The two guys who resonate with me in the current presidential race are the two Catholics running, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Catholic thought on the economy is rather centrist, pointing out that neither free markets nor big government is the answer and that a healthy blend of the two best helps the commonweal and the Kingdom of God (that's a loose paraphrase; the Catholic members of the Peanut Gallery are encouraged to chime in and correct and clarify).
That Catholic though covers a lot of political territory, going from third-way moderate socialists like Tony Blair to free-market friendly Michael Novak.
What does evangelical though on the economy cover? .....................
....sleet softly falls to ground in background.......
Not a heck of a lot. Most American evangelical politicians are taking the cues from secular thinkers, like classic Austrian liberals Hayak and von Mieses and American Milton Friedman; Rand gets some following for her libertarian fiction but her militant atheism makes her a harder sell. They were poor fits in the modern political paradigm, for the God-and-country conservatism of continental Europe held little appeal to Hayak.
Thus, modern conservative orthodoxy in the US is a melding of theological conservatism, American exceptionalism and classic liberal/libertarian economics. Freedom, rather than commonweal, is the economic order of the day.
Modern conservative economics is rather godless. The liberal Christian can quote scripture on needing to help the poor, while conservative politicians who are quick to quote the Bible on social issues are relatively mute beyond a few basics like the parable of the talents.
Does perferring the Catholic school of thought to the libertarian school make me a pro-life statist? That may be preferable to being a pro-life minarchist, as many modern rightists seem to be, if letting the needy fend for themselves is the rule of the day on the right.
No, I'm not becoming a Democrat anytime soon, not as it is presently constituted. I'm still on board with the idea of limited government, but not like one of those bad calculus class frameworks where the limit of the function where government approaches zero.
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