Fr. Oakes is a seminarian professor. He's not saying that liberals are creeps - rather Liberalism creeps up on you...
FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Liberal Creep
This is most obviously the case with social issues, which is part of the reason debate on them is both so heated and so frustrating. For example, I remember when gay marriage was first proposed in the early nineties, which struck me then as no more likely to pass than that goofy bill mooted in the Indiana state legislature in 1897 to give a rational value to pi. (One amusing sideline: it was claimed that 1 Kings 7:23 “reveals” the rational value of pi.) Marriage is first and above all a reality of human nature before society makes it into a legal contract, and attempts to change that reality would be like trying to pass a law to confine the value of pi to a number short enough for John Q. Public’s limited memory. Or so I thought in my benighted youth.
How out of date I am. Of course in the early days of the controversy, voters were given a chance to vote in referenda on gay marriage, which they voted down resoundingly. But as is usual nowadays with these issues, courts meddled, imposing gay marriage in some states, and civil unions in others; and now plebiscites show majority opposition gradually fading. I do not feel particularly passionate on the issue, but the process is worrisome. Think of physician-assisted suicide: Even without direct court intervention, two states have already passed, through referenda, laws allowing the practice.
Nor do I need to mention here that attempts to overturn Roe vs. Wade have so far gone nowhere. But the longer that atrocious decision stays on the books, the greater the danger of liberal creep on abortion too. I myself do not think the Freedom of Choice Act—which would, among other things, mandate that every medical student be trained to perform abortions—will pass in this Congress. But the very fact that it has been proposed is clearly a salvo in what will surely be an epochal battle. The bill is flagrantly unconstitutional; but that is hardly consolation, since the same holds true of Roe vs. Wade. Liberal creep, in other words, means a slow drift toward coercive liberalism.
The only question remaining, however, is how long this liberal drift will continue before the country slams into reality (political pi, as it were). In that regard, I cannot help but think of Bernard Madoff’s now notorious Ponzi scheme, a display of financial shenanigans I find strangely riveting. The odd thing about Ponzi schemes, though, is that they always fail. Only when the perpetrator is able to arrange to get out of town (and out of the reach of the law) just before the inverted pyramid collapses does it make sense for the schemer to dupe the investors. But whether the perpetrator sticks around too long, or manages to skedaddle out of town in time, the scheme will collapse.
I mention this universally recognized reality (pi anyone?), because Social Security is its own Ponzi scheme. Is not what is supposed to be a government-sponsored old-age insurance program really just a nationwide program to pay early “investors” out of the proceeds of later ones? As with traditional Ponzi schemes, the question is: Who benefits? That is, who gets to “skedaddle” in time? The elderly, of course, provided they die before the whole thing comes down. And given the demographic implosion in Europe, together with a globalized economy (which means recessions can no longer be localized, but all economies sink together), I expect the crisis of Ponzi implosion will hit Europe first, then Japan. But the United States won’t be that far behind, and then comes China.
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