Those on the right may differ from those on the left on the applicability of subsidiarity, seeking to keep the solution local rather than growing the state. (Though there are plenty on the left who are interested in relocalization, just not many Catholic Democrats.)
Mr. Reno writes:
Want to help the poor? By all means pay your taxes and give to agencies that provide social services. By all means volunteer in a soup kitchen or help build houses for those who can’t afford them. But you can do much more for the poor by getting married and remaining faithful to your spouse. Have the courage to use old-fashioned words such as chaste and honorable. Put on a tie. Turn off the trashy reality TV shows. Sit down to dinner every night with your family. Stop using expletives as exclamation marks. Go to church or synagogue.
In this and other ways, we can help restore the constraining forms of moral and social discipline that don’t bend to fit the desires of the powerful—forms that offer the poor the best, the most effective and most lasting, way out of poverty. That’s the truest preferential option—and truest form of respect—for the poor.
Will these acts really matter if one is not living next to the poor, though? We should be committed to evangelizing and both the corporal and the spiritual works of mercy, but there's very little talk in this piece about the reform of the political economy. There are moral problems, to be sure, at every strata of society, but how many people seeking to make a simple, honest living are being prevented from doing so?
The premise of Mr. Reno's argument:
A Christian who hopes to follow the teachings of Jesus needs to reckon with a singular fact about American poverty: Its deepest and most debilitating deficits are moral, not financial; the most serious deprivations are cultural, not economic. Many people living at the bottom of American society have cell phones, flat-screen TVs, and some of the other goodies of consumer culture. But their lives are a mess.
It's too late for legislation -- what else can work, unless it's conversion or the heavy hand of law (which would do away with the American egalitarian, laissez-faire impulse). The current form of Leviathan, the bureaucratic welfare state isn't sufficient to prevent the demise of the state. More extreme measures would be required.
I can see why Professor Deneen appreciates the piece, with its emphasis on defending the civilizing influences and practices of society , but I don't think it does a good job in evaluating its proposed measures.
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