![\"1024px-Funny_Direction_Sign\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2015\/08\/1024px-Funny_Direction_Sign.jpg\")
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So here\u2019s the deal: \u00a0if you\u2019re a progressive Democrat who believes that abortion has no real moral dimension, all it takes to vote for Hillary is some fairly standard, \u201cwhen it comes to my guy, any accusations of misdeeds are clearly overblown and exaggerations by my opponents,\u201d and you\u2019re good to go.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s say that\u2019s not you. \u00a0Let\u2019s say you\u2019re a Christian. You\u2019re pro-life. You care about the future of the country, but you also believe in being fiscally responsible. You want to vote for someone who has neither done anything morally offensive nor criminal.<\/p>\n
If you read your twitter feed, or your facebook news feed, or any number of blogs, you know that your fellow believers are divided between \u201cit\u2019s a grave sin to vote for Trump\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s a grave sin to vote for Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n
But guess what? \u00a0There is no one single morally right decision on November 8th.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a judgement call. \u00a0It\u2019s an evaluation of likelihoods and risks. \u00a0And different people can reasonably come to different decisions about those risks.<\/p>\n
Quick comparison: \u00a0we are commanded to care for the poor. \u00a0Progressives like to say that we are thus morally obliged to support generous government benefits, but reasonable people can believe otherwise \u2014 can believe that the command is hardly as specific as that, and that the command can be heeded by private charity, and that very generous social welfare benefits can do more harm than good.<\/p>\n
But here we are, with two terrible candidates, as well as some impossible-odds third choices.<\/p>\n
Trump? \u00a0You can rule him out entirely for his behavior toward women, or Trump University and his other financial scandals, or you can evaluate his possible performance as president.<\/p>\n
Clinton? \u00a0You can rule her out entirely for her husband\u2019s behavior toward women, or the trail of greed and corruption in her private server, the Clinton Foundation, etc., or you can evaluate her possible performance as president.<\/p>\n
Is Trump\u2019s profession of a conversion to the pro-life cause genuine, or will he lose interest as soon as the election is over? \u00a0It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess, as far as I\u2019m concerned \u2014 but there are others who are convinced of the genuineness of his belief.<\/p>\n
Is Clinton\u2019s plan to provide public funding for abortion, as well as her alignment with an unapologitic \u201ccelebrate your abortion\u201d Democratic Party, going to produce a massive increase in the number of abortions? \u00a0Or will a Republican congressional majority force her to stay with the status quo?<\/p>\n
Is Trump going to come to the rescue of hardworking Americans, by enforcing our immigration laws, or will he prove to be indifferent upon taking office?<\/p>\n
How far will Clinton go in her plans for amnesty? \u00a0Will a Republican congressional majority keep her in check, or will they be happy to lend her support?<\/p>\n
Will Trump in fact implement a tariff? \u00a0And what impact would that have on the economy?<\/p>\n
Which of them will put peace at greater risk? \u2014 will Trump\u2019s seeming indifference to Russian aggression lead them to move in on Poland or the Baltics, or will his rash thin-skinnedness provoke an extremely dangerous 3 AM decision? \u00a0Or will Clinton\u2019s aggressive rhetoric against Russia lead to a proxy or direct war in Syria?<\/p>\n
These are all evaluations of risk \u2013 a supremely actuarial specialty. \u00a0But I am not going to claim that my actuarial skills are up to the task of assessing these risks. \u00a0My point is simply that those who make a different determination than you have not done anything immoral.<\/p>\n
And even the fundamental question \u2014 is one of the two so dangerous, so risky, so likely to cause irreparable\u00a0harm, that all the other\u2019s flaws simply have to be overlooked?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know. \u00a0I can\u2019t give you a risk level, or an expected value calculation. \u00a0But if your decision\u00a0is different than your neighbors, well, that\u2019s not an indicator of moral superiority or moral failure.<\/p>\n
And, yes, I know that many people consider this election to be, as any other, a matter of first and foremost voting for the pro-life candidate. \u00a0But if you suspect that candidate is only taking that position to get electoral support, and it might well evaporate afterwards, and worry that his Supreme Court nominees might be just as pro-Roe as the rest of them, and, what\u2019s more think the chances of him starting a major war (rather than, let\u2019s face it, minor war such as Iraq) are too great \u2014 that\u2019s a bit of a different situation. \u00a0And nothing in moral theology makes the decision for you of whether it\u2019s a \u201cwasted vote\u201d to choose a third-party\/independent candidate, does it?<\/p>\n
I know that I, personally, can\u2019t pull the trigger for either one of them. \u00a0I\u2019ll go with McMullin, fully aware that his chances are about the same as winning the lottery. \u00a0I know that turns the election over to others, and I\u2019m OK with that \u2014 though I admit that I can\u2019t really say whether my answer would be different if my vote mattered, because it doesn\u2019t, not here in Illinois.<\/p>\n
So be nice to each other, would\u2019ja?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
image: \u00a0from Wikimedia Commons,\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AFunny_Direction_Sign.Jpg;\u00a0By Tolukra (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So here\u2019s the deal: \u00a0if you\u2019re a progressive Democrat who believes that abortion has no real moral dimension, all it takes to vote for Hillary is some fairly standard, \u201cwhen it comes to my guy, any accusations of misdeeds are clearly overblown and exaggerations by my opponents,\u201d and you\u2019re good to go. But let\u2019s say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":2542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[442],"class_list":["post-5525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-election-2016"],"yoast_head":"\n