Religion & Law

John Schwenkler evidently thinks that my recent comment on "moral incoherence" was directed at him.  It wasn't.  It was directed at Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Mark Begich, Christopher Dodd, Ted Kaufman, Dick Durbin, Tom Harkin, Mary Landrieu, Barbara Mikulski, John Kerry, Claire McCaskill, Robert Menendez, Kirsten Gillebrand, Jack Reed, Patrick Leahy, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, and those Catholics in the House of Representatives and across the nation who share what, if Mr. Schwenkler and I are right, is the morally incoherent position that (1) ?we must reform the health care system to ensure that basic care is reasonably accessible to all members of the community,? and (2) ?the unborn have no right to legal protection against being killed by abortion.?

I took the opportunity afforded by Michael P.'s posting of Mr, Schwenkler's comment to make the point.  Mr. Schwenkler seems to think that I wanted to force him to go through the ritual of acknowledging the bidirectionality of the charge of moral incoherence.  I didn't.  I hadn't heard of Mr. Schwenkler before reading the comments Michael P. posted.  He seems a bit annoyed that I haven't seen his bio on dotCommonweal.  But I do not read dotCommonweal on a regular basis, and I read his comment on MoJ, not on dotCommonweal.  Anyway, none of this matters, since my post wasn't directed at him and I had no intention of forcing him ritually to acknowledge the bidirectionality of the charge of moral incoherence.

I concluded my post by noting that Ross Douthat would agree with me, but allowing that I didn't know whether Mr. Schwenkler would agree.  That was because I know Ross Douthat and I don't know Mr. Schwenkler.  In particular, I didn't know whether Mr. Schwenkler would agree with this point in my post:

"The Church ("that very same church") teaches that efforts must be made to ensure that all members of the community, including the poor, have reasonable access to basic health care; but it does not prescribe a government run health insurance or health care system or a particular scheme or degree of government regulation of health care providers or insurers.  People can reasonably and responsibly "claim the banner of church teaching" while advocating different policies for the structure (or reform) of the health care system to make sure that as many members of the community as possible have reasonable access to basic care (and insurance against medical catastrophes)."

I gather from what Mr. Schwenkler says in his response to my post that he does agree.  That;s great.  I'm delighted.  But Mr. Schwenkler seems to want to do a bit of boxing with me, so I'm happy to go a round or two with him.  Here's where I disagree with him, if I understand him correctly.  He blames "conservatives" for their "stunning. inability to propose a coherent and forward-looking agenda of their [read our] own to address this country?s very real need for serious health care reform."  He is painting with too broad a brush.  Are some conservatives complacent about the need for dealing with the flaws of our health system, including the need to improve access and expand coverage?  Sure.  And they merit Schwenkler's criticisms (and mine).  Are there Randian libertarians out there who think that improving access to health care is none of the government's business?  Of course, though most of them, like Ayn Rand herself, are on the Biden-Dodd-Durbin-Harkin-Mikulski side of the abortion question. (It's just that they are less morally incoherent than the pro-choice Catholic senators against whom my post was directed.)  But there are conservatives, including dedicated pro-life conservatives, who are thinking and working hard to devise sensible, affordable, liberty- and subsidiarity-respecting ways of reforming the health care system.  James Capretta and Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. are two whose work strikes me as particularly insightful and promising.  If Republican victories in 2010 and 2012 make it possible to repeal and replace Obamacare, work now being done by people like Capretta and Levin will help to shape the reform of the reform