Here’s a poor, unsuccessful letter I sent to the editor of The Washington Post:

Michael Gerson’s claim that “Catholic social teaching is simply not libertarian” [“A Catholic Test for Politics,” Feb. 8], reveals that Gerson either does not understand Catholicism, or libertarianism, or both. Immediately thereafter, he cites many libertarian aspects of Catholic social teaching: “the necessity of limited government,” subsidiarity, respecting the human rights of “even illegal immigrants,” etc. When he claims that repealing ObamaCare or government funding for AIDS and malaria conflicts with Catholic social teaching, he ignores that government coercion is inherent in those policies. Is Gerson claiming that Catholic social teaching condones using violence or the threat of violence to heal the sick? Catholics who reject those policies do so because they want to heal the sick through peaceful, non-coercive means. They cast their lots with Christ – not Caesar, as Gerson recommends. Gerson should spend some time learning about libertarianism, from actual libertarians. I would be happy to arrange it.

Just another uninformed potshot from the columnist who sees libertarianism’s emphasis on limited government as “morally empty,” “anti-government,” “a scandal,” “an idealism that strangles mercy,” and guilty of “rigorous ideological coldness.”