On his Wednesday radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh accused Pope Francis of going beyond religion and into politics in his latest apostolic exhortation attacking “unfettered capitalism” and condemning the “idolatry of money”
Francis’ latest writings condemned the global economic system.
“Now, as I mentioned before, I’m not Catholic,” Limbaugh said. “I admire it profoundly, and I’ve been tempted a number of times to delve deeper into it, but the pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here, and this is pure political.”
“I’ve got to be very careful,” Limbaugh continued. “I have been numerous times to the Vatican. It wouldn’t exist without tons of money. But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope. Unfettered capitalism? That doesn’t exist anywhere. Unfettered capitalism is a liberal socialist phrase to describe the United States. Unfettered, unregulated.”
Limbaugh pointed to socialist philosophy, noting that everywhere it has been applied it has destroyed wealth and spread poverty.
“Wherever socialists have gained power, they have done nothing but spread poverty,” he said. “They cannot and do not produce wealth. They do not understand it. All they can do is destroy it. They are not compassionate. They coerce. And to hear the Pope regurgitating this stuff, I was profoundly disappointed — the idolatry of money, urging ‘politicians to ‘attack the structural causes of inequality’ and strive to provide work, health care and education to all citizens.’”
Where the Pope called on humanity to share wealth, Limbaugh pointed out that the United States, with its supposedly capitalist economy, is one of the most charitable countries on Earth. But even those charitable contributions aren’t enough to raise everyone in the world out of poverty compared to what free markets can do.
“The Pope ‘also called on rich people to share their wealth,’” Limbaugh said. “We were just talking about the charitable donations and contributions that existed in this country, and they are profound. The United States is near the top of the list in the world of charitable countries, but even with all the charity, and it is tremendous, it cannot compete with capitalism in elevating people out of poverty. There is nothing the world has ever devised that has elevated more people out of poverty than capitalism.”
“Look at the United States,” he continued. “How can you deny, how can anybody objectively analyzing and looking, deny the United States became a superpower? In less than 250 years, the United States became a military, economic superpower devoted to the concepts of freedom here and everywhere else around the world. We were the defenders of freedom, our own and others’. In less than 250 years, a nation of, for the most part fewer than 300 million people, produced an economy that created the highest standard of living the world has ever known. We fed the world, produced so much food, more than we ever needed ourselves. We were able to feed the world, and after doing all of that, we were able to provide disaster relief for anywhere else in the world that it occurred, where it was accepted.”