Catholics, health care, women, Taliban

fpb is a pro-life Catholic I know of from johncwright's LJ, so I think of him as right-wing. But he's also Italian or British and living in Britain, so when it comes to universal health care he has some differing opinions. Also this on health care, taxation, voting, and citizenship. Vs. Wright's "The free market is the mechanism, and the only mechanism to make the rich man answerable to the common man.". (Really, James, if OSC isn't being provocative enough, what with his supporting the banking bailout, you're missing another gold mine for baiting your readers.)

He's also got something interesting on monasticism and the role of women in Western Europe. More randomly, Pope Benedict has apparently lifted the excommunication on the Lefebvrists. "Nazi Pope embraces Nazi schismatics."

New Yorker article by Gawande on the path dependence of universal health cares. E.g. the British NHS is rooted in WWII experience; France's system is rooted in its labor movement; etc. Thus he advises against radical remakes of the US system... of course, that still leaves us a choice between aggressive expansion of Medicare (which already works) vs. patching private insurance coverage, or even (unlikely) aggressive expansion of the VA hospitals.

It occurs to me (again) that while we can assume Jesus, as a Jew, was against any form of infanticide, the Gospels don't say anything about abortion. Neither does Paul or the rest of the Bible, it seems. Thought prompted by a Catholic LJ thread bemoaning Obama's lifting of the gag rule, and a comment bemoaning our spending "money we don't have" on international social programs to feed the poor. Because I remember three strong messages from the Gospels: "believe in Me", "don't divorce", and "help the poor, even unto all the wealth you have."

Bush's legacy: failing to defeat the Taliban.