The Democrat philosophy of President Obama is opposed to the Catholic social principle: subsidiarity. Subsidiarity means that problems ought to be handled by those closest to the problems first before bringing in larger and more powerful groups and forces. Why? First because this is more efficient. A mother and father should teach their children not to touch a hot stove. An alternative, of course, would be for the Federal government to force stove makers to make child proof stove tops and then mandate that these be in every household by such and such a date. Penalties would attach to manufacturers who don’t comply. The government could enact mandatory business and home inspections to check for compliance.

Now think how complicated that would be. Hundreds of lawyers would be required to draft legislation for Congress. Lawyers are expensive, especially those who contract with the Federal government. Millions of dollars would need to be spent to run the regulative bodies and the inspection and enforcement agencies involved, who might need to hire additional workers at tax payer expense. The regulations would need to be published and promulgated. A new layer of federal bureaucracy would need to be created with satellite officials at state, county and municipal levels. The administration of the monetary penalties would be expensive too, requiring accountants on the federal payroll. Accountants don’t come cheap and more than lawyers do. All of this would need to be organized and hierachized and inevitably there would be top administrators required and their pay would be in the six figure area, payed for by tax revenue or laid on the shoulders of our children as debt or borrowed from the Chinese as debt [which would also be laid on the backs of our children].

There would be huge costs to industry too. New stove tops would need to be created. Old stove tops would need to disposed of, probably at landfills. Home and business owners would need the services of contractors to bring them into compliance, unless grandfather clauses were written into the laws. Yikes, more lawyer fees! Some of the “new” stove tops would fail and injure children creating an enormous opportunity for product safety lawsuits and ‘yikes’ more lawyers.

Now which is better, a parent who teaches their child not to touch a hot stove and a child who exercises self-control, or creating a huge federal program and placing the billion dollar debt on the backs of all of our children for the next fifty years? For Mr. Obama, the second way is always the best.

Now resources cannot be created ex nihilo. Those billions lost are actually in the form of two losses. One is the actual loss and the other is the potential loss. The billions of dollars taken out of the pockets of millions of people are dollars that they cannot use for their immediate needs. When too much is taken from their pockets, they cannot afford a house or college education for their children. Of course, for Mr. Obama this is a call for another gigantic ‘federal’ solution.

This is the first reason why the Catholic Church has also taught the principle of subsidiarity. The second reason is this, and has two parts. No single man, not even the Messianic Obama; nor any group of men, have in themselves the wisdom of all people put together. The Federal government, for all its size, represents an impoverishment of the totality of the knowledge of all Americans acting individually in their own best interest. Secondly, the concentration of power necessary to solve every problem at the federal level would be the greatest possible evil. The vast majority of all instances of genocide have been caused by overly powerful centralized governments. It is almost as if powerful centralized government inevitably leads to some form of genocide. Think of the Roman Empire and the mass killing of Christians. Think of the the Nazi Reich and the mass killing of Jews and Slavs. Think of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Now consider how Roosevelt’s enlargement of federal centralization of power has now facilitated mass abortion, and euthanasia. The concentration of power to solve evil always ends up in creating more monstrous evil. James Madison realized this. And so does the Catholic Church. Before Roe v Wade, some states had legalized the genocide of abortion. With Roe v Wade, genocide was nationalized. Hidden in the fine print of Mr. Obama’s Messianic Health Care Plan are plans for euthanasia.

We spoke of the hidden loss of resources, actual and potential, of massive government centralization. We were speaking of money. The more obscene loss is the abortion of God’s beloved children, a slaughter that takes place outside of public view and results in the deaths of millions of innocents.

On a lighter note, right now, my fingernails need to be clipped. I can clip them myself. If I can’t for some reason, a family member might help me or I could go to a nail salon. God forbid that the Federal government would create a trillion dollar nail clipping service.

The principle of subsidiarity goes back to Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Its called self-restraint and self-control and love. Read the Holy Gospels from cover to cover and you will never find our Lord saying: “Blessed are they who create federal bureaucracies.” “Do the will of God by creating massive centralized government programs.”