In a Nutshell

A few weeks ago, Rebecca did a “Can of Worms” series on Catholics and Voting/Public Life. I did a guest post for that series. However, I wish I had read Mark Shea’s post on a similar topic before I wrote my post, because I would have quoted it. As such, I’m going to quote it now. Because it’s basically how I view politics and voting in this day and age.

“I have abandoned the game of supporting candidates who advertise themselves as “30% less evil than the other leading brand.” I will not support candidates of any stripe who ask me to support intrinsic grave evil. Please don’t tell me that’s expecting perfection. It’s not. It’s a bare minimum request for least common denominator civic decency. I don’t ask perfection of either GOP or Dem. I simply ask that they stop telling me I have to support policies which Catholic moral teaching describes as “worthy of the fires of hell”. Both parties do this in various ways, therefore I will not support any candidate from either party that does. Conversely, if any candidate from either party tells me he will not be supporting grave and intrinsic evil, I will at least consider voting for him. So far, the pickings are slim.”

“I don’t think conservatives (real ones, I mean) are the scum of the earth. I don’t think our Faith allows us to think of people that way, even really scummy people like child molestors, terrorists, and what not, much less mere fellow citizens of a different political persuasion. As to conservatives, I consider myself one. However, much thinking that calls itself conservative today is not about conserving anything. It is about sucking the economy dry on nation-building experiments, radical expansions of power for Caesar, salvation through leviathan by any means necessary and, last but not least, exploitation of sincere and well-meaning social conservatives via the continual false promise that, eventually, our “conservative” pols will do something about abortion. When serious effort is made to raise the US above sub-Carthaginian levels of respect for the unborn, I will take the GOP seriously. But in fact, the GOP leadership has no real interest in the problem and they never will until social conservative get off the reservation and make it clear we are serious. So, for now, I vote for third party candidates who do not ask me to support grave sin and pray for the day when mainstream conservatism actually stops spending money like drunken sailors, anointing Talk Show hosts who care nothing about gay “marriage” as their de facto leaders, and enthusiastically endorsing war crimes as the means of saving America.”

That’s basically how I feel, in a nutshell.

You can read the whole article here, and it is very good.