A few weeks ago “Don Blickhan”
published the following letter in our Quincy paper. I am quite sure he is “Father
Donald Blickhan,” recently retired as chaplain at the Illinois Veterans Home.
He was chaplain at Fort Benning, Georgia back in the 1990s when I was going to
the School of the Americas protest there, and he published a letter attacking
the SOA protest movement.
He is also a former student of mine.
I taught him in high school. Within the last two years he has twice asked me to take his place for Sunday Masses at the Veterans Home.
printed August 8, 2019
To the Herald-Whig:
Socialism is based on the illusion
of a utopia, an imaginary state of things or place where everything is perfect.
There is not, nor has there ever been a perfect place.
But socialists nevertheless
passionately pursue that goal. But in so doing they cause great harm to the
social order.
Socialism is fundamentally immoral
because it depends on theft to achieve its ends. Socialists propose taking
money from one group and giving it to others. It holds that the end justifies
the means.
But theft always involves a
disrespect for the person who is thereby violated and is therefore profoundly divisive
of society. It sets people against one another.
A good number of our current political
candidates are socialists. They believe that their programs will make America a
better place. And that sounds so nice. They propose a “free” college education,
socialized medicine, open borders, and many other idealistic schemes that sadly
will only bankrupt our country.
It is a popular sentiment in the
country today because it is so seductive. It is seen as an easy way to solve
our country’s challenges. The only problem is that a utopia is a goal that can
never be attained. And the more it fails, the more a society disintegrates as
those in power multiply their efforts to attain the impossible. It becomes a
fanatical pursuit.
Every nation that has gone down
that route has been destroyed. Have you noticed what has happened to Venezuela
and Cuba?
Don Blickhan
Quincy
printed August 22, 2019
To the Herald-Whig:
Don Blickhan’s letter (August 8,
2019) contains a number of statements that I challenge.
He says that socialism is immoral
because it takes money from one group and gives it to others, which he says is
theft. All taxation is theft. It is theft when we tax ourselves to pay police,
firefighters, school teachers, and Medicare recipients, and to build highways
and airports.
We should do as much as possible
without government intervention, but when we cannot get something done by
private efforts, we should use government authority to do it. Governments exist
to support life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
There are almost no societies in
the world today that are either totally capitalist or totally socialist. All
countries have a mixture of private enterprise and government intervention. How
much government intervention is necessary needs to be determined by reasoned
political discussion.
Blickhan presents as absurd several
ideas proposed by some current political candidates: "'free' college
education, socialized medicine, and open borders."
We have free elementary and
secondary education. It is not absurd to debate whether we should have free
college education.
“Socialized medicine” was the term
used to oppose Medicare when it was being proposed in the 1960's. While
Medicare is no more perfect than any other human enterprise, not many of us
over 65 want it to go away.
We should not be looking at “open
borders” as a horror to be feared. Jews and Christians welcome strangers and
aliens. Immigrants seeking asylum are people who have fallen among robbers, and
we do not pass them by.
Furthermore, our country has
thrived because we have welcomed immigrants. Our openness has provided us
with some of the most creative and productive people in our economy. Our gain
is other countries’ loss. Immigration is helping to mitigate the problem caused
by our low birth rate: fewer and fewer young workers supporting more and more
aging retirees.
Blickhan does not mention the most
important issue we face: climate change. Science is warning us that really
drastic changes in our lifestyles will be required if the earth is to be
livable fifty years from now. Drastic changes will require government action.
Joe Zimmerman
