{"id":9112,"date":"2014-03-16T22:39:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T22:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9112"},"modified":"2014-03-16T22:39:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T22:39:57","slug":"the-pope-and-peron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-pope-and-peron\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pope and Peron"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"descamisados\"<\/a>In the course of a lengthy piece<\/a> on Pope Francis, The Economist<\/em> looks at the pontiff\u2019s political and economic opinions and (correctly, in my view) finds them rooted in the history of the country of his birth:<\/p>\n

The political landscape of Francis\u2019s homeland, however, offers a more accurate, and nuanced, understanding of his views. For most of his life Argentina has plotted a kind of third way between Marxism and liberalism\u2014albeit one with disastrous political and economic results. \u201c[Francis] only knows one style of politics,\u201d says a diplomat accredited to the Holy See. \u201cAnd that is Peronism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The creed bequeathed by Argentina\u2019s former dictator, General Juan Per\u00f3n, with its \u201cthree flags\u201d of social justice, economic independence and political sovereignty, has been endlessly reinterpreted since. Conservatives and revolutionaries alike have been proud to call themselves Peronist. But at its heart it is corporatist, assigning to the state the job of resolving conflicts between interest groups, including workers and employers. In that respect it resembles fascism and Nazism\u2014and also Catholic social doctrine.<\/p>\n

The pope\u2019s Peronist side shows in his use of a classic populist technique: going over the heads of the elite to the people with headline-grabbing gestures and comments. And it is visible in his view of political economy, which also has much in common with post-Marxist protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street, the Spanish indignados and Italy\u2019s Five Star Movement. \u201cWhile the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by the happy few,\u201d he has written. \u201cThis imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Economist<\/em> is perhaps too polite to mention the fact that crude reductionism, scapegoating and argument by straw man are also often \u201cclassic populist techniques\u201d, and ones, regrettably, that this pope sometimes appears willing to deploy. Nevertheless, the magazine does find space to include this:<\/p>\n

One passage in Evangelii Gaudium <\/em>[This pope\u2019s first \u2018Apostolic Exhortation\u2019] appalled many: \u201cJust as the commandment: \u2018Thou shalt not kill,\u2019 sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say \u2018Thou shalt not,\u2019 to an economy of exclusion and inequality.\u201d Even more radically, he quoted St John Chrysostom, an early church father: \u201cNot to share one\u2019s wealth with the poor is to steal from them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, of course, was (as The Economist<\/em> noted) the same document that included, without qualification, this:<\/p>\n

\u201cToday everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everything<\/em>? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the course of a lengthy piece on Pope Francis, The Economist looks at the pontiff\u2019s political and economic opinions and (correctly, in my view) finds them rooted in the history of the country of his birth: The political landscape … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,711],"tags":[1026,998,403],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9115,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112\/revisions\/9115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}