Civil Society and You

From a campaign speech by Paul Ryan in the past hour or so in Cleveland, Ohio:

So what is government’s duty when it comes to the institutions of civil society? Basically, it is to secure their rights, respect their purposes, and preserve their freedom.

Nothing undermines the essential and honorable work these groups do quite like the abuse of government power.  Take what happened this past January, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules requiring Catholic hospitals, charities and universities to violate their deepest principles. Never mind your own conscience, they were basically told – from now on you’re going to do things the government’s way.

This mandate isn’t just a threat to religious charities. It’s a threat to all those who turn to them in times of need. In the name of strengthening our safety net, this mandate and others will weaken it.

The good news? When Mitt Romney is president, this mandate will be gone, and these groups will be able to continue the good work they do. 

But it’s not just the abuses of government that undermine civil society – it’s also the excesses of government.  Look at the road we are on, with trillion-dollar deficits every year.  Debt on this scale is destructive in so many ways, and one of them is that it crowds out civil society by drawing resources away from private giving.  

Even worse is the prospect of a debt crisis, which will come unless we do something very soon. When government’s own finances collapse, society’s most vulnerable are the first victims, as we are seeing right now in the troubled welfare states of Europe.  Many there feel that they have nowhere to turn for help, and we must never let that happen in America. 

Where government is entrusted with providing a safety net, Mitt Romney and I have our own vision for how to keep it strong. It is a vision that leaves the failures of the past in the past, and proposes instead to build on those reforms that have worked. 

For starters, a Romney-Ryan administration will clearly restore those parts of the welfare-reform law that have been undone or weakened. We will do this for the sake of millions of Americans who deserve to lead lives of dignity and freedom.

We have so much more at stake in this election than most people realize...and we need to succeed at every level from the presidency to the Senate to the House.