Regarding Michael Gerson, Roman Catholic thought, and Father Fessio’s ideas conveyed below, I admire Father Fessio very much and have written to tell him so. I’ve seen him on TV fighting the good fight. But in my view the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution arise from strains other than Roman Catholicism per se, more from the Reformation and the Enlightenment, although of course they build on the whole structure of European thought, including the Christian/Catholic Middle Ages. (They do also build to some extent on the ancient world as well, I think, particularly Rome.) It is true that Roman Catholic social thought opposed socialism but it inspired the Christian Democrats of Europe to create semi–socialized states. Not pure socialism of course, because there is private property, corporate enterprise, etc., but there are also heavy taxation, redistribution of income, and cradle to grave entitlement programs. When the French students rioted some time ago in objection to proposed changes in employment law, they did so in the name of a whole ethos different from ours in America. A young man on NPR explained that they objected to our kind of more competitive, individualistic society and wanted to preserve the more secure, more comfortable, less driven kind of society produced by European economic thought. That’s what I was thinking when I made the distinction between “Europe” and “America.”

I believe Samuel Huntington is correct when he writes that the United States would not be the country it is today if it had been settled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants, but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics. If that had been the case, it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil. I wonder if Michael Gerson wrote the speech in which presidential candiate George W. Bush said he was happy that the United States was becoming more like Latin America and that in nominating him the Republican Party was also endorsing that development.