A Cogent (and Quite Damning) Response to Rush Limbaugh

I've been waiting for someone to counter Rush Limbaugh's rather shallow proclamation on his show last Wednesday concerning things Pope Francis was alleged to have said in his recently released Apostolic Exhortation:

I gotta be very careful.  I have been numerous times to the Vatican.  It wouldn't exist without tons of money.  But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him.  This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.  Unfettered capitalism?  That doesn't exist anywhere.  Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States.

I wait no longer.

Scott Eric Alt has stepped up to the plate and knocked one out of the park:

What Mr. Lim­baugh had to say was long, so I’m going to be iso­lat­ing the key parts of it and giv­ing my own run­ning response. But as you will see, it’s sad; because he makes it very clear that he does not grasp Catholic social teach­ing, nor (appar­ently) had he read the pope’s words in their orig­i­nal con­text, or at all. At the bot­tom of the tran­script, he cites a sin­gle arti­cle fromThe Wash­ing­ton Post. So this was all very thor­ough show prep on Mr. Limbaugh’s part.

Here’s how it began:

You know, the pope, Pope Francis—this is astounding—has issued an offi­cial papal procla­ma­tion, and it’s sad. It’s actu­ally unbe­liev­able. The pope has writ­ten, in part, about the utter evils of capitalism.

Stop the quote!

Actu­ally, if you turn to the pas­sage in ques­tion—Evan­gelii Gaudium 54—the Holy Father does not use the word “cap­i­tal­ism” once. Here is what he does say:

…some peo­ple con­tinue to defend trickle-down the­o­ries which assume that eco­nomic growth, encour­aged by a free mar­ket, will inevitably suc­ceed in bring­ing about greater jus­tice and inclu­sive­ness in the world.

So Fran­cis is talk­ing about trickle-down specif­i­cally, not cap­i­tal­ism more broadly under­stood. Before I am accused of split­ting hairs here, it is worth point­ing out that trickle-down is a rel­a­tively recent sub­set of cap­i­tal­ist the­ory, dat­ing to the 1980s. It is entirely about tax breaks for busi­nesses and the rich, the the­ory being that the econ­omy will improve and thus ben­e­fit the poor.  Dr. Thomas Sow­ell, in a pub­li­ca­tion for the Hoover Insti­tute (here), says that higher taxes on the wealthy reduces the profit motive, and thereby impede the flow of money in a pri­vate enter­prise econ­omy. That is to say, trickle-down is not itself cap­i­tal­ism, but instead a polit­i­cal the­ory about the ben­e­fit of tax cuts, within the con­text of an econ­omy that is already capitalist.

To return to Mr. Limbaugh:

Up until this, I have to tell you, I was admir­ing the man. I thought he was going a lit­tle over­board with the common-man touch, and I thought there might have been a lit­tle bit of PRinvolved there. But nev­er­the­less I was will­ing to cut him some slack.

Stop the quote!

Really, folks, I won­der whether Mr. Lim­baugh under­stands what a pope is. First of all, the “common-man touch” is not PR but per­son­al­ity. More importantly—and the rea­son I point this out—the pope is not a politi­cian. He is the spir­i­tual leader of Catholics. But so much of what is said about Fran­cis is an attempt to inter­pret his words within the polit­i­cal con­text of lib­eral vs. con­ser­v­a­tive. That is not the con­text in which they should be under­stood. Catholi­cism tran­scends polit­i­cal debates, and you will not under­stand it until you forgo the habit of talk­ing about it politically.

If it weren’t for cap­i­tal­ism, I don’t know where the Catholic Church would be.

Stop the quote!

Folks, the his­tor­i­cal igno­rance in this remark is stun­ning. Cap­i­tal­ism has been around for only ten, maybe fif­teen, per­cent the length of time the Catholic Church has. The word cap­i­tal­ismwas not coined, even, until the mid-nineteenth cen­tury, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary. The Catholic Church has been around, by con­trast, for two thou­sand years; and as I recall, it flour­ished quite well under feudalism.

I gotta be very care­ful. I have been numer­ous times to the Vat­i­can. It wouldn’t exist with­out tons of money.

Stop the quote!

Where does this idea come from, that the money with which to build grand places can only exist in a cap­i­tal­ist econ­omy? Where does this idea come from, that with­out a cap­i­tal­ist econ­omy all the money will dry up and peo­ple will be bar­ter­ing in cows or something?

This is just pure Marx­ism com­ing out of the mouth of the pope. Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism? That doesn’t exist any­where. Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism is a lib­eral social­ist phrase to describe the United States.

Stop the quote!

Yes, and “unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism” is not a phrase that is used any­where in Evan­gelii Gaudium. “Unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism” is a para­phrase of the Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, which was the only thing on this sub­ject that Mr. Lim­baugh seems to have both­ered to read.

There is much, much more and I encourage folks to read the whole thing and then do the right thing by passing it along.

I'd like to think Mr. Limbaugh, should he see this, will read, inwardly digest then respond with integrity.

I'd like to.  

There was something else that Mr. Limbaugh said that day that makes me think, perhaps utopianly, that he will:

Now, as I mentioned before, I'm not Catholic.  I admire it profoundly, and I've been tempted a number of times to delve deeper into it. 

Delve deeper indeed Mr. Limbaugh.  Delve much deeper.