The Thing that Used to be Conservatism vs…

Reagan’s first Budget Director. Here is David Stockman talking about Paul Ryan’s fairy tale budget plan. This would be the Ryan whose budget received a round drubbing from the bishops a few months back as failing the “basic moral test” of protecting the most vulnerable.

Remember: Ryan’s budget is a brilliant Aquinas-like purification of Randian thought, not a capitulation to some of the worst in Rand and a surrender of Catholic teaching on the common good to a truly dreadful human tradition. Besides, the only thing that matters is that he is anti-abortion. That is, we are to understand, the same thing as prolife. And prolife is the same thing as orthodox. And so the bishops are wrong, and so is Stockman and, as one of my readers so eloquently summed things up, “Time to get on board.” I have to vote for a candidate who spent years supporting abortion and only “changed his position” at the exact moment it became politically expedient to do so. I am to support him, even when he compelled Catholic hospitals to dispense the morning after pill, just like the HHS mandate. I am to support him when he is indifferent to gay marriage and is telling the Boy Scouts to admit homosexuals. I am to support him when he uses support for torture as a surefire applause line. I am to support him when he is very excited about plunging us into fresh wars in the service of Empire. All because Ryan is allegedly Really Truly Deeply Catholic. Or at least prolife. Or at least anti-abortion.

I can, as I say, see an argument for the Sucks Less position.  But this rubbish about Really Truly Awesomely Aquinas-like Ryan is induced Tina Fey intensity eyerolls. The more I see what party spirit does to make people sacrifice significant portions of the Tradition in order to win, the more convinced I am of the pernicious effect it has on Catholics. We *consistently* wind up ransacking the Tradition for the bits that fit the party agenda and we *consistently* wind up denouncing those who insist on paying attention to the fulness of the Tradition as “perfectionists”. Indeed, we consistently wind up denouncing those who just want to avoid supporting grave intrinsic evil as “perfectionists”.

Nope. Done with that.