In regards to my post below on how the GOP has successfully duped Catholics to vote Pro-Life:
There is a tendency, as evidenced by comments in that thread, to reduce political action to a choice between parties. One either sides with the Democrats or the Republicans.
I will not deny that the Democrats have a rotten understanding of the human person, which tends to reflect in their advocacy of policy detrimental to the family–although, I think the danger is utilitarianism from the point of view of the individual, which just as much exists on the Republican side, rather than a conscious denial of the sanctity of life. The view seems to be that the right of the individual for self-determination is the greatest good, and the affection for socialist solutions to poverty, health care, and other social evils, actually mean to restore the individual to a position where they can once again choose for the themselves, what it is they want to do. The inconsistencies that follow are known to all.
But as MacIntyre points out, the Republicans tend to be in reality only the obverse: protecting the individual from the influence of the state, so as to safeguard the freedom of self-determination.
This is perhaps a caricature, but I think even the benign elements in both parties (evangelicals who want to protect the family; social workers who want to aid those less fortunate) eventually get sacrificed and are corrupted on the final path to the highest good, freedom for its own sake.
The Catholic understanding of freedom and the common good is radically different.
On both sides then you have the parties advocating unjust policies. But at the end of the day, they are not substantially different in sharing a similar view of the human person and his relation to the common good, one that is indebted to modernity and liberalism. Rush Limbaugh ends up arguing for the same final result as Bill Maher. To quote MacIntyre:
We note at this point that we have already broken with both parties and both candidates. Try to promote the pro-life case that we have described within the Democratic Party and you will at best go unheard and at worst be shouted down. Try to advance the case for economic justice as we have described it within the Republican Party and you will be laughed out of court. Above all, insist, as we are doing, that these two cases are inseparable, that each requires the other as its complement, and you will be met with blank incomprehension. For the recognition of this is precluded by the ideological assumptions in terms of which the political alternatives are framed. Yet at the same time neither party is wholeheartedly committed to the cause of which it is the ostensible defender. Republicans happily endorse pro-choice candidates, when it is to their advantage to do so. Democrats draw back from the demands of economic justice with alacrity, when it is to their advantage to do so. And in both cases rhetorical exaggeration disguises what is lacking in political commitment.
Neither party is “safe” for Catholics. Both parties argue for a view of the person and society that ultimately results in unjust policy.
The answer is simply, in my view, that if you vote at all, do so with the clear view that one is choosing the best option among a host of undesirable options. Recognize that at root, the party “believers” are not like us, and believe and work for a different result, and want a different world in the end.
Here’s a question to put this conversation in the direction I’m angling for:
can one be a good American and a good Christian at the same time?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In