Liberals' big rock candy mountain

The problem with liberals is they don't like the way the world is. Now, there is a sense in which we all share that dissatisfaction. Sin has made a wreck of the world and of each of our lives, and it's a mark of good character to recognize that and rebel against it. But liberals and conservatives differ in their attitudes toward the nature of things as God created them to be. There is an order of creation that is good and that no one can violate without unhappy consequences. It is the way things work, not only physically, but also morally.

Against nature, political liberals advocate same-sex marriage and they want women fighting fires, fighting in wars, and doing all the manliest things alongside the hardest men. They believe that overcoming natural sexual distinctions is progress, i.e., that it's not only possible and permissible, but also desirable. But as the old saying goes, "God always forgives (when asked through Christ), people sometimes forgive, nature never forgives."

This divinely established order also governs the effective creation and just distribution of wealth. But liberals want broadly distributed prosperity simply by government imposition. Anyone who questions this system of well-intentioned giveaways they call "heartless," even though in the end it produces the very suffering it was intended to relieve.

Ten years ago, Congress made private banks give mortgages to people who could not afford houses. Nature took its course, gave us a housing bubble, and then the system imploded. Sadly, where I live, the concentrations of foreclosed homes are all in poorer, minority neighborhoods. With friends like these in Congress, who needs enemies?

In your personal life, you know that you have to live within limits. Though you need a host of good things-a nice vacation after a trying year, bodywork on your rusting but still running car, siding for your aging home, generous gifts for neighbors and relatives in need-if you just spend your way down the list you go broke. You could borrow the money, but there are limits to what you can finance. People who spend on impulse, whether noble or selfish, without regard for these limits go bankrupt.

All too often, a liberal in Congress is someone who doesn't recognize any natural limitations to government spending on entitlements and social programs. If there is a human need, there must be a corresponding government program, and the national line of credit is endless. Never mind that the need is naturally addressed by family, neighbor, or church. In its attempt to defy the laws of economic gravity, this "progressive" approach to economic justice must eventually end in national bankruptcy as we have seen in Europe, a moderate example, and communism, an extreme one.

There is a limit to how long you can pretend the world is a big rock candy mountain "where the handouts grow on bushes." Even the Greeks are seeing that.