The casual tbag at the end was great <| sep |> Be honest , you probably came here for an ego boost . Might ' ve worked if you had boobs . <| sep |> It doesn ' t take the entire world . It takes one person . <| sep |> There ' s some good stuff there , but the author , while avoiding and clearing up the obvious mistake of thinking Republican economics are conservative makes the opposite mistake of assuming leftwing economics are . They are not . They are also liberal , and even more so than rightwing economics . Is the American rightwing socially conservative ? Yes , and one can ' t be conservative one can ' t be Catholic and not agree with them on social issues . Is the rightwing economically conservative ? No , it is liberal . Is the leftwing economically conservative ? No , it is more liberal . You can ' t be truly conservative and thus truly Catholic and agree with either side . I can best demonstrate the origin of the mistake by looking at this paragraphSo for many years I have refused to identify as a conservative nor to place myself on the supposed leftright spectrum . A few political scientists have suggested a more sophisticated division , with a fourfold schema of libertarians little or no state action on either economic or family issues conservatives state intervention in family issues but not in the economy liberals state regulation of the economy , but not of family issues and traditionalists state intervention in both areas . This is certainly a superior way of looking at the matter , but I am not sure even it is completely adequate . For it seems to me that there are fundamental issues here that go back to questions about the origin and purpose of the state which this division does not deal with . The truly fundamental issue with this is that , in Traditional Catholic thought there is no state as such . The State is an invention of the Enlightenment . So , any idea that includes state intervention is starting from a liberal position . Instead , Catholic political philosophy starts with rulers , concrete individuals who are given by God and not some mythical social contract the authority to govern , and who are held personally responsible , by Him , for their execution of it . There is no abstract , amorphous thing called the state . The rulers have a paternal responsibility to the ruled to , as a good father of the people , to protect them , teach them , and care for them and while that absolutely implies conservative morality enforced by rulers , it certainly doesn ' t imply either freemarket capitalism or socialism or any combination thereof . It is something alien to both . The paradigm of the spectrum assumes a dichotomy that is false . Traditional Catholic political philosophy also includes the idea that ALL human law must be founded on the Natural Law law is discovered by man , not created by him , and any law not so founded is not law at all Summa III 95 . 2 . And so , the question of economic laws must rest on what is discovered from the Natural Law . We can ' t just make it up . Finally , Catholic social teaching grew out of the tradition and traditional social forms structured according to such political ideas . The one really doesn ' t work without the other .