Friday, November 16, 1984
Pago 6
Daily Nebraskan
Si
M St
i 1 OH .n?rrTinfa d
fe Letters mates OMO
ifciM residents blast ei
TINT j Q T Pn(Yi)a firm ?
U1Jj 5 I VIIUVUUVIIS
An nnon 1-ittnr tn hf rrornt
and administrators of UNL. Just
what are your priorities? They
must not be education. This
semester weVe seen you approve:
Something like $75,000 for a
new X-ray machine for the Uni-
versitv Health Center. (What is
wrong with old one?)
An expansion of the health
center (supposedly at no extra
cost to students. C'mon, were not
done paying for the original yet.)
$230,000 to buy the UMHE
hniMinc fnr mnrp nffirp snap fnr
the union, while at the same time
planning to move the Bookstore
out of the union.
$100,000 for land to build
the fine arts building (no men-
tion of classroom space though),
New astro turf for both UNO
and UNL.
Massive bucks for parking,
rA
"m '
6
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these and a few others, you had
the nerye m the same breathe t0
tell faculty members to find pla-
rni tn rut. R nnrrpnt. nut of their
departmental budgets, up to and
including cutting programs.
And now, somebody has decided
that massive changes changes
few want are in order for Nei-
hardt Hall, the oldest residence
hall on campus. Some of the pro
posed changes would: Section off
the Blue TV room, which is the
only large lounge in Neihardt, for
study areas we don't need; put
doors on the Blue Parlor and
move the TV in there, which would
ruin the atmosphere created DV
the only working fireplace in the
residence nails and one 01 tne iew
on campus; wall off the Birch
Room to make it a lockable lounge,
essentially closing it to student
use.
Why the fuss over this?
1. Where's the money coming
from? If there is a fund to build
IrZZ
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If til II l7i vx
those walls and put in doors, why
not use that monev to do some-
thing we students want. Hell, we u
even volunteer to help do it, as
evidenced by the shiny Dress Knoos
on Our Stairwell.
2. We already have placesto
study that are under-used. The
cafeteria, our rooms (novel idea)
and those same lounges you want
to change, can be used to study in
now, but the rooms with desks
nnd tables and chairs in them
downstairs are all locked up.
3. This is our home. Most or us
here
e chose Neihardt because of
its "homey" feeling, in fact some of
our mothers and grandmotners
lived here.
Continue to destroy Neihardt
with our own money and you're
going 10 ue laueu wan bu-ui,
which you may have to drag off
mothers and grandmothers,
Jay Lee Noble
Linda M.Plante
Lisa M. Richardson
Eric P. Moss
and 14 other students
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v,
xN
in mii r. Hie nr sio,
nr rWadps now Dolitically
i liberal clergymen and theolo-
- tfians from both the Roman
Catholic and Protestant traditions
have tried t0 fashion a "Christian
apoi0-y for the welfare state. With
the publishing of the National
conference of Catholic Bishops'
P,storal Letter on Catholic Social
Teachlng an(j the U.S. Economy,
Aroft tttmr
thp!P rinomed atternots have
nllinfpd tn new &nH i0Wer depths
fnhfii nation.
Jim
Rogers
Perhaps I am too unkind to the
document but it seems obvious,
in the light of subsequent passages,
that thS early praisings of the U.S.
economy in providing material
1a, iX otLt nn thP
to meZit and
coopt conservative objections that
the letter endorses statist solu
tions to the problems. It is a bone
thrown in to appease conservative
appetites.
The Bishops are careful to avoid
the use of the term "state" in most
instances. Instead they insert the
term "society." Nonetheless, the
letter tips its leftist hand, because
it uses political categories of
thought and language. The terms
social justice and economic
democracy" are well-known syno
nyms for the use of the state and
its coercieve capabilities to force
ably effectuate an egalitarian
society.
The letter makes this call for
statism: "This economic challenge
we all face today had many
parallels with the political chal
lenge that confronted the founders
of our nation. In order to create a
new kind of political democracy
they were compelled to develop
ways of thinking and political
institutions which had never
existed before.
"We believe that the time
has come for a similar experiment
in economic democracy, the crea
tion of an order that guarantees
the minimum conditions of human
dignity in the economic sphere
for every person."
The call made by the bishops
here is for a new political order,
One which forcibly redistributes
income upon the false belief that
economic equality is a moral good.
The lesson of modern times, if
there is any lesson at all, is that
political democracy and economic
democracy a perverse pseudo
nym for socialism are incom
patible. It is also difficult to maintain
that the line of argument taken in
me letter is an examDle of
explicitiy Christian thinking. Take
tor example this passage: The
moral acceptability of unequal
Unsigned editorials represent
ni!?1, ?UT ofie Ml im
Daily Nebraskan. They are writ-
Slf ynl 4eme?ter's editor ia
cnief, Chris Welsch.
Other staff members will writ a
i iou niiuugiiouc me semes-
i! ter. ThPV will rnmr f K x ..n .
! v,v- jr Uic auiiiur a
Pditnriic a
reflect thP wLnr?K nec.essarily
reject the viewS 0f the university,
economic bcnefits...is strictlv
conditioned. It is subject to several
stringent constraints. First
unequal aistnounon must be eval-
uated particularly in terms of its
effects on those persons whose
basic human needs are unmet...
Tnis condition establishes a
strong presumption against in-
equality of income or wealth as
long as there are poor,, hungry
and homeless people in our
midst...This presumption can be
overridden only if an obsolute
scarcity of resources make the
fulfillment of the basic needs of
all strictly impossible or if unequal
distribution stimulates produc
tivity in a way that truly benefits
the poor."
o . .
This argument is obviously bor-
md Posopher John
1 971 book, A Theory of
Je," which is an important
but greatly flawed work. The
bishops evidently think that by
merely sprinkling the word "God"
every now and then throughout a
work that the secularity of an
argument is converted, via its
baptism, into a Christian argu
ment. Jesus and the Bible
express a concern for the poor
and require believers to be gener-
ous in aid to the poor. However, it
is quite a leap from arguing that
there exists a moral obligation
for an individual to be generous
to the poor that, hence, the state
may be used to enforce this moral
obligation. At no time does the
Bible teach that the institu
tionalized violence of the state
can be justly used on behalf of the
poor in the absence of overt or
fraudulent aggression. Biblically
this aggression must be proven in
each instance and cannot merely
be presumed for income transfer
to justly take place. Yet it is exactly
this unjust presumption that
Rawls makes, and the bishops
sadly follow suit.
Nonetheless something gcxxi may
in fact come out of the bishops'
letter, albeit unintentionally. Con
servative Christian thought on
economic issues, when it upon
rare occasions occurs, is usually
rather silly and greatly flawed.
Its defense of property and
the market system is usually based
on the radical egoistic thought of
the last century and is thus hardly
to be considered any more
Christian than the Christian man
date from the left for a massive
social welfare state. However,
dramatic documents such as the
letter tend to focus opposition
debate in a fashion which incre
mental development does not. If
the letter, at the very least,
accomplishes this and forces con
servative Christians to clean up
their act, then its obvious faults
have at least nrovided a oeaa-
gogical tool with wnicn to create
a truly better and more just
society.
i:
i
iai
icy
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NU Board of Regents.
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