Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson's remarks, as expressed in a Sunday Union Leader staff editorial, suggest that it is immoral to reduce what the government spends on health and social programs.
As quoted, "When sacrifice is perpetrated on the vulnerable and weak by the strong and prosperous, it is social abuse."
He goes on to include the poor, the disabled, the blind, the unemployed, the impoverished elderly, the uninsured and children living in poverty.
His point (one of them at least) is that by reducing government's fiscal contribution to bureaucracies established to manage such things, that governor John Lynch and the New Hampshire legislature are considering immoral choices to balance the state budget.
So where do I begin?
First and foremost, by advocating for the remedy of social ills by statutory action Bishop Robinson immediately contradicts his own moral objection. The only way for the state to attempt care for any class of persons under any set of circumstances--moral or otherwise--is to use the force of law, under threat of punishment, to extract the necessary income from whomever it chooses. (A sacrifice perpetrated on the weak by the strong--under force of temporal law--is not also social abuse?)
Even God does not demand as much. God gives us free will. Bishop Robinson appears to prefer statutory taxation. Not terribly trusting of him is it? You'd think his priority would be to shift that kind of caring away from the state into the hands of more qualified institutions. And he would have more than one good reason if he was not acting like a christian socialist.
It is a historical fact that social distress expands to meet the supply of publicly funded services available to reduce it, making the funds available forever inadequate to the task.
It is also a documented fact that governments--lead by sinners, as Bishop Robinson must understand we all are--will define the "vulnerable," and therefore the assistance required, based almost entirely on their own personal agendas and the human desire for power and influence--which must also include the warm feeling social justice advocates get by "doing good deeds" with the fruits of other peoples labors. They just can't help themselves.
We end up with good deeds like helping vulnerable banks (domestic and international), auto makers, unions, ensuring young women can abort babies (in foreign countries no less), even helping states full of public sector workers, who are all worthy of our property on some notion of morality, because failing to act could make them vulnerable.
So what is it that this kind of government cannot or should not do? There are no limits. The government does not have to define any act as moral, it simply needs to act to prevent immorality. And since any act must ensure equal treatment (or mistreatment),as defined by the nature of those doing the deciding, by using these rules there is nothing that cannot be considered a morally statutory obligation (to avoid creating immoral ones) and therefore no limit to the amount of property the state could confiscate to pay for these obligations. The state simply needs to decide the obligation exists and then proceed to write laws to extract the "necessary funds."
This is the trap of the statist fiscal morality.
But no nation that has ever advanced a political agenda based on this kind of "morality" has ever managed to do more than increase the number of those defined as vulnerable, while simultaneously reducing the resources available with which to administer to their increasing needs.
And how moral is it to reduce one mans property against his will to address another mans perceived 'needs' when all that does is increase those in need who must then scrounge amidst a resource in spiraling decline as a result of statutory force?
History is unkind to those who pretend this process has any other logical conclusion. And it is a path you will find increasingly difficult to stray from because of people like Gene Robinson who use mankind's declining moral authority as an excuse for the faux-morality of state mandated secular socialism--an irony that should not be lost on a cleric like Bishop Gene Robinson.
And what of free will? God gave it to us to test us. Have we failed so miserably that even a Bishop cannot see how we might come to the defense of the vulnerable, even in the context of minimizing some state services?
Whatever happened to a church whose role was the building and defending of the institutions that traditionally cared for the blind, the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, the uninsured, the impoverished elderly, or kept children out of poverty? Are we so weak in our faith in mankind and the family to suggest that without the state to intervene the "vulnerable" would be cut loose to wander helplessly among us? Have we abandoned that task to fast talking politicians and career bureaucrats? And if so at what cost to morality?
At some point the reality of the debt accumulated to sustain a system that values the costs of a state run morality over a private one becomes immoral on its own. We institute the condition of generational debt at every level of government, passed down to our children. To paraphrase something Dennis Miller said the other day, we just owe it forward. There is nothing moral about this. We should be teaching generations to give of themselves freely to help those in need, not under threat of fine or punishment by the government. Cutting unsustainable costs and retuning that money to the people is not immoral. It is an opportunity for them to learn to give of themselves to pick up the slack, and care for their own family members and their fellow man--which if I am not being to direct, it suitable work for an Episcopalian Shepherd and his flock.
So instead of preaching to the state of its moral obligation to confiscate the property of others to administer to the people, perhaps the Church and Bishop Robinson might look inward at how they might prevent an immoral state from robbing them of the role for which they are acutely qualified--the caring of bodies and souls--even of those who do not believe. It would be the christian thing to do.
Note to those who might take issue with my post on the grounds that Gene Robinson is a Bishop: My Uncle was an Episcopalian Bishop (may his soul rest in peace.)
Cross Posted
Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 08:24AM 
I know… New Hampshire Democrats were losing sleep in hopes of some politically-beneficial revenue numbers, and guess what? They were politically beneficial….To TEA Party Republicans.
In a staff editorial the Union Leader reminds us why Senator (and former NH Governor) Jeanne Shaheen still needs a blue ribbon panel to make decisions for her.