Politics gets a bad name for itself. Too often it is just cynically dismissed. Political cynicism is one of those bipartisan values. It’s embraced by moderates and reactionaries. I certainly do understand the frustrations, having fallen into the temptation myself. While we can entertain a myriad of logical possibilities toward solving our societal problems in our ideological sanctuaries, politics smothers those possibilities into metaphysical ones that aren’t always inclusive of our fifth preference, let alone our first.
Politics contains many unpleasant truths. For example, in the abortion “debate” – I put debate in scare quotes because there is only one side to the debate with two fringes, one fringe that I’m albeit sympathetic towards – there is a clear plurality of people that are opposed to criminalization in well over 90% of the cases that abortion is sought. The only clear opposition for abortion occurs in cases where the mother is healthy and unvictimized, the child doesn’t have a birth defect, and the second trimester has begun. (This poll shows support for legal abortion in at least some circumstances to be 81%.) While there are more people that find abortion distasteful in the first trimester, in concrete circumstances there is almost no political will to criminalize it. While the poll result is dismissed wherever it is brought up, Americans clearly state they do not want Roe v. Wade overturned. As LifeNews put it, “60 percent said no while a new high of 38 percent said the favor reversing the case.” Keep in mind that the reversal of Roe would be one of the mildest, but essential, accomplishments for the unborn. Reversing Roe would merely return the question of abortion to the legislatures; it would not give protection to the unborn.
Then there are issues where you end up having to support what you find to be perverse because you don’t want something more perverse. I would encourage you to read this short piece, but I am going to quote just a paragraph of Daniel Larison here:
As Andrew Exum wrote shortly after the Rolling Stone piece came out, “In a weird way, Hastings is making the argument to readers of Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone!) that counterinsurgency sucks because it doesn’t allow our soldiers to kill enough people.” That has also been one of the principal criticisms of administration policy coming from the right: the rules of engagement are too strict and do not allow for enough aimless violence. This is what I find so frustrating about a lot of phony Republican “antiwar” arguments, as I have explained before in my criticisms of George Will and others. These critics are all for withdrawal, provided that “withdrawal” still allows air strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years and decades to come regardless of the effects on the civilian population. These critics really have no problem with an endless military campaign in the region so long as there is no immediate risk to any Americans. This is one reason why it is somewhat misleading to describe the “counter-terrorist” approach as a more “limited” one, when it is certain to be far less limited in time because it is fairly certain to push the population into the arms of the groups that would be targeted by these strikes. What advocates of genuine disengagement and withdrawal often overlook is that the fastest way to get to a point where the administration can leave Afghanistan entirely is to shore up the Afghan government and military enough that they will not disintegrate soon after U.S. forces depart.
In short, we can risk the lives of our soldiers to a greater extent today in pursuit of a solution that will persist or we can withdraw and kill terrorists from 10,000 feet, ensuring many innocents are also slaughtered. The natural tendency when faced with this sort of argument is to cry, “False dichotomy.” Don’t we have the alternative of withdrawing our forces and not killing innocents with drone attacks? No, politically we don’t. We went into Afghanistan because there was overwhelming support for ridding that country of the Taliban. There still is no desire to allow the Taliban to resurrect their leadership of the country and allow it to be a safe haven for Muslim fundamentalist terrorists. There is even less desire to allow the toppling of the nuclear power Pakistan by the same. While I’m not desirous of our troops being overseas, I’m not going to allow that to rule over our other legitimate interests in the region. I don’t hold similar fears over Iraq.
Sometimes there are instances in politics where the alternatives are untenable full stop. This is the situation where no matter which option prevails, we have lost. I think the best example of this has been the Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) debate. In the end, President Bush’s allowance of federal subsidy for existing lines in research was deemed a little victory (or a minor loss), because there was significant support for federal funding of it. Missouri in fact passed a referendum under the stern opposition of then Archbishop Burke to subsidize it at the state level. On this matter, there has probably been the most debate on Church teaching. On one side, you have those that say you should take the least worst option. This position is often pilloried as not accepting the truth of intrinsic evil. On the other side, you have the abstainers. In short, they believe it is better to tolerate a worse outcome rather than be implicated in a bad outcome. The contention lies in the interpretation of Evangelium Vitae. To choose just one part (75),
The negative moral precepts, which declare that the choice of certain actions is morally unacceptable, have an absolute value for human freedom: they are valid always and everywhere, without exception. They make it clear that the choice of certain ways of acting is radically incompatible with the love of God and with the dignity of the person created in his image. Such choices cannot be redeemed by the goodness of any intention or of any consequence; they are irrevocably opposed to the bond between persons; they contradict the fundamental decision to direct one’s life to God.
While I will not offer an exhaustive defense of the former position, I think the latter argument against it misses the point. When one votes for a candidate, one does not wholly vote for a policy. Even if we were to concede that, I’m afraid that were we to limit ourselves to issues touching on life and death, we would still find ourselves lacking choices between the major two parties.
More importantly, I’m afraid the absence of malleability will lead to Catholic leadership practically being eliminated from being offered in a number of places in this country, ironically enough in many of those same places that are heavily Catholic. To this, some will argue that we are better having no friends rather than false friends. Perhaps. While the disagreement is fundamental, I don’t believe it is as extensive as propagators of this view would insist. Nor am I convinced that those in agreement with the Church on a couple of fundamental issues are interested in advocating the full body of Catholic social doctrine. Finally, “it couldn’t possibly get worse” is not an argument that I’ve found particularly persuasive.
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