September 2000 Fraser Forum: Sharing an Unconstrained Vision of a Better Future
Well-meaning social-activist clerics were in the news again recently from two parts of the country. In Toronto, Catholic priest Bob Holmes joined Leonard Deroches, a former Catholic seminarian and former M.P., and Anglican Priest Dan Heap, as they waited to hear their verdict in a mischief charge laid by Toronto police. In Victoria, the new Catholic Archbishop is sending out bond salesmen to see if he can convince his parishioners to invest $1,000 per family to rescue the church from the bankruptcy caused by social activist former bishop Remi Deroo.
Holmes and company were accused of common mischief in the abortive 1999 attempt to remove a sword from the cross on a Queen’s Own Rifles war memorial. The trio claimed that it incorrectly combined the Christian symbol of the cross with an implement of war. In effect, it gave physical embodiment to the idea of the "just war"—a war waged with the tacit approval, if not the active involvement of God.
Deroo, meanwhile, once an avid media hound, is nowhere to be found as his successor contrives to cajole low- and high-income families alike to shoulder the $1,000 bonds which are necessary to save their churches and schools from the ravages of bankruptcy. Deroo, who made a national reputation for himself as the co-author of the Catholic Bishop’s Statement on the Economy, championed the anti-restraint general strike in BC, fought free trade, and of course (and somewhat paradoxically in light of his own experience), campaigned hard against the notion of balanced budgets.
What do Deroo and Holmes and company have in common? Several things, actually. First, they are all well meaning people. They sought to do well by doing good. They sought to oppose injustice, to champion peace, and to bring a little heaven into the temporal order. Second, they all share what Fraser Institute author Thomas Sowell has called an "unconstrained vision" of the human condition.
So, Deroo, while permitting his flocks’ assets to be invested in race horses and a piece of moose pasture and jeopardizing the very survival of his diocese, fought against public sector probity and the cuts in spending that were required there to balance the budget. Calling the process "immoral," Deroo argued that mere fiscal accounting exercises should not stand in the way of the need to have full employment, which would be achieved if only the government spent more money. To his congregation’s considerable regret, Bishop Deroo’s view was not constrained by the fiscal realities which he opposed.
Of course all Canadians have the burden of the federal and provincial debt to share as the result of the fact that Bishop Deroo and his colleagues were, for a time, successful in stemming any attempt to deal with out-of-control public spending. (In fact, the sentiment is not yet dead, as the decade of deficits by the NDP government of British Columbia has made clear.) While Deroo has apologized for his financial goofs, I’d bet my Adam Smith tie that he hasn’t made the connection between the need to protect and enhance his episcopal holdings and the need to balance the nation’s books at a low level of public expenditure. (On second thought, perhaps he has, since the debts he incurred are owed in US dollars!)
The same sort of well-meaning but unconstrained vision haunted the Toronto court room when the accused, together with an avid gallery, appeared in court to learn whether Reverend Holmes’ imprecation that "Jesus told us to love our enemies" would win out over the charge of common mischief in the trio’s attempt to remove the sword from the memorial cross. They revelled in the court’s finding of an absolute discharge. While it may not have been the court’s intention to do so, the impression is left that what the priestly protestors did was appropriate, and their message sound.
Such is not the case. While one is stupefied that more evidence is necessary, the fact is that there are bad people in the world who can only be contained by the use of force. The people who, on behalf of the rest of us, exercise this force are entitled to the belief that what they are doing is morally correct and that in their death during a just war their god was by their side.
Of course, we can dream about a time in the future when the interests of competing factions around the world are so knitted together by mutual economic benefit that the cost of war will be unacceptably high and therefore eliminated. But until that capitalist utopia is realized there are the Gadhafis, the Mugabes, the Castros, the Shinning Path guerillas, not to mention the North Koreas and the Sierra Leones, to contend with. And there remains the issue of Asian expansionism and the threats it may pose.
Of course it would be nice if there were no bad people, just like it would be nice if fiscal arithmetic didn’t include negative numbers. But there are and it does. We must constrain our vision to conform to these realities while working tirelessly to press for economic freedom in every country of the world.
Recent work at The Fraser Institute looking at 123 countries during the interval between 1970 and 1995 has found that economic freedom is indeed a very powerful deterrent to hostility. When people are linked together in mutually beneficial commercial relations they have a great incentive to find alternatives to war. While they don’t always do so, the record of conflict during the past three decades indicates that freedom-based economic performance is the surest and best way to turn swords into plough shares.
The tragi-comedy is, of course, that when they aren’t out trying to dismantle
war memorials, Holmes and company can be found protesting against trade
agreements and other constructive efforts to have diverse people share
a common interest in prosperity.
Michael Walker (michaelw@fraserinstitute.ca) is Executive Director of The Fraser Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Western Ontario. He has written, edited, or co- authored many Fraser Institute publications.
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