When Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico cites biblical texts to justify expanded health care, veteran support, or immigrant protections, he is doing more than making a policy pitch. According to a recent column in American Thinker, he is blurring a line that has caused “misguided, misplaced, or absolutely ineffective programs” for nearly a century.
The piece, written by Frank Ryan, takes direct aim at Talarico’s habit of weaving scripture into his campaign messaging, a practice NPR has documented as part of the candidate’s stump speech in church pulpits and political venues alike.
Ryan’s core complaint is not that Talarico cares about the poor. It is that Talarico is conflating compassion with public policy. “With compassion comes responsibility,” Ryan writes. “Without responsibility and a moral compass, chaos will reign supreme in our nation.”
The argument is a familiar one in conservative circles, but Ryan frames it with a distinctly personal and theological lens, drawing on Christian teachings about individual moral duty.
The commandment was not to Congress
Ryan’s central claim is that Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor was “not directed to Congress.” It was not conditioned on government programs, and it did not ask anyone to assess how much a stranger should contribute before fulfilling the obligation. “It was personal,” he insists.
The problem, as Ryan sees it, is that modern political culture has collapsed every human need into a policy question: What should government do about it? This reflex, he argues, erases the moral responsibility that belongs to individuals, families, churches, and voluntary organizations.
Ryan does not let conservatives off the hook either. If a person opposes government programs on the grounds that private charity should step in, that person must also be able to answer: What am I personally doing about the problem? “It is difficult to argue that helping the poor is a personal responsibility while personally doing very little to help them,” he writes.
Markets need a moral compass
The column extends beyond Talarico to a broader critique of how Americans talk about economics. Ryan argues that we have become trapped in a binary: either the market solves a problem, or the government does. But there has always been a third sphere, civil society, that performs functions neither markets nor government handle particularly well.
Ryan draws on Adam Smith, often remembered only for The Wealth of Nations and the invisible hand. But Smith, Ryan notes, also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a work that understood human beings as more than economic calculators. “Responsible capitalism requires something government cannot manufacture: a moral compass.”
Economic freedom, Ryan argues, increases individual responsibility. But it cannot survive without a society that practices generosity voluntarily.
Subsidiarity and the Tenth Amendment
Ryan invokes Catholic social teaching, specifically the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that responsibility should be exercised at the most immediate capable level. He draws a parallel, though not an equivalence, with the U.S. Constitution’s structure of enumerated powers and the Tenth Amendment’s reservation of powers to the states “or to the people.”
Those last four words, Ryan stresses, deserve more attention. Not every responsibility that doesn’t belong to Washington automatically falls to state government. “Some responsibilities belong to us, the people.”
Ryan acknowledges this does not settle tough constitutional questions about federal spending. But he argues it is a better starting point than immediately asking government to solve every problem it identifies.
The danger of abstractions
When assistance becomes detached from human relationships, Ryan warns, both sides become abstractions. Taxpayers become one group, recipients another. The inevitable result is resentment: one side believes too much is being taken, the other believes too little is being given. Political leaders can stoke both perceptions for their own benefit.
“We should at least recognize the risk of designing systems in which the giver never encounters the recipient,” Ryan writes, “and the recipient never encounters the giver.”
He turns to the parable of the Good Samaritan as a corrective. The Samaritan did not petition Rome to establish a roadside assistance program. He used his own resources, accepted personal inconvenience, and became a neighbor.
“Government can require me to contribute to caring for my neighbor,” Ryan writes. “Government cannot require me to become his neighbor.”
A warning for both parties
Ryan’s essay is not a blanket condemnation of government programs. He concedes that material needs are real and that sometimes only government has the scale to address them reliably. But he insists that meeting a material need and loving another human being are not the same act. “A healthy society needs both.”
His final warning is aimed at defenders of economic freedom. If every social need becomes the government’s responsibility because individuals and communities decline to accept their own, government will grow to fill the vacuum. “The alternative to government compulsion is responsibility.”
Or, as Ryan puts it more pointedly: “If we want less compulsion, we must accept more responsibility. If we want freedom, we must demonstrate that freedom can coexist with compassion.”
For Talarico, a candidate who has made faith central to his public identity, the critique is likely to find a receptive audience among conservative voters who see government expansion as a threat to both liberty and genuine charity. Whether it changes any minds in the pews Talarico hopes to reach is another matter entirely.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/james-talarico-s-faulty-government-charity/