Working it out

Political pondering
Until today, I was quite convinced that I would vote for George Bush come November. I probably still will, but I am entertaining a certain amount of uncertainty. The blame for this uncertainty can be placed squarely on the shoulders of St. Blog's Parish. Let me explain.

First I check my regular sites. Not much going on at Dom's blog. Let me see if Mark Shea has updated his yet. Great, he has...what's this, go check out Disputations. OK, I will. Disputations is not an everyday stop, but is always worth a peek now and again. He has a post titled "What I like about grave evil". The title is ironically eye-catching so I read on. In this post the author, Tom, discusses the gravity of certain issues, using legalized abortion and unjust immigration laws. He writes:

An argument blinded by the enormity of abortion might look like this: "Life is the one absolute, bedrock, fundamental right, without which it's meaningless to speak of other rights. What constitutes just immigration law is a matter of prudential judgment, but abortion is everywhere and always evil. We must, therefore, resist legalized abortion and choose the purportedly unjust immigration law."

The correct answer, though, is: We should do neither.

The correctness of the answer is clearer when the evils are more proportionate: Should you punch the next person you see in the face, or in the gut?

I think the difficulty many have in recognizing that as a matter of fact we shouldn't choose unjust immigration law lies in part in the fact that many think "the lesser of two evils" is a legitimate way of choosing how to act. But the lesser of two evils is evil, and evil is never legitimate. Is this a failure of reason, do you think, or of faith?

This is the beginning of my uncertainty. Do I not vote in November? Do I write in a candidate? For some reason I was under the impression that "wasting" your vote was no good. The comments to this post don't help very much either.

Next stop is Catholic Kerry Watch from which I am led to Fr. Rob's blog. Fr. Rob is tearing some of his commentators a new one. He has a huge, very good post on the difference between supporting abortion and supporting the death penalty and the Iraq war. Basically it boils down to: abortion is always wrong, capital punishment and war is not. Capital punishment and war are based on prudential judgments. These judgments could be wrong and if they are, the results(killing a criminal or enemy combatants and possibly civilians) are immoral.

So now the only thing I know for certain is that I cannot vote for Kerry, which I knew already. But the question is, can a Catholic in good conscience support George Bush?

Here are my pros and cons:

• PROS


• Pro-life


• Cloning


• Supports Marriage Amendment


• Faith based initiative


• School choice


• War on terror


• Stem cell research


• CONS


• Too middle of the road on abortion


• Capital punishment


• Stem cell research

One issue that I have not made up my mind about yet, is the Iraq War. I vacillate between thinking it was necessary and thinking it was probably a bad choice. I tend not to think that the decision was made in bad faith. But the fact that the U.S. bishops and the Vatican thought it was not a good idea carries some weight and must be considered. Stem cell research is listed as a pro and a con because I did not like Bush's decision, but it could have been worse. I wish he would have banned research altogether, but at least he placed some restrictions on it.

I checked out the Voter's Guide for the Serious Catholic, since after all, I am a serious Catholic ;-> The money line, I guess is:

In some political races, each candidate takes a wrong position on one or more of the five non-negotiables. In such a case you may vote for the candidate who takes the fewest such positions or who seems least likely to be able to advance immoral legislation, or you may choose to vote for no one.

Since I am pretty confident that Kerry will push abortion, homosexual marriage, and stem cell research and that he will not back school choice, and that George Bush's stance on these issues is better if not perfect, then I will probably vote for Bush in November.

I am open to other opinions, got any?