Secular liberalism and conservatism (1)

Dr David Friggieri (The Sunday Times, May 7) implied that the Catholicism of the Maltese militates against Dr Mario Spiteri's goal of spreading condoms freely among young people. What is needed, suggested Dr Friggieri, is a truly secular state. With the Church out of the picture, common sense and the condom will triumph.

As Malta continues to experience a continued rise in crime, incivility, and births out of wedlock, let us, for argument's sake, give the secular liberals a chance to shape our lives.

Under a philosophy of secular liberalism, the Ministry of Health would set up vans with ice-cream cones, condoms, and syringes. Rolling merrily to jingle-playing loudspeakers, the vans would peddle their free wares around the islands' dusty streets and playgrounds.

Taking a cue from life in Amsterdam, the vans would hand out pot. Pornographic magazines and prostitution services would also be available through these vans.

End result of this new, secular, liberal state?

Our young people will behave the way we treat them. As one American conservative observed, if we treat our young people with dignity and respect, they will act with dignity and treat those around them with respect. If, on the other hand, we treat them like animals on heat and provide them with tools that befit animals on heat, they will behave like animals on heat.

The whole issue turns on how the government views its youth in enacting public and health policies. The issue is not what is secular versus what is religious. Instead, it is what separates the conservatives from the liberals.

In the words of conservative Boris Johnson: "There is one thing that conservatives all have in common, or ought to have in common, and that is a basic Aristotelian belief in the will, and that the individual is the principal agent of his destiny, for good or ill."

Under secular conservatism, as opposed to secular liberalism, it is a travesty when the Maltese government doles out generous welfare benefits to 15-year-old girls because they have just delivered a baby out of wedlock. What message is the government sending to its future generations? That it will reward them with the taxpayer's hard-earned money for their shortcomings? What message is is it sending to young men when it stuffs their pockets with free condoms?

The government should stop dilly-dallying with liberal public policies, and go back to the country's conservative roots. It should distinguish between these two drivers of public policy. It is a hallmark of intellectual laziness that Maltese liberals sweep conservatism under the rug, mistaking it for Catholicism when Catholicism spans across both liberal and conservative agendas.

Christ forgives. Mother Nature does not.

In the face of Mother Nature, liberals and conservatives differ. The liberals happily post the welfare cheque and a boxful of condoms. The conservatives, on the other hand, say: "Tough luck, Joey! Go and earn a living if you want to feed your girlfriend and your child. You rolled the dice of vice; your excuse will cut no ice."

Liberals and conservatives equally differ in their arguments about illegal immigration. Yet, amazingly, many Maltese liberals tend to mistake conservative ideology for Catholic ideology on immigration issues as well, unnecessarily needling Catholics.

Such confusion springs from the fact that the Maltese political scene has been bereft of conservative parties for decades, and as the left-leaning political parties continue to run out of solutions in the face of a rampant global capitalism with all its aches and side-effects, the public looks at the only remaining established ideology in Malta, Catholicism, and finds it wanting since it offers neither an economic nor a political platform.

The Catholic Church is not and does not hold itself out as a political party. In the meantime, conservatism is alive and well in the political reasoning of many Maltese but because it isn't officially represented by any political parties, readers like Dr Friggieri, desperate for tangible evidence of what it is and where it resides, mistake it for the Catholic Church.