The Superficiality of Left and Right

Thomas Storck thinks outside the boxes.

Now, given all this, are our present political terms and usage dangerous to Catholic political activity? As I said, if a Catholic looks at or takes part in political activity, at least in the U.S. and most English-speaking countries, he will find all political activity organized around a right/left Lockean perspective. People think of themselves as liberal, moderate, or conservative; they form alliances and appeal to voters based on such perceptions; political commentators present all of our political life as existing within such a Lockean universe. And for most conventional American politicians this is adequate, though they should be aware that their universe is only the Lockean universe, not the entire cosmos. But what does one do with something like the prolife movement? Is it of the Right or the Left? Since it defends the most elemental rights of a defenseless part of the population, the unborn, a grave issue of social justice, one would think that it was a cause 6f the Left. But it is linked in the perceptions of many with the Right because it opposes something considered necessary for sexual freedom by those on the libertine Left. So it looks for allies and spokesmen among those on the Right and unwittingly becomes even more linked with the entire right-wing program. But the prolife movement cannot really be classed on the American/Lockean spectrum, because it is not Lockean. It is not really interested in obtaining material benefits for anyone, as if it supported the right to life only of those who would grow up to be successful. Its concerns arise from an elemental recognition of injustice. But Catholics taking part in the prolife movement easily feel compelled to identify with either the Right or the Left, both because one obviously feels better working with allies and because the reigning conceptual framework urges them to consider themselves one or the other. We naturally classify people and things, and where our classifying tools are flawed and illusory we will usually, unless we think back to first principles, make flawed and illusory classifications.

This problem is equally real for those Catholics working in what we call leftist areas—e.g., for the poor, the homeless, Hispanic immigrants, or for economic justice generally. Usually these Catholics also feel the political and intellectual need to define themselves, and perforce place themselves on the Left. Now, in some cases these Catholics really are left Lockeans, but in other cases they are genuine Catholics who take up leftist causes simply because many of these causes are good. Most of us when placed in a milieu will identify with it and accept it. Thus Catholics who are concerned more with issues our society deems left will usually come to support the entire left program; similarly for those Catholics who are more concerned with issues our society puts on the Right. We Catholics, then, are made to serve others’ agendas and to subordinate a complete vision of Catholic political topics to a set of priorities that is not of our making and is even based on unreality.

We must discover that real Catholic politics are outside the Lockean spectrum, and we must learn to see ourselves as neither right nor left-Lockeans, but as Catholics, who ought to differ from one another only within the clear bounds of permissible Catholic teaching. When once we begin correctly to see ourselves for what we are, it will become harder for various self-interested parties to co-opt us for their own purposes as simply adjuncts of the Right or Left. There are enough Catholics in the U.S. and the world that if we were educated to understand what we are and what we stand for, then political commentators, not to speak of practicing politicians, would have to accommodate themselves to us, and at the same time to the real nature of things, as they realize that not everyone exists and thinks within a Lockean framework.

This was written in the early 90s, a decade or so before it somehow became integral to the prolife movement to support an unjust war of choice and the use of torture. Storck’s warnings about Catholics allowing their prolife convictions to wed them to other right wing agenda items was prophetic. His remarks on the willingness of Catholics to allow their concerns for the poor and disenfranchised to wed them to un-Catholic agenda items (like contempt for the unborn) only missed being prophetic because it already lay in the past and the evidence of it was everywhere.