Sunday, June 27, 2004
HRE on politics
I don't know how much use I'm going to be here, but here goes. As I've said many times, the center of Catholic social teaching is the family. Whatever benefits the family is good. Whatever harms the family is bad. That's where I come from in evaluating political candidates. Clearly, of course, Bronze Age Fanatics who want to kill as many innocent Americans as possible is one threat to the family. And I have no problem at all with hunting them down and killing them. I don't think that descending to their level. I think that's legitimate self-defense. My objections to the Iraq War have always been just war objection and have always been confined to that war, not to the war against al-Quaeda or the Afghanistan campaign. I believe the war against Radical Islam is a war we *must* win. However, I have been concerned because war has a coarsening effect on a culture and we humans tend to do "whatever it takes" in order to win. So far, we've been in a position to do soul-searching over things like Abu Ghraib (which speaks very highly of us). One doesn't get the sense that al-Quaeda does a lot of soul-searching about anything.
I continue to think that Bush is a basically decent man who is trying to do the best he can according to his lights. I think there is a long tendency in American history to see our mission as a duty to make everywhere America and that our optimism often exceeds reality. So, for instance, I am highly skeptical that the new states planted in Afghanistan or Iraq will last. But I think it is quintessentially American to attempt such an export.
As to domestic stuff, abortion remains, for me, a trump issue. Each month, more children are killed than were killed in all of the Vietnam War. Any candidate who wants to make sure that that continues, preferably with federal funding, is a candidate I can't vote for. The Stupid Party hasn't done much, but the Evil Party worships and celebrates the sacrament of abortion. So I have support Bush. Are there other issues? Certainly potentially. If, for instance, some Grand End to Evil Project Type were elected who really had drunk the Koolaid about the necessity of establishing American Hegemony By Any Means Necessary, I can conceive of abandoning both parties with a protest vote. I believe there are few dangers more potent than a faith in politics to achieve transcendent goals. Politics that attempt this virtually always seem to end in mass murder.
But we are still far from that, I think. At least, till we are threatened in a really major way. Then, it could well be katy-bar-the-door, given that immense power and fallen humans are a volatile mixture, when combined with profound fear, great pain, and deep rage.
I continue to think that Bush is a basically decent man who is trying to do the best he can according to his lights. I think there is a long tendency in American history to see our mission as a duty to make everywhere America and that our optimism often exceeds reality. So, for instance, I am highly skeptical that the new states planted in Afghanistan or Iraq will last. But I think it is quintessentially American to attempt such an export.
As to domestic stuff, abortion remains, for me, a trump issue. Each month, more children are killed than were killed in all of the Vietnam War. Any candidate who wants to make sure that that continues, preferably with federal funding, is a candidate I can't vote for. The Stupid Party hasn't done much, but the Evil Party worships and celebrates the sacrament of abortion. So I have support Bush. Are there other issues? Certainly potentially. If, for instance, some Grand End to Evil Project Type were elected who really had drunk the Koolaid about the necessity of establishing American Hegemony By Any Means Necessary, I can conceive of abandoning both parties with a protest vote. I believe there are few dangers more potent than a faith in politics to achieve transcendent goals. Politics that attempt this virtually always seem to end in mass murder.
But we are still far from that, I think. At least, till we are threatened in a really major way. Then, it could well be katy-bar-the-door, given that immense power and fallen humans are a volatile mixture, when combined with profound fear, great pain, and deep rage.
