Mike Maturen Interview Part 1 – The American Solidarity Party

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Michael Maturen, who is from Michigan and is a candidate on the American Solidarity Party and representing the American Solidarity Party is on the Dude Maker Hotline with us.  We’ve got a chance to ask a real, live presidential candidate a little bit about his platform, a little bit about the American Solidarity Party, and a little bit about the cultural and moral quagmire, the toxic soup in which we are all being marinated these days that we call a cult.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  . . . Michael Maturen, who is from Michigan and is a candidate on the American Solidarity Party and representing the American Solidarity Party.  We’ve got a chance to ask a real, live presidential candidate a little bit about his platform, a little bit about the American Solidarity Party, and a little bit about the cultural and moral quagmire, the toxic soup in which we are all being marinated these days that we call a cult; it’s not a cult because it doesn’t cultivate, so it’s got to be an anti-cult.  Mike, welcome to the Mike Church Show here on the Crusade Channel, part of the Veritas Radio Network, radio the way it should be.  I believe, my friend, you will be the first presidential candidate that we have ever had.  How are you?

Michael Maturen:  I am fantastic.  Thanks for having me on, Mike.  I’m honored.

Mike:  We’re honored to have you.  First of all, let’s get down to brass tacks.  If I mispronounced your name, please correct me.

Maturen:  You actually got it exactly right.  I was surprised.

Mike:  Michael Maturen, okay.  You are from the great State of Michigan, which our sponsor, Todd McClure, is from, from McClure Tables.  I don’t know if you know Todd or of McClure Tables.  They make some fantastic products up in Michigan, hand made by Michigan labor.  You’re running with the American Solidarity Party.  Can you tell the folks out there a little bit about the American Solidarity Party first?

Maturen:  Sure.  The American Solidarity Party was first formed in 2011 here, obviously, in the United States.  It was then known as the Christian Democracy Party USA.

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Sometime after that they changed their name to the American Solidarity Party to kind of reflect our core principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, and distributism.  Our platform is largely based on Catholic social teaching, although I must say that we are not an exclusively Catholic party.  We have members from all across the religious spectrum and the non-religious spectrum as well.  Some would call us a centrist party, but it is not in the terms that American politics would consider centrist, which would mean no opinion.  We really do have an opinion.  We’re solidly pro-life, but we’re pro-life for the whole life.  We follow Catholic social teaching.  In addition to opposing abortion, which is where most pro-lifers end, we also oppose the death penalty.  All life is precious in God’s eyes.  As far as fiscally, we probably would be considered center-left because we do believe in a social safety net, but we are not a leftist party as far as big government do everything for its citizens kind of approach.

Mike:  When you say social safety net, though, you’re talking about a real, charitable, from the theological virtue of charity-based safety net; right?

Maturen:  Absolutely.  One of the concepts of subsidiarity teaches that things that can be done at a smaller and more local level efficiently and well should be done at that level.  The upper levels of government should only intervene when necessary.  That would then mean, as far as a social safety net, we should rely on our religious institutions – churches, synagogues, mosques, other charitable organizations – for that help, but then have something available.  If we’re going to be truly pro-life and we say that women should have these babies but they can’t afford to raise a child, there should be something in place that truly would provide life, which is what we believe in, for that family.  That’s not to say a multi-generational lifestyle, but it is to say that we have to be able to provide the basic necessities for those who are unable to provide it for themselves.  Whether that comes from charitable organizations or some level of government, that is a kind of [unintelligible] act, if you will.

Mike:  I don’t think most people that fancy themselves as traditionalists or “conservatives” or evangelicals or Catholics that consider themselves to be very devout, I don’t really think that there is as visceral and as forceful of an opposition to their local government, in their town or in their county, having a social safety net of sorts where you can keep an eye on it, where you know the people that are actually using and partaking of the social safety net, where you could actually say: No, you’ve got to go to the next county over; this one is for ours.  Actually acting upon the charitable command to feed the poor, clothe the naked, and care for the sick.  Government or a public entity – we made the word government so toxic and it shouldn’t be toxic.  As long as it’s for the public good and the common good, we need government.  Government is not always our enemy.  See St. King Louis IX as an example.  I don’t think people oppose solidarity if you explain it to them from the local point of view.  Have you had the chance to do that, and what’s the reaction?

Maturen:  Most, like you say, agree with the idea.  Most people are charitable.  Most people want to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves, the elderly, the underprivileged, the sick.  The problem is, when federal government gets involved, most often it gets overinvolved.  It becomes, as we see in our society today, we have multi-generations of families on welfare, when what government should be doing is not only providing that safety net, but trying to provide a means to educate folks, get them some job training, get them out into the workforce so that they can help themselves.  Number one, that’s the right thing to do.  Number two, it brings a sense of pride to that person and to that family, and then they want to continue in the work world instead of living off the government.  I don’t think most people that are receiving welfare benefits really take great pride in that.  We do need to come up with a way, my personal opinion, and in the opinion, I think, of most reasonable human beings, to provide for them while they – welfare initially was meant as a, like I’ve said, a safety net, not a way of life.  It’s a temporary way to get someone through a rough time until they can get on their own two feet.  That’s what we need to get back to.  That’s what solidarity and distributism and subsidiarity are all about, getting back down to the local level, like you mentioned.  Then, if that’s not working well, then go up to the higher level.  That’s when they step in.  That’s what subsidiarity teaches.

Mike:  That’s exactly what it teaches.  Michael Maturen is the American Solidarity Party’s candidate for the presidency here in 2016.  You’d find company in some pretty unlikely places.  For example, I’ve had conversations, many conversations, some of them here on air, with my good friend who fancies himself a libertarian, although he is a Catholic libertarian, which is almost a contradiction, Tom Woods.  Tom Woods has written books, many books, Politically Incorrect Guide to American History; Meltdown; Nullification, books that many people have.  Tom is a big promoter, because he’s a great student of history, and defender of subsidiarity.  I think where most people don’t understand subsidiarity, subsidiarity will work and did work and has worked – there’s quite a significant track record of subsidiarity working – provided that you have what John Adams called for, which is a moral people.  Of course, I’m not so sure that Adams would have been able to identify them.  Subsidiarity does work in a Christian population that has the order correct.  That’s what I want to get into next here.

Let’s talk about the order here for just a moment.  It’s our belief here on the Crusade Channel that our order in our public affairs is backwards.  We can’t have governments that are answerable to men.  Governments have to be answerable to the eternal law of Almighty God.  You begin with the Commandments, and then use Catholic social teaching – we can call it the Magisterium, we can call it 2,000 years of moral teaching written down in catechisms.  We know what’s right; we know what’s wrong.  We can’t have governments that are going to perform the common good if they’re going to contravene those things, or if they’re going to allow people to contravene those things and continue to be upstanding members of society.  We think that that’s where the real reform has got to come.  We’ve got to get the order right.

In the 1870s, the National Reform Alliance actually had a series of conventions.  In 1874 they proposed – these were all Protestants.  They proposed an amendment to the Constitution that never made it out of committee in Congress.  What it basically did was amend the preamble.  It amended the preamble to try and get the order correct.  Congress had to stop making laws – the federal government could make no laws that were in contravention of the eternal law.  How do you see the future based on the order of things?

Maturen:  As a devout Christian Catholic, I would agree with your assessment.  Unfortunately, we have gotten so far beyond – I’ve said for a long time now that we’re living in a post-Christian country.

Mike:  Indeed.

Maturen:  I don’t think it’s impossible to get that back.  One of the brilliant things that the founders did was to say that the government can’t get involved in religion.  Let me restate that.  The Constitution does not guarantee freedom from religion.  It guarantees freedom of religion.  All folks in this country are free to practice their religion as they see fit, although they’re kind of contravening that with the conscious laws and all of that, which we’ve gone way beyond what the Constitution even comes close to say.  That’s not to say that religion can’t and shouldn’t have an influence on government; it should.  I have a lot of atheist friends who say that religion needs to be out of government and no laws should be written based on religion.  If that’s the case, then all of our country’s laws virtually would have to be wiped off the books, including the law against murder.  That’s based on nothing but the Ten Commandments.  We have to face the fact that this country is a Christian nation in its founding, but we’re an open nation in that anybody can come in and practice their religion freely.

However, that being said, we need to establish a moral people, as you said John Adams said, in order that we make laws that will be good for all people.  The whole principle of solidarity is: Hey, we’re all in this together.  Whether you’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, doesn’t matter.  We are in this together.  We can win this together if we band together and take those moral laws – all of those religions have certain moral codes and moral laws.  If we would get together on the things that we can get together on, I think the face of this nation would change, the charitability of this nation would change, and I think we would be more at peace, we would have more prosperity if all of us would just focus on those things that we do have in common.  Those things that we don’t have in common, that’s for them to practice their religion as they see fit.  Now, when somebody else’s rights start to abridge my rights or your rights, that’s where it ends.

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Mike:  Without getting the order correct – this is one of the things that 19^th century author, I believe he began as a Methodist and then wound up converting to Catholicism, Orestes Brownson – Brownson wrestled with this and finally said: All right.  That’s it; I’ve had it.  He wrote that magnificent treatise of his called The American Republic.  The entire work is about correcting the order.  I would say long before there were distributists, that Brownson sounds to me like he would have been a distributist.  Let’s get to the final leg of the stool, if you will.

Michael Maturen, the candidate for the American Solidarity Party for the presidency is on the Dude Maker Hotline.  Before we get to economics, how many ballots are you going to be on, all 50?

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Maturen:  No.  Unfortunately these United States have weighed heavily against any minor party.  For instance, in my state of Michigan, in order to get on the ballot, a minor party must have 30,000 signatures, which is, for a small startup party, next to impossible.  We’re going to be a write-in in a large number of states.  Some states you can be a write-in and have the votes counted without registering.  Others you have to register.  We have registered in those states where we can.  We do have ballot access in the State of Colorado.  We will be on the ballot there.  We are currently in the process in Florida.  We’re hoping to be on the ballot in Florida, which will be a huge thing.  We are a registered write-in in the State of Texas.  The way the State of Texas works is, if you’re a write-in candidate, your name not only appears as a list next to the sample ballot at all the polling places, but your name also appears on a list in each and every voting booth.  I think in Texas we’re probably going to do quite well because of that.  The rest of the states – there are nine states, I believe, that don’t allow write-ins at all.  Those states we will not be able to – people can still write us in, but the vote won’t be counted.

End Mike Church Show Transcript