Capitalism is in worse shape than I thought if people like Barr at Notre-Dame’s law school three weeks ago or Marco Rubio this week at the Catholic University of America feel that they need to have recourse to dubious moral philosophy or nineteenth-century Catholic encyclicals in their hot pursuit of moral rearmament at the individual or government level (Barr) and in boardrooms and union shops (Rubio). As Catholics, they could simply begin by rereading the story of the Samaritan businessman in the gospel of Luke… It is an impossible task to defend capitalism when it has long been clear that it destroys community and the public good in general. Its sharing, as in the sharing economy, has become an obscenity. Oh, it does depend upon individual freedoms alright (remember the “go shopping” of GW Bush after 2001?), but it ends up gnawing at human dignity and freedom from deep inside our souls. Marcus Aurelius is of no help when the gospel is turned into a farcical prosperity revival. Politicians who shamelessly insist on yawing and tacking between Trump and some form of unregulated capitalism had better read Leviathan.