A Modest Proposal

Landscape, unidentified Canadian national park.

The standard line emerging on the left, and among the gilets jaunes of France, is that it is immoral to spend either public or private money rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral while people anywhere are starving.

They would seem to have a point. Surely any money would be better spent on the basic material needs of those who are poor? 

Starving child. While rich foreigner can apparently afford a camera.

But let’s apply the principle consistently. Odd that it only comes up now, in the case of religious buildings. We should also by that logic sell off all our national, provincial or municipal parks. We can give the money to the poor, and the land can then be put into production. More food for everyone; but this is especially important to the poor and starving. We should also sell off any museums and public art galleries; these are obviously luxuries. Sell all the artifacts to rich collectors, as no doubt we would if we were shutting down Notre Dame, and give the money to the poor. After all, the poor cannot afford the admission to get in to the galleries and museums anyway.

You know the one place the poor can always get to see such things of beauty and significance, though? The one place they are free? Churches.

But the poor apparently do not need beauty in their lives, or meaning, or entertainment, or escape from the unhappy moment. They need only food and shelter.

There is another reason, too, why we should sell off all the parks. Many these days worship nature. They speak of “Gaea,” “the Earth our Mother,” “Evolution did this”; “Nature intended that”; and “Mother Nature.” I attended a live lecture once by David Suzuki; publicly funded with tax dollars, of course. He spent it arguing that nature was sacred, and declaring his lifelong devotion to the “sacred elements.” He meant the old Greek quaternity: earth, air, fire, water. Their purity must be preserved.

Mandala of the four classical elements.

 
Given, then, that nature is a religion now, it is obviously a violation of the separation of church and state to fund public parks. At least if we are not going to fund churches equally.

Just as there are still churches, without government support there no doubt would still be parks and museums. Indeed, on the model of churches, they could and should all be admission free. As it stands, most national parks are, unlike churches, simply not available to the poor.

But even this would not be enough for the left. They are objecting even and specifically to private funds being spent on Notre Dame.

So we must have no parks or museums either, even privately-funded, under any circumstances. We must surely also object to anyone spending money building amusement parks, cinemas, theatres, tourist hotels, or restaurants. All are purely luxury goods. People are starving!

Indeed, even so, there is still a better argument for spending on churches than on any of these other things. Not just that churches, unlike all these other luxury goods, are accessible to the poorest of the poor. Aside from that, it is, after all, at least possible that there is a world and a life after this present one. Those who build churches of course think so. And it is believed to be eternal, while this one is transitory. If so, not having enough money for food right now may be trivial in comparison to preparing for this forever. Since each individual eternal life saved is infinite in length, restoring Notre Dame might be of more value than an infinite number of relaxing weekends in nature here on earth.

One cannot under any generally accepted premise say the same for parks. Even the nature worshippers see no path blazed from them to eternal life.