Catholic Randians

Thanks to Rick for his thoughtful reply to my dotCommonweal post.  The post has many of the shortcomings of its genre (by genre, I'm referring here to the subcategory of little ditties dashed out on Saturday afternoon while your 2 year old is napping).  In particular, I think I was way less clear than I might have been about the questions I was posing, especially by introducing the question of emprical support. 

The most interesting question to me is why someone like Ryan shouldn't come in for the same treatment as pro-choice Catholic politicians have often received.  In his case, it would be more than just the question whether a Catholic can in good faith support his plan (back to that question in a second).  There are specific things about Ryan's relationship to Randian libertarianism -- his strange habit of requiring his staff to read Ayn Rand, his statement that Rand was his reason for entering public service -- that call into question his motives in structuring his plan how he has. I think it is worthwhile for Catholics to call attention to the utter irreconcileability of Rand's political philosophy, such as it is, with basic principles of Catholic teaching.  Though I admit not decisive, the implausibilty of his empirical assumptions seems like a relevant data point for the inquiry into his likley principles.  And the central point of my post was to observe that applying the wrong principles to produce policy suggestions that would otherwise fall within the ambit of permisisble prudential disagreement is not itself within the boundaries of that permissible prudential disagreement (as the hierarchs have defined those boundaries).  In other words, from the standpoint of a Catholic politician, at least, the principles matter.

In part this relates to the second question -- can Catholics in good faith support the Ryan plan?  I have no doubt that, subjectively speaking, they can.  On the other hand, I think it's an important challenge to Catholics who are prone to accept the assumptions that would be necessary to justify support for that plan (e.g., that handing billions in dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans against the current baseline of historically -- and comparatively -- high inequality and low taxation rates would actually redound to the benefit of the poorest over the long run compared to the available alternative policies) to engage with the empirical support (or lack of empirical support) for those counterintuitive assertions.  Moreover, given a Catholic commitment to social policy that is fundamentally oriented towards the well being of the poorest, I think its fair to hold a plan that appears on its face to simply transfer burdens from the poorer to the richer to a higher empirical standard than a plan that on its face appears to do the opposite.  That last pont is probably controversial, but it is in a way independent from my bottom line, which is that I don't think retreating behind the protection of "prudential judgments" should be seen as absolving Catholics of various political stripes of doing the work of evaluating a plan like Ryan's against the principles of Catholic social teaching and the relevant standards of sound empirical analysis.