Mike Lux's summary of what's at stake with the Ryan budget, "the most radical, repeal-the-20th Century budget document" Lux has read in 30 years following politics:
The entire country will be drawn into this most fundamental of American debates: will America's future be a social Darwinian, Ayn Rand-like country where selfishness and greed are the virtues worshipped above all others, where the wealthy reap ever more rewards no matter what they did to get their wealth, where the powerful have no holds on their power and the weak are left behind to fend for themselves? Or are we a country where we value each other and believe in our nation as a sacred community, where political and economic power is dispersed widely rather than held by just a few, where the middle class is prosperous and growing again, and where "the least of these" is given a hand up and their children are given a chance at a decent life? Those are the values the Romney-Ryan budget will make the candidates debate.
Lux maintains that if the 2012 presidential election comes down to a choice between Obama and Romney, the debate will center on these two competing visions of the future of America, since Etch a Sketch Romney has permitted the hard right wing that now controls his party to inscribe its social Darwinian and Randian vision over any "Massachusetts liberal" values he may once have had.
Lux is correct. (And the open politicking of the U.S. Catholic bishops, with the open collusion of the "liberal" Catholic media commentariat, for the Darwinian-Randian option is grotesque, and radically undermines the pretense of the bishops and their centrist co-belligerents to have any concern at all for Catholic social teaching.)
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