering down the other side's arguments by watering down the conservative argument. I understand the 'human element', but find this the crux of the issue, that we do need to understand facts, and not rely on feelings. I really don't care about whether Stephen Herried, or anyone cares about my feelings. I've had teachers and parents 'care about my feelings' to death, or at least help put me in poverty because they weren't kind enough to speak to me on facts of life, and preferred to coddle me to the point that, despite having a college education, I'm scraping by on a retail job that barely pays the bills. No lessons on balancing a checkbook, because, well heck, not even the government cares to balance their own checkbook and try to live within its means - er, well, the means of the taxpayers that they press to give them money to waste on terrible healthcare bills, unnecessary funding of political correctness nonsense that only causes more litigation and aggression between fellow citizens, and all the other ways that the government wastes taxpayer funding, and yet these crocodile career politicians on both sides of the aisle come out with their 'feeling's and virtue signalling campaigns to, what? Get re-elected to continue to waste our taxpayer money?
But this is what I wrote in the comments - or at least sent. Whether they actually put it up in the comments section is another story. But here is is for anyone who cares to read:
Sorry, but Ocassio-Cortez is virtue signalling. You are not even getting Ben Shapiro right with the 'because math' argument, because that's an obvious straw man. She's not hitting on points, but tossing around the usual liberal virtue signals. Low information voting means that they don't look beyond the soundbytes. This is not about right-wing pundit hat, or 'because math', which is mere fallacy rhetoric that makes no point whatsoever. The 'eat the rich', and all rich are right wing corporate owners that don't care about the poor loses ground when Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet are both liberals that vote democrat and push the liberal agenda. The problem isn't about the money. In 1947, senators made about $30,000 a year, and the president $75,000 a year. National debt was around $200 billion. People in retail made as much, if not more than teachers, around $2400 a year, and a car cost about $1500. Houses were about $15,000.
The core problem is between greed and envy, and that vicious cycle is what has our national debt in the trillions, and why in many places you can't live off of $15/hr. By the way, in 1947, minimum wage was around $0.50/hour. How is it in over half a century, we're talking about a job paying $15/hr is being at poverty level? Within probably less than 25 years, people might all be millionaires, and so what? By that time, nobody would be able to live off a million dollars! So let's cut the crap and start looking at the root problems. Continue on the path to socialism, and we may all be millionaires, but we'll still be poor, and not in the 'poor in spirit' that makes for a beattitude, but that selfish poverty and depravity that lends itself to making a person poor no matter how much they make, that leads people to killing babies in pursuit of a career, because apparently you can't have a steady job and a family at the same time, that leads to illegal immigration because we are a lawless people that can't understand why we have borders, and that everyone will go to heaven regardless what sins they commit, and regardless of if they go to Confession or not. After all, who needs Confession in a world that's abolished the rightful judgement of sin, tells you not to listen to your conscience, even to kill it so you can sin more boldly, and that you shouldn't have to suffer to have good things? Granted, not all good things are difficult and require suffering, but to do true good and virtue is going to cost you. It cost our Lord and Savior his life, in order to redeem us from sin and give us a sacramental life whereby we can ourselves overcome the slavery of sin and fear of death so that we might have eternal life.
Ben Shapiro is not Catholic, I know that, but yet, he does give right criticism for us Catholics, who, if indeed we truly believed what Christ taught, would quit all this left winged communist virtue signalling and actually go out and do the virtuous works of mercy. We would quit looking at the sliver in our neighbor and first take out the plank in our own. What he speaks on is not mere 'nerdy' or 'because math' hard to understand stuff. It's very sound, and reasonable. We can't rely on billionaires or trillionaires, nor the Nanny State to be our saviors. Especially if we are Christians, this would be wrong as we are putting the rich and the government in the place of God. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has spoken much the same, that this is the problem of modernism, that the state is made the god after taking God out of our public lives. You don't have to be a Pope or a conservative Christian fundamentalist to see that. The question is simple, who do you choose as your god, God Himself, or the world? There's two civilizations in the world, one that's of God, and one that is not, which one are you residing in?
