Demolishing Paul Ryan

Daniel Henninger writes about the Left's warning to any who might challenge its ideological fortress, e.g., the Supreme Court, should it overturn ObamaCare.  Other shots are presently being fired across House GOP Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's bow.

You may have heard of his cruelty and black heart.  He's the one that Democrats and the President accuse (this week) of social Darwinism, Trojan-horse deception and historical anachronism.

Mr. Ryan justifies the GOP's proposed budget--which increases this year's federal outlays of $3.6 trillion (yes, you read that correctly) to a mere $4.9 trillion in 2022 rather than the President's proposed $5.8 trillion (yes, you read that correctly, too)--on rather different grounds than the President alleges: Catholic Social Doctrine.

"To me, the principle of subsidiarity . . . meaning government closest to the people governs best . . . where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that's how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities. 

"Those principles are very, very important, and the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenets of Catholic social teaching, means don't keep people poor, don't make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life. Help people get out of poverty out onto a life of independence."

For the dual impudence of proposing a responsible federal budget and invoking Catholic Social Doctrine to justify it, Mr. Ryan has been accused of shilling for the Catholic Church. Assuming ad arguendo that it were true, that would be a self-evidently disreputable thing for a politician to do.

Unlike shilling for the Department of Health and Human Services or the American Civil Liberties Union (groups that regularly assail the Catholic Church), invoking Catholic Social Doctrine to promote local governance and to help the poor escape dependence must be stopped before somebody listens.

The fortress being defended is the Left's totem: an overarching federal power subordinate to no one but the Statist ideologues who run it.  As Henninger writes, "At any suggestion that a conservative idea might be threatening its ideological fortress, the American left now launches ICBMs of rhetorical destruction."

Bring on the denunciations.  I imagine that Ryan wears them as badges of honor.  Would that more Catholics were so stalwart in their beliefs.