Dear Editor: It’s not difficult for pandering socialists promising free everything to garner approval, but it should be difficult with Catholics given Catholicism’s unambiguous condemnation of socialism for its atheistic hatred of God-given truths about human nature.
Selvin Gootar (May 19) praises Bernie Sanders’ proposals including eliminating student loan debt by government, which really means taking more from taxpayers who do not receive the benefit and rewarding the bad behavior of others with no sense of moral obligation to meet their responsibilities.
I often think that if a politician promised a billion dollars to everyone so no one would have to work anymore, some Catholics would not see anything problematic, let alone immoral.
The modern connotation of compassion appears to be: let’s all agree to baby each other’s egos and call ourselves caring when it costs us nothing. Telling the young they don’t have to grow up and take responsibility for their decisions only compounds the stupefying consequences of a college education. It is giving a stone when we should be giving the bread of moral truth.
Unless a young person attends school with an awareness that many teachers indoctrinate leftist ideology more than they teach, they have not received guidance from anyone who cares. Telling them they are entitled to something for nothing is immoral. No job that pays off debt is beneath anyone raised with the awareness that hard work is always a gift from God.
Socialists can often exploit economic ignorance to convince many that financial institutions rather than idiotic government mandates for lenders to take on bad debt caused the economic crisis of 2008, that free trade diminishes jobs when it actually increases them for both countries, or that taxing tax-deferred accounts, as Sanders proposes, helps anyone.
The fact is nothing is free.
All economic transactions require the creation and transfer of real wealth, which only comes from the incentivized economic productivity that socialists hate.
JOSEPH AND CAROL PAGET
Bay Ridge
