JIMMY AKIN.ORG

October 29, 2008

Elections, Part 6: The Zippy Argument

(SDG)

Continued from Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

UPDATED: Part 6 comments link (page 4) (TypePad, this is getting old)

SDG here (not Jimmy).

In my last couple of installments, I've argued for the moral legitimacy of voting for the candidate you regard as the least problematic viable candidate. Given two viable candidates X and Y, to believe that the common good would be better served by a Y administration than an X administration more or less entails hoping that Y wins rather than X, which in turn more or less entails hoping that other voters like oneself who share the preference for Y over X ("Y-friendlies") actually vote for Y in greater numbers than those on the other side who prefer X vote for X. And what we hope to see others like ourselves do, we ought to do ourselves.

I have also argued that an individual vote for candidate Y can always be seen as contributing something worthwhile, not only if one lives in a toss-up state, but even if one lives in a solidly Y-friendly or even X-friendly state. An election is not entirely a threshold event; the popular vote and the margin of victory does matter insofar as it may contribute to a sense of mandate or realignment around a candidate's agenda. This is not to deny that there might also be good to be pursued voting for a third-party candidate; my case is that both voting quixotic and voting pragmatic (by, um, different voters of course) may be seen as morally licit ways of attempting to do good.

This point of view has been vigorously resisted by some, including Mark Shea and Zippy Catholic. Mark and Zippy are both — in the sense previously defined — "McCain-friendly," not meaning that they like McCain at all, but that they prefer him to Obama. Mark has said that he would vote for McCain if he thought there were proportionate reason to do so, and Zippy has said that if one could push a button and make McCain president by fiat, as opposed to casting a negligible vote for him, it would be legitimate to do so.

However, Mark and Zippy argue that the actual negligible impact of any one vote does not constitute a proportionate reason to cast a vote for a candidate who supports direct killing of the innocent, as McCain supports embryonic stem-cell research.

Note, incidentally, that even if McCain were to have a Damascus-road experience on ESCR, Mark and Zippy might still be obliged to oppose him, on the grounds that McCain's opposition to abortion allows for exceptions for rape and incest, which is still killing the innocent. And even if he changed his mind on that, they might still have to oppose him if he allowed for abortion only to save the life of the mother, but failed to differentiate between direct and indirect abortion, since Catholic moral theology generally considers direct abortion to be killing the innocent.

For those refuse to vote for any candidate who fails to condemn all killing of the innocent, there is no major-party candidate since Roe v. Wade, including Ronald Reagan, they could have supported. I'm not sure they could even vote for Chuck Baldwin (I don't know whether Baldwin distinguishes direct abortion from indirect).

The issue is further complicated by the fact that Mark and Zippy are not merely voting quixotic, but campaigning quixotic — actively discouraging voters from choosing either major-party ticket, encouraging them to vote quixotic instead. Here their potential contribution to the outcome becomes much harder to calculate. Mark's blog is widely read; his ideas reach tens of thousands of readers, and ripple out to innumerable others. There is no way to know how many votes next week could be affected by quixotic advocacy from Mark and others like him. In principle, it is not impossible that such advocacy could play a significant role in undercutting support for McCain and clearing the way for an Obama victory.

That said, if Mark and Zippy believe that voting for either of the major-party candidates is morally unjustified by any proportionate reason, it may be reasonable for them to seek to discourage their fellow Catholics from engaging in unjustified behavior, however inconvenient the consequences may be. The fundamental question is: Are their concerns warranted? Is their reasoning sound? Does voting for a candidate who supports any form of killing the innocent involve remote material cooperation in evil in a way or to a degree disproportionate to the good of trying to defeat an even worse candidate?

Lurking behind this question is a principle of moral theology called the law of double effect. Double effect governs the morality of acts that have, or can be reasonably foreseen to have, both good and bad effects or consequences. For example, amputating a cancerous limb leaves the amputee crippled (bad effect), but saves his life (good effect). Less dramatically, taking a job fifty minutes from home may cost you gas money, vehicular wear and tear, and emotional stress (bad effect), but it but allows you to support your household (good effect).

Acts which have mixed effects — which, when you get right down to it, includes pretty much everything we do — are considered morally licit if they meet certain criteria. These criteria can be variously formulated; here is one variation:

1. The act itself is permissible (at least neutral, or good). Intrinsically evil acts, such as the direct taking of innocent life or adultery, can never be justified.

2. The acting agent intends or desires the act for the sake of the good effect(s). He may foresee and accept the evil effects, but he does not desire them.

3. This entails that, for example, if there is a better way to achieve the good effects while minimizing or eliminating the evil effects, the agent must pursue that course rather than the more harmful one.

4. The evil effect must not be the cause of the good effect. (Thus, for example, you might save some lives at the cost of other lives, but you could not directly kill innocent people in order to pacify a madman and stop him from killing greater numbers of people.)

5. The evil effects must not outweigh the good effects; the good must be proportionate to the harm done.

An everyday example: You buy a product in a store, or from a store owned by a company, that also sells contraceptives or pornography. In a small way, your purchase contributes to keeping those products on the market from that distributor. This is a form of remote material cooperation in evil, though it is very remote, and the immediate and direct good of having the product that you need outweighs that tiny element of cooperation in evil. (You might have a go at buying from another distributor, but there is virtually no way to entirely avoid all such cooperation. Most products you buy probably advertise in venues owned by companies that support some sort of evil; some tiny part of your purchases will go to those advertising budgets, etc.)

To support, advocate or vote for a candidate whose agenda includes some form of intrinsic evil, including murdering the innocent in any form, is a form of remote material cooperation in evil. With respect to the practical impact of the vote itself on the election, the negligible impact of each individual vote obviously greatly mitigates the voter's involvement in whatever evil the candidate might do, as well as the voter's contribution to whatever good the candidate might do. The minimal impact of individual votes tells equally against the good and bad consequences of casting the vote; with respect to the outcome of the election, the evil effects of the individual vote do not seem disproportionate to the good effects, so there seems to be no difficulty here.

However, the consequences Mark and Zippy are concerned about go beyond the actual impact of the vote on the election to the moral and social effects on individuals and groups, not just of voting for, but also of advocating a candidate who supports any form of murdering the innocent. Here is Zippy's summary of his argument from his blog:

1. Murdering the innocent is the singular act which is most radically opposed to the common good, so much so that when sanctioned by authority it undercuts the very foundation of legitimate authority (see Evangelium Vitae);

2. Voting is a civic ritual in which we express our submission to legitimate authority and co-responsibility for the common good (see the Catechism);

3. Because of the radical opposition between (1) and (2), there is always some harm done to the person and those around him in voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent;

4. This harm far, far outweighs any influence one's vote has over the outcome in national elections, because in national elections one's influence is very, very small;

5. As votes aggregate in influence over the outcome, the outcome-independent harm also aggregates in influence;

6. Therefore the outcome-independent harm in voting for a national candidate who supports murdering the innocent always far outweighs any concomitant influence over the outcome

Zippy's argument turns on the crucial third premise: that the "radical opposition" between, on the one hand, the total illegitimacy of laws legitimizing the direct killing of the innocent, and, on the other, the moral nature of voting as an act of submission to legitimate authority and co-responsibility for the common good, is such that "there is always some harm done to the person and those around him in voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent."

As I pointed out earlier, this logic would seem to compel us to conclude that harm is likewise done both to the agent as well as to others in the very different, but still relevant, scenario posed by Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, of a pro-life official casting a decisive vote for a law that restricts but does not outlaw abortions. (With apologies to those who read it in the previous combox, the next several paragraphs are adapted for the most part verbatim from my combox response.)

Here is the pope's scenario:

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. … when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

First the dissimilarities: The pope's scenario involves an elected official (not a voter) whose legislative vote for a particular law would be decisive (not one vote among millions in any given state) for a particular law (not a particular candidate).

Some of these dissimilarities diminish the overall applicability of the underlying principles to our current topic; others increase it. However, in one crucial respect they are the same: Both involve the same sort of "radical opposition" noted in the third point of Zippy's argument regarding the evil of murdering the innocent and the duty of the individual, whether a private citizen or (much more) a public official, to promote the common good.

Whether the vote is likely to be decisive or not, although quite relevant to the end conclusion, goes to step (4) in Zippy's argument, and is not relevant at the earlier stage. Following the structure of Zippy's argument, it seems that the pope's scenario would be subject to the following analysis:

1. Murdering the innocent is the singular act which is most radically opposed to the common good, so much so that when sanctioned by authority it undercuts the very foundation of legitimate authority (see Evangelium Vitae);

2. Public witness to our faith "is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one's children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms … Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature" (see Sacramentum Caritatis)

3. Because of the radical opposition between (1) and (2), there is always some harm done to the elected offical and those around him in voting for a law that partially legitimizes murdering the innocent.

Indeed, the opposition here is much more radical than in the original case, since (a) the vote is for a specific law on the brink of passage, not one of two candidates with countless positives and negatives to consider, agendas that might never get enacted, etc., and (b) the elected official's responsibility obliges him much more strictly to "support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature."

Now, this doesn't mean that Zippy must conclude that the official's support of the law is unjustified. Given the decisive influence of the official's vote, the good to be achieved by this vote could be considered proportionate to the harm suggested by Zippy's argument. By contrast, the argument would go, the negligible good to be achieved by a vote for McCain (one tiny click on an enormous counter that will barely register in the statewide vote, and even less in the popular vote) is not proportionate to this alleged harm, and thus does not constitute a proportionate reason to incur the harm.

Now, it is admittedly true that the official's support of the imperfect law could, and almost certainly would, be the occasion of some harm to, say, at least some constituents and others, who would wrongly interpret it as support for, or failure to oppose, abortion itself. That's why the pope stipulates that the official's "absolute personal opposition to procured abortion" (and presumably to the legality of the same) be "well known," to minimize such scandal. However, minimizing is not eliminating; some at least will be scandalized, since the official's vote is a public act. (You see how complicated moral theology is? Almost everything involves some sort of remote material cooperation in evil.)

Similarly, Zippy's concerns include the social consequences of pro-life advocacy for McCain, which he contends has the effect of burying the ESCR issue both in our public discourse and in our consciences. Zippy blasts National Right to Life for omitting ESCR on their abortion comparison piece of McCain and Obama (a charge bolstered by Lydia McGrew's analysis), decries the Catholic media for "paeons [sic] to how pro-life McCain is," and laments that "Church parking lots are filled with bumper stickers singing the praises of candidates who support murdering the innocent."

Zippy's critique of compromise in the pro-life movement does have some validity, and to that extent I am frankly appreciative of his efforts. By itself, though, this goes to particular cases, not to McCain advocacy as such. All candidates are elected by coalitions of coalitions who are often at cross purposes, who may not agree on anything but the preferability of their candidate. Those who support a particular candidate are not ipso facto implicated in the excesses or lapses of other supporters.

Zippy's argument, however, seems to posit that voting for McCain somehow involves the voter in the kind of social consequences described above. But does it? Here we encounter one of the relevant dissimilarities between the pope's scenario and our election scenario: For us, voting per se — as distinct from acts of public advocacy — is essentially a private and anonymous act.

Let's begin with a minimum-impact scenario. Imagine a pro-life Catholic citizen whose absolute personal opposition to legalized abortion, ESCR and all the rest is well known to his friends and acquaintances. He never discusses the particulars of the election with anyone and never expresses a word of public support for or opposition to any candidate, but insists that opposition to the legalized direct killing of innocent human life must be the primary consideration. His pro-McCain friends have no reason to think that he isn't voting for McCain, and his quixotic friends have no reason to think that he isn't voting quixotic. On election day, he goes into the voting booth, pulls the lever for McCain, walks out, and never breathes a word to anyone.

Is anyone else harmed by this Catholic's vote? Perhaps one might argue that some weaker brethren might be scandalized by his failure to vocally denounce (or advocate) voting for McCain (or voting quixotic). However, that would be a consequence, not of his vote, but of his silence; it would be the same no matter who he voted for.

I don't think we can infer from the possibility of such "harm" a positive duty to engage in vocal public advocacy for the actual way you will vote in order to avoid giving scandal. Among other things, the potential harm occasioned by silence could be pitted against the potential harm occasioned by speech; there is no course of action that someone will not stumble at. To stick to principles and remain silent about your actual vote is at least a licit course of action. Therefore, our silent voter's vote for McCain has not harmed anyone else.

But has it harmed the voter himself, as Zippy's argument seems to suggest? If we say that it has, it would seem that we must likewise conclude that the official in the pope's scenario, who rightly casts a decisive vote for legislation restricting but not ending abortion, also harms himself as well as others, even if there is a proportionate reason for the official to harm himself in this way (because his vote is decisive) whereas (Zippy argues) there is not in our case.

I submit, however, that neither moral theology, nor common sense, nor anything in Evangelium Vitae itself supports the notion that the official does himself justifiable harm by casting this vote, that this particular species of morally good act comes at a morally self-mutilating trade-off (on this more below). On the contrary, the official's act is salutary and beneficial to his character. He knows perfectly well where he stands on abortion. He has no illusions about the acceptability of the present law or the terrible evil it still permits. He accepts this consequence without willing it, because he can't prevent it and the good is worth doing.

In the same way, our silent voter knows very well what he is doing and why. He adamantly opposes ESCR, but he makes the practical prudential judgment that the best contribution that he and others like him can make to saving innocent lives in this election is by voting for the best chance at derailing Obama. No moral harm comes to him, or anyone else, as a result of his vote. There is thus no basis for arguing that there is no proportionate reason for his vote.

Now a modified scenario: Our silent voter is out to dinner with some pro-life friends who vocally support McCain, not in the qualified way that he does, but in a whole-hearted "He's the pro-life guy" sort of way. When the subject of McCain's pro-life credentials comes up, our voter objects to his friends' unqualified McCain enthusiasm and reminds them of the evil of ESCR. He makes his case so effectively that some present, chastened, begin to wonder aloud whether they should actually be advocating McCain at all, and ask our voter whether he plans to vote at all, or to vote third party.

At this point, gratified by their change of heart, but not wanting to harm turnout for McCain, our voter breaks his silence and carefully explains why he is, in fact, voting for McCain based on the principle of double effect, remote cooperation in evil, the example of the pope's scenario in Evangelium Vitae, and so forth.

Humbled and edified, the others begin anew their McCain advocacy in a different spirit, with a sharp awareness of McCain's evil stance on ESCR but persuaded that votes for McCain are still votes to save babies. This leads to other conversations in which these friends confront other McCain advocates on the ESCR issue; and, when they debate Obama supporters or third-party supporters they do so in a fully pro-life spirit, without in any way minimizing the evil of ESCR.

Has our silent voter's McCain advocacy done any harm in this scenario? On the contrary, it has done good. I can understand Zippy Catholic's concerns about the burying of ESCR as an issue, but Catholic McCain advocacy need not be this or have this effect on individual pro-life souls. Neither individual voters nor those around them need be harmed by votes or advocacy for McCain.

This is not a hypothetical example. Zippy has decried the Catholic media and blogosphere. I don't know what Catholic media he consumes, but my newspaper, the National Catholic Register, which is certainly "McCain-friendly" in the sense I have established, has repeatedly emphasized McCain's pro-life problems, particularly on ESCR. For example, this election article mentions McCain's ESCR support in the first sentence, as I did on this blog (other examples aren't hard to find). Numerous comboxers here at JA.o have done the same.

What about NRLC? My brief today doesn't entail carrying water for NRLC, but FWIW they haven't entirely ignored McCain on ESCR. What about the comparison sheet Zippy mentions? It focuses on abortion, not all pro-life issues. Zippy protests that ESCR is merely a species of abortion. There are various possible responses to this, but for the sake of simplicity I'll merely note that abortion is merely a species of murder, so shouldn't the fact sheet deal with end-of-life issues too?

What about McCain bumper stickers in Church parking lots? Clearly Zippy, at least, is scandalized (in the colloquial sense, not the technical moral sense). But that's because he chooses to interpret a campaign bumper sticker as "singing the praises" of the candidate named. They are not. As such, they are simply a form of propaganda encouraging others to vote for the candidate named. Unless Zippy has seen bumper stickers that say "McCain: 100% Pro-Life!", I submit he has no call to see disproportionate cooperation in evil in McCain bumper stickers.

Unfortunately, it seems that Zippy's conviction that McCain advocacy causes moral self-harm may dispose him to diagnose moral harm in others on inadequate grounds. In an earlier combox, Zippy accused me of "callousness with respect to McCain's brand of murdering the innocent." While generously stating his belief that I am a good man (a vote of confidence I'm happy to return), Zippy goes so far as to say that my writing is "a poster child" for this kind of damage.

When I protested that Zippy had "no call to be making such moral judgments against me," he countered, "To the contrary, I am required to remonstrate moral error of such gravity - in your writing, which, not your person, is the object of my judgment - when I see it."

At that point, I can only leave it to others to conclude for themselves what our respective writing may, or may not, be a poster child for, and how our respective views may be occasions of moral harm. (Note: Whatever conclusions you may reach in this connection, regarding either Zippy or me, PLEASE DO NOT share them in the combox. Thank you.)

In the end, Zippy's argument goes wrong, apparently, because he posits a disproportionately "evil effect" in the moral self-harm caused by voting for a pro-ESCR candidate. From a moral theology perspective, this is backwards reasoning. Acts are not morally wrong because they cause moral self-harm; acts cause moral self-harm because they are morally wrong, either intrinsically or in view of disproportionately evil consequences. The disproportionately evil consequences that make the act evil have to be something other than the moral self-harm that will result if there are disproportionately evil consequences to be found. Zippy's argument is an empty hall of mirrors; it is all cart, no horse.

Nor will pointing to accidental or unnecessary consequences, like NRLC's comparative ESCR silence or other cases of insufficiently qualified McCain support, establish the wrongness of McCain voting or advocacy per se. In every war, including wars that meet the criteria for a just war, there are always unjust acts and campaigns. The Allied bombing of civilian targets in Germany was unjust and wrong. This does not mean that the Allies should not have been at war with the Axis, or that individual soldiers should have become conscientious objectors.

To whatever extent that pro-lifers engage, jointly or severally, in unqualified McCain advocacy, other pro-lifers ought to resist and oppose this, as I and many other pro-life voters have done. I see no grounds for concluding that this entails, or can only be legitimately pursued by or in connection with, voting third party. (Whether voting third party is the best way to pursue this I leave open as a judgment call to the individual voter.)

In sum, I don't see that anything Zippy — or Mark — has said refutes the argument I have made in the last two posts for voting for the candidate you see as the least problematic viable candidate. Anyone who feels that the public good would be better served by voting third party is welcome to do so, but the claim that the public good is not served by McCain advocacy has not been substantiated.

Finally, one last point. At least one reader has commented that he would feel better about McCain advocacy if it were clear that more McCain advocates had thought through the issues and were aware of the problematic implications of voting for McCain. Again, that goes to individual cases, not to advocacy as such, but there is a further point to be made.

Some polemics on the quixotic side seem to be operating on an unstated assumption that, whereas McCain advocacy comes with various moral dangers and pitfalls, third-party advocacy is somehow the morally "safe" choice. As long as you choose a completely pro-life third-party candidate, one who does not advocate killing the innocent in any form, you don't have to worry about cooperation with evil.

This is nonsense. All moral choices come with moral dangers and pitfalls, and cooperation with evil is always in the cards in nearly everything we do. In this election there are no moral choices that do not involve some form of remote material cooperation with the culture of death, with killing the innocent.

Those who advocate quixotic voting may do so partly to avoid complicity in the burying of ESCR as an issue and partly as an act of hope for change in future elections. However, such advocacy comes at the potential cost of contributing to erosion of McCain support, thereby contributing to the likelihood of an Obama victory — or an Obama realignment.

In addition, by attacking McCain advocacy as a valid pro-life option, the quixotic critics may actually help move others who might have supported McCain, but are not willing to go third party, to conclude that, since pro-life isn't a reason to vote for McCain anyway, they might as well vote for Obama. By the same token, repudiating McCain advocacy as a valid pro-life option salves the consciences of those who were leaning toward voting for Obama anyway but were bothered by pro-life related concerns. 

I'm not saying that quixotic advocacy has the moral character of voting for Obama. Of course it doesn't. However, it does have the effect of making an Obama win (or realignment) more likely than if, say, the quixotic advocates were simply silent about their views.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't advocate quixotic. It does mean that they should be aware of the potential consequences, and regard the good to be achieved as proportionate to the potential for harm. The potential for harm is substantial. So we could equally say that we could feel better about both McCain advocacy and quixotic advocacy if it were clear that more advocates on both sides had thought through the issues and were aware of the problematic implications of their chosen course of action.

In closing, I hope to post at least once more before the election, addressing various possible objections to the arguments I have proposed throughout this series.

Continued from Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Posted by SDG in Government | Permalink | Comments (181)

October 24, 2008

Elections, Part 5: Thresholds, fuzziness and realignments

(SDG)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

UPDATE: new comments link for Part 5 (TypePad says they're working on this!)

New comments link for Part 4 (TypePad says they're working on this!)

SDG here (not Jimmy) with more thoughts on voting.

In Part 4 I proposed what I called the "intuitive and obvious" claim that "you vote for the candidate you hope to see win." The first point in need of further consideration is what is meant by "the candidate you hope to see win."

Whatever the merits of voting any way at all, in the end any election will produce a winner whose administration will have practical implications for the common good. Such implications, it should be noted, are broad-based, extending not only to the implementation or non-implementation of specific policy initiatives, but also to such effects as public advocacy of or opposition to key principles on public discourse and cultural sensibilities, the stamp of a candidate's administration on the party and the nation, and of course the long-term effects of a candidate's judicial nominees.

Let's suppose two major-party candidates X and Y. Candidate X strongly supports several intrinsically immoral policies — virtually every such policy on the market, let's suppose — while candidate Y is largely opposed to most of them, though with various qualifying asterisks and footnotes. (For example, let's suppose that Y favors embryonic stem-cell research, though not as robustly as X, and while Y is anti-abortion he allows loopholes that may not be compatible with Catholic teaching, and so forth. What? It's a thought experiment.)

Candidate X is highly likely to vigorously reinforce and strengthen the culture of death in various ways: legislative support for intrinsically evil policies, increased public funding for abortion, evil-activist justices to the Supreme Court as well as lower-level judges, and so forth.

In virtually all of these respects, we recognize that candidate Y is highly likely to be an improvement on candidate X, even if Y still has significant problems. Y will oppose most intrinsically immoral policies, though he may advance some, if not to the extent that X would. It seems likely that Y's judicial nominees would be an improvement upon X's, though far from certain that they would be particularly good. The country would be spared the corrosive cultural effects of X's public advocacy of intrinsic evils.

Of course X would accomplish some good things in office; so presumably would Y, or so would any candidate. It could even be that the implications of a victory for X would include some positive effects on the very issues where Y advocates intrinsically immoral policies. Almost any catastrophe will include some good effects. It doesn't change the fact that a victory for X is a catastrophe, and that Y would be significantly preferable.

At this point it seems fairly clear that we may say we do not want to see X win — that, of the two possible outcomes, an X administration would be the more undesirable outcome for the common good. Thus it would seem that, of the two possible outcomes, a Y administration is the preferred outcome.

Yet if candidate Y supports even one intrinsically evil policy, can we speak of "hoping" that he wins? Is that "hoping" for evil?

In almost any race there are assorted candidates flying well below the radar — Chuck Baldwin, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney. If we could, many of us would pick one of these marginal or quixotic candidates to send to the White House. Many do in fact cast votes for such candidates, or if necessary even write in the candidates of their choice. Why shouldn't the rest of us follow suit? Why settle for the lesser of two evils if there is a better choice?

The common-sense response, of course, is that Z has zero chance of winning. Much as we might like to see someone else win, we have no real hope of our quixotic candidate (or any other) winning. We may choose to vote for him anyway — it is not my primary purpose here to oppose quixotic voting as a matter of personal choice — but at the end of the day, or the election cycle, the White House will in fact go to one of the two major-party tickets. Whatever objections and criticisms we may have of the selection process, whatever better systems we might advocate in principle, the reality of our current system is that, once the primaries are over, the campaign underway, the VP choices announced, there are only two possible outcomes.

Some idealists may resist this conclusion. Why is it that Z has no chance of winning? Isn't it simply because we all agree that he has no chance? Isn't it a self-fulfilling perception? If enough of us got up on election day and voted for him, why then, he would be the winner. What if everyone rebeled and voted for the genuinely good candidate? Wouldn't that be a better world? Why shouldn't we do our part to work toward that better world?

This line of thought is appealing, but it doesn't work in practice. This isn't necessarily to dismiss all quixotic voting, which might be advocated on other grounds. However, the fact remains that, no matter how many of us vote quixotic, the outcome of the election will be collectively decided by those who vote for one of the major-party candidates.

To begin with, our quixotic candidate is doomed, not because everyone agrees he is doomed, but for the more elementary reason that a critical mass of voters never think of him at all. However it has happened, he hasn't made the necessary impression on the collective consciousness of the voting public to have a real shot.

It may not be his fault. The exigencies of the American political process turn heavily on factors ranging from national organizational infrastructure to the enormous amounts of money needed to power national and grass-roots campaigns as well as the realities of national public attention and media coverage. Once again, we can rail against the system as much as we like; it may be that there are better systems, and perhaps we should consider them.

In our present situation, though, it essentially doesn't matter how many of us rebel against the two-party duopoly and vote quixotic — our quixotic candidate is still doomed. Let's suppose some astronomical percentage of the electorate — over half, or even two-thirds — were to wake up on voting day and decide to throw viability to the winds and truly vote their heart for the two-person ticket they would truly most want to see in the White House. Would that be a better world?

In a word, no — at least, not as regards the outcome of this election.

For one thing, once we widen the pool of candidates beyond the major parties, there's no particular reason why voters thinking outside the two-party box will commence rallying around our quixotic candidate, or any candidate we might support, or even any candidate we might like better than X or Y. The field of potential quixotic candidates — and the bloc of potential quixotic voters — is too diverse. Votes will be cast for Baldwin, Nader, Barr and McKinney. But many will find none of those choices acceptable. If we are truly voting our hearts, there's no reason why we should be limited to names on the ballot. And so we will get write-ins for anyone and everyone from Pat Robertson to Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates to T. Boone Pickins, Paris Hilton to Scott Hahn, Michael Moore to Mel Gibson.

In the end, our massive quixotic vote will wind up hopelessly divided among countless prospects. Very likely a great many voters, however carefully they consider choices outside the two-party box, will still wind up with no better idea than to vote for the major-party ticket of their choice — not to mention the pragmatic voters who will do the same. In the end, the largest bloc of votes for a single candidate will still ultimately go to one of the two major-party tickets.

In an earlier combox discussion on this blog, someone suggested that a certain pro-life quixotic candidate could win if only American Catholics were serious about voting pro-life. The problem, of course, is that he couldn't: There aren't enough Catholics in America, pro-life or otherwise. We aren't a large enough bloc, even voting all together, to elect a quixotic candidate all by ourselves. Catholics in general are a key swing vote, but a candidate needs support from multiple sectors in order to win.

The only practical effect of any such extravagant experiment in quixotic voting is this: The winning major-party ticket will be picked by a smaller bloc of voters than ever before — and, conversely, whatever preference that enormous bloc of quixotic voters may have as a group between the two major-party tickets will be a non-factor in the outcome. Our massive exercise in quixotic voting turns out to be an exercise in large-scale self-disenfranchisement.

Again, this isn't necessarily an argument against all quixotic voting. It could be argued that, in the long run, such a defeat can have a salutary effect for the losing cause. Efforts to avoid similar defeats may possibly result in improved major-party candidates seeking to unite the base and woo back disaffected quixotic voters. And maybe so. On the other hand, the losing party could also wind up essentially writing off the quixotic vote (or the sector of the quixotic vote we happen to represent) and seeking to shore up other sectors of support — possibly along lines that worked for the winning ticket. Again, I'm not primarily arguing the merits of quixotic voting, so the point is moot.

The argument at this stage is simply the obvious observation that, things being what they are, the outcome of the election will be collectively decided by those voters who vote for one of the two major-party candidates. The more numerous quixotic voters are, the fewer major-party voters will have input on which of the two major-party candidates will in fact govern the country.

I said above that voting quixotic amounted to an act of self-disenfranchisement. For many quixotic voters, though, it may be seen as an expression of an existing sense of disenfranchisement — of their inability to influence the process in any way, as illustrated in the present race by the poorness of both candidates, neither of whom even remotely resembles a candidate the quixotic voter would like to support.

Quixotic voters note that no presidential election, no matter how close or contested, ever turns on one single vote. No one vote affects the outcome. Even if I have a preference for one of the major-party candidates over the other, I as an individual have no actual power even to contribute to his victory. My vote has no actual effect. Therefore, there is no compelling reason for me to cast my vote for a lousy major-party candidate just because the other guy is even worse. It's not like my vote has any chance of saving us from the worse candidate anyway.

At first glance this might seem like an exercise in fuzzy-logic sophistry, but the point is subtler than that. Fuzzy logic deals with degrees of truth and fuzzy sets. For example, one person who picks one flower from a national park may tell himself that one flower won't ruin the park — but a million people picking a million flowers ruins the park, and every one of the million people who picks one flower is complicit in the park's ruin. Isn't the quixotic voter essentially committing the same error as the flower-picker?

Actually, not exactly, no. The "ruin" of the park is a matter of degrees; each flower picked really does infinitesimally damage the park. If a million picked flowers ruins the park, ten thousand would damage it, twenty thousand would be twice as bad, and so on. It's a matter of degree.

The outcome of an election, though, is not a matter of degree in the same way. Rather, it's a matter of reaching or not reaching a given threshold. There is a sense in which, beyond that threshold in either direction, more or fewer votes doesn't change the outcome; a candidate is no more or less president (or not president) for the margin by which he exceeds or falls short of the needed threshold.

Thus, in contrast to the flower picker whose one act of flower-picking really does have an effect, it may be argued that the individual voter actually makes no difference to the outcome. Therefore, since my vote doesn't actually affect the outcome, there is no practical reason to vote pragmatic rather than quixotic.

This argument is of a type that seems superficially cogent, but I think our common sense distrusts the conclusion. One might as well conclude that there is no point in voting at all. Certainly it is hard to see why, on this point of view, exercising the right to vote should be considered "morally obligatory," much less a form of "co-responsibility for the common good" (CCC 2240). How can we exercise "co-responsibility" if our vote makes no difference?

In any election, while the outcome is in one sense not affected by any one vote, it is nevertheless individual votes and nothing else that determines the outcome. (In our system this principle is modified by the vagaries of the electoral college process, in which individual votes are tallied on a state-by-state basis, and the correlation between the popular vote and a winning number of electoral votes isn't exact. Nevertheless, the state-by-state outcome ultimately determines the final outcome.) Individually considered, we have no power to affect the outcome, but the outcome is determined by nothing other than individual votes.

In a certain sense, the outcome of every election is ultimately determined, on a state-by-state basis, by the distribution of potential voters among three crucial blocs:

A. those who vote for X (henceforth "Xers"),
B. those who vote for Y (henceforth "Yers"), and
C. those who vote for neither X nor Y, either because they vote quixotic or because they don't vote at all.

Specifically, the outcome is determined solely by which of the first two groups has the advantage of numbers on a state-by-state basis. (The third group affects the outcome only by their absence from the first two blocs.)

Needless to say, none of these blocs is a monolithic unity. Those who vote as Xers or Yers do so for a wide range of different, even conflicting reasons. Some may support X or Y in spite of factors that others reckon among the main reasons to vote for that same candidate. There may in fact be no one policy, priority or factor that unites all Xers or all Yers — other than their common preference for their candidate over the major-party rival.

Yet this preference, while it unites all Xers and all Yers, is not synonymous with being an Xer or a Yer. The crucial threefold division of Xers, Yers and others substantially overlaps with, but is not identical to, another, equally crucial threefold division:

A. possible voters who prefer X to Y — who believe that the common good would be better served by an X administration than a Y administration;
B. possible voters who prefer Y to X — who believe that the common good would be better served by a Y administration than an X administration; and
C. possible voters who have no preference between X and Y — who see no clear advantage or disadvantage for the common good from either in relation to the other.

Among each of these groups, again, is a great deal of diversity, with divergent and conflicting priorities, values, outlooks and opinions. Even regarding their common preference for X or Y, there is room for a wide diversity of opinion regarding the merits of both X and Y, from enthusiastic and unqualified support to those who reluctantly consider one candidate the lesser of two evils. Conversely, attitudes toward the non-supported candidate may fall anywhere along an opposite spectrum, from considering (say) Y a good candidate but not as good as X to considering Y a disastrous candidate. Many on both sides may consider X better than Y in some respects, but Y better than X in others.

Ultimately, though, however strongly, with whatever conflicts, and for whatever reasons, some potential voters prefer X to Y, and others prefer Y to X. For lack of a better term, I'll classify these groups as "X-friendly" and "Y-friendly" — though, again, this shouldn't be taken to imply any actual fondness for X or Y.

It will be seen at once that all Xers (those who actually vote for X) are also X-friendlies (with minimal allowances for confusion over ballot configurations and so forth, as well as those marginal voters who may not actually technically exist). However, not all X-friendlies necessarily wind up voting as Xers. Many X-friendlies may wind up in that indeterminate, self-disenfranchised third bloc, those who either cast no vote, or who vote quixotic.

In short, the outcome on a state-by-state basis is determined by two factors. Factor 1 is which group has the advantage of numbers, X-friendlies or Y-friendlies. Factor 2 is how reliably X-friendlies wind up voting as Xers and how reliably Y-friendlies wind up voting as Yers. Do the math (it's multiplication) and you've got the winner. To the extent that X-friendlies tend to vote as Xers, X is more likely to win; to the extent that Y-friendlies tend to vote as Yers, Y is more likely to win.

From this, it seems to follow that to be, say, Y-friendly more or less entails hoping that Yers outnumber Xers state by state, rather than vice versa — which, in turn, more or less entails hoping that Y-friendlies (that is, potential voters like ourselves) as a group wind up, by a critical margin, voting as Yers.

There are various ways of trying to resist this line of thought, but I find them unconvincing, as I try to show in time. The bottom line is that if we think the common good will be best served by a Y administration rather than an X administration, we hope that Y will win, which means we hope that others who also think as we do that the common good will be best served by a Y administration vote for Y.

If they do not do so — if potential voters who are only somewhat or marginally Y-friendly wind up not voting, or voting quixotic, and if in part as a result of this Xers wind up outnumbering Yers state by state, so that X wins — then the common good suffers relative to Y winning.

From this is seems to follow that what we wish to see other voters like ourselves do, we bear some responsibility to do ourselves. If we believe the common good is best served by voters like ourselves voting a certain way, that is how we ought to vote. If we are Y-friendly and want other Y-friendlies to vote as Yers, then we have some responsibility to vote as Yers ourselves. (The term "responsibility" is used here in a general, popular sense, not a technical moral-theology sense. To put it more precisely: On a Y-friendly assessment of the election, to vote as Yers should be seen as a permissible act that discharges our general moral obligation to take co-responsibility for the common good by voting. Other acts also, including voting quixotic, might be argued to discharge that moral obligation; it falls to prudential judgment to decide which of the available permissible ways of discharging our duty is most prudent and advantageous.)

How much "responsibility" we have as Y-friendlies to vote as Yers (that is, how much good "voters like us" can hope to accomplish voting as Yers) may vary with circumstances, but it is never, I submit, entirely nonexistent. Obviously in a critical battleground state the obligation is much more significant than in a state that is solidly friendly to our candidate. However, even in an overwhelmingly Y-friendly state, Y's victory still depends on actual Y-friendly voters actually turning out voting. That Y's victory in this state is practically inevitable doesn't change the fact that Y can't win the state without actual votes from Y-friendly voters. It is thus incumbent on Y-friendly voters even in an overwhelmingly Y-friendly state actually to turn out and vote for Y; though individual Y-friendlies might make a prudential judgment that enough Y-friendlies will vote as Yers to permit some Y-friendlies to seek the common good in other ways (e.g., voting quixotic).

What about Y-friendly voters who live in an overwhelmingly X-friendly state? Superficially, their situation might seem to be the same as that of Y-friendly voters who live in a solidly Y-friendly state: The outcome is essentially a foregone conclusion, so it "doesn't matter" how they vote. In fact, though, there is a difference. In even the most Y-friendly state, it is still necessary for some Y-friendly voters to turn out and vote as Yers in order for Y to win. In the most X-friendly states, OTOH, Y cannot win no matter how many Y-friendlies vote for him. In that state, Y is a non-viable candidate; he cannot win there any more than quixotic candidate Z can win. So is there any reason Y-friendlies should vote for him?

Again, Y-friendlies in such a situation may legitimately consider voting quixotic, but yes, there is still good to be accomplished by voting as Yers, no matter what state you live in. The reason is that the "threshold" character of election victory has been somewhat overstated. Although winning or losing is a threshold event, election results do have a somewhat fuzzy character (fuzzy fuzziness, as it were) in which every single vote contributes, just as every flower contributes to the forest. There is winning and winning. The popular vote does matter; how much you win or lose by does matter.

For example, consider this sentence from Zogby regarding recent poll numbers that show Obama with double-digit leads over McCain:

These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers. They fit the 1980 model with Reagan's victory over Carter — but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment…

"Not only victory but realignment." IOW, the wider the gap between the winner and his nearest competitor, the greater the winner's perceived mandate; the more he will be perceived to have the will of the people behind him; the less political clout his opponents will have to push back on his agenda; the more pressure they will feel to cooperate with his initiatives.

When Bush 43 eked out an electoral college win by Supreme Court decision in 2000, it was widely understood that he came to office with very little political clout and would have to govern in a very bipartisan style. Bush was accordingly humble and soft-spoken in the early months of his first term.

What changed that, of course, was the devastating "realignment" of 9/11. In the new crisis environment, bipartisanship was shelved for united front, Democrats and Republicans closed ranks, and Bush's approval ratings soared to the highest levels of any president in U.S. history. This gave him the political capital to aggressively pursue his agenda with little resistance — and he poured out that political capital like water, in ways that, many would conclude, led to his ultimately suffering the worst approval ratings of any president in history.

What events may occur during a president's term that may affect his perceived mandate, we have no way of knowing. The one fixed point, possibly the key event in the absence of some 9/11-like crisis, is the election.

For Y-friendlies who oppose an X administration, even in an overwhelmingly X-friendly state, it makes sense to want X to win by a smaller margin rather than a greater margin. Likewise, whether or not we can prevent an X victory at the electoral level, we at least want to prevent "realignment." The popular vote matters; the margin of victory or defeat matters. Thus there is always reason to vote for the preferred viable candidate.

What about voting quixotic? Doesn't that also add a vote to the non-realignment side of the equation? Yes, to a degree. If X wins 51 percent of the vote, that has a certain fixed value, whether Y wins 49 percent and all possible Zs win 2 percent, or Y wins 42 percent and all possible Zs win 9 percent.

However, there is also a fixed value in the point spread between the winner and his nearest competitor. Winning by two percentage points is one thing; winning by nine percentage points is something else. In terms of weighing against an X mandate, there is always value in voting for Y, whether in an X-friendly state or a Y-friendly state.

Once again, this is not to say that voting quixotic might not be felt to accomplish other goods that are more worth pursuing, particularly in highly X-friendly or Y-friendly states. It is simply to say that there is, in fact, good to be accomplished in voting for Y, no matter what state you live in. It is never the case that such a vote is meaningless.

Whew. More to come.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

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October 21, 2008

Biden flipping on same-sex marriage?

(SDG)

Catholic Exchange reports that Biden said yesterday "that if I lived in California, I would vote against Proposition 8," i.e., he would vote against defining marriage in California to be "between a man and a woman." (Hat tip: Ignatius Insight.)

This appears to conflict with his claims in the VP debate with Sarah Palin that "neither Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage." CE notes that Bill Dohonue has pointed out the conflict between Biden's apparent opposition to defining marriage to be between a man and a woman and the teaching of Pope Benedict in Sacramentum Caritatis (quoted here at greater length, emphasis mine):

Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter, without consequences for our relationships with others: it demands a public witness to our faith. Evidently, this is true for all the baptized, yet it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one's children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms (230). These values are not negotiable. Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature (231).

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October 17, 2008

Elections, Part 4: The least problematic viable candidate

(SDG)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

New comments link for Part 4! (TypePad says they're working on this!)

SDG here (not Jimmy).

In previous posts, I've argued that, on the basis of what Catholic moral teaching understands as fundamental moral principles, the Obama–Biden ticket is far and away the more problematic of the two major-party candidacies, and the McCain–Palin ticket is far and away the less problematic of the two.

I would like to be able to leave the point there. Unfortunately, it has become necessary to make a defense for pro-life Catholics and others who agree with the above assessment — who, whatever objections, misgivings and reservations they may have about McCain–Palin, regard McCain–Palin as less problematic than Obama–Biden, who would prefer a McCain–Palin victory to an Obama–Biden victory — supporting and voting for McCain–Palin.

I don't mean a defense of the thesis that such voters must vote for McCain–Palin. I mean a defense of the thesis that they may do so.

On first blush, this would seem to be too intuitive and obvious to need defending. Of course you vote for the candidate you hope to see win — what else?

As is often the case with intuitive insights, the reality turns out to be more complicated when you stop and think about it, with some conceptual speed bumps along the way. At the same time, also as is often the case, the intuitive insight is basically on the money. To support and vote for the candidate you hope to see win — or, as I've put it in previous posts, for the candidate you regard as the least problematic viable candidate — is always morally licit.

However, as I noted in my first post, some serious and thoughtful Catholics, including my friend Mark Shea and his sometime co-belligerent Zippy Catholic, have suggested or argued that McCain's support of embryonic stem-cell research makes it objectively wrong for any Catholic to vote for him as well as Obama — even though Obama  supports ESCR as well as abortion, euthanasia and other intrinsically evil policies. (Added: Zippy has taken exception to my original characterization of his views, arguing that "in circumstances like ours there is no proportionate reason to vote for a presidential candidate who supports and promotes a policy of murdering the innocent." Mark seems at times to have proposed a similar view regarding voting for a candidate who supports any intrinsically evil policy.) Thus, on such a view, Catholics who support and vote for either major-party ticket, whatever their sincerity or their culpability may be, are engaged in objectively wrong behavior.

Among other things, it has been argued that voting for a candidate who supports objective evil as the lesser of two evils normalizes that level of evil as "the new normal." It has also been argued that voting for a candidate who supports objective evil involves remote material cooperation in evil, which requires a proportionate reason to be justifiable. But no one vote has any effect at all on the outcome of an election, the argument goes, so there is no proportionate reason.

The only moral alternatives, on this view, would seem to be (a) voting for some third-party candidate, however quixotic or hopeless, or (b) not voting at all. Mark and Zippy have thus become outspoken advocates of voting for a quixotic third-party candidate, strongly resisting any attempt, not only to encourage or pressure other Catholics to vote for McCain, but even to justify a Catholic vote for McCain.

Many Catholics and others who feel strongly about defeating Obama and wish to vote for the one ticket that could conceivably beat him have become unsettled by such claims, and are concerned that they cannot support or vote for McCain–Palin without betraying their faith. A growing number of Catholic voters, many apparently swayed by this scrupulous line of thinking, are joining Mark and Zippy in advocating quixotic candidates such as Chuck Baldwin (who, while he advocates no intrinsically evil policies, seems to be a bit of a kook) and Joe Schriner (a journalist and activist who seems to have some good ideas).

To the extent that quixotic-vote advocates may feel that the most prudent and productive course is to register dissent from all forms of intrinsically immoral policy by voting for a third-party candidate, they are within the bounds of legitimate prudential judgment.

However, to the extent that quixotic-vote advocates have been influenced by concerns over the alleged unjustifiability of voting for any candidate who supports any intrinsically immoral policy, even when the only other viable candidate is far worse, they have been led astray. Such concern is, I submit, unnecessary, unfounded and deeply unfortunate. Catholic moral theology does not support the scrupulous conclusion that one cannot support or vote for the candidate one regards as the least problematic viable candidate unless that candidate is free of all support for intrinsically evil policies.

To the extent that some quixotic-vote advocates have led others to believe that a vote for any candidate who supports any intrinsically immoral policy is objectively wrong, even when the only other viable candidate is far worse, I'm afraid that, with the best of intentions, they have done those others, and their country, a real disservice. By taking to public fora like blogs to actively influence Catholics in significant numbers to believe that they cannot vote for McCain in good conscience, it is in principle not impossible that quixotic-candidate advocates could help peel away critical support from McCain in battleground states, thereby indirectly contributing to an Obama victory. Morally speaking, this is not the same as actually supporting or voting for Obama, but the outcome for the common good of the country is no better for that.

In this and following posts I hope to contribute some needed clarity to the subject. Can informed and serious Catholics legitimately vote in good conscience for McCain–Palin in an effort to defeat the most pro-abortion major-party candidate in history? In a word: Yes. We. Can!

First, a brief summary of the argument.

1. The outcome of any election has implications for the common good. In any election that offers more than one possible outcome, different outcomes will have differing implications for the common good, almost always including both positive and negative implications for any outcome. (In American presidential politics, once the primaries are over, the campaign underway and the VP choices announced, the number of possible outcomes is in a basic sense no more than two, and strictly limited to the major-party tickets. Note that we are concerned here with possible outcomes, not theoretical scenarios.) 

2. Comparing and contrasting the implications for the common good of possible outcomes may be complex and uncertain, but it will often be possible for individual voters to arrive at prudential judgments regarding how positively or negatively they believe any possible outcome is likely to impact the common good, and thus to arrive at a preferential ranking of possible outcomes — or, in other words, a preferential ranking of viable candidates. This doesn't necessarily mean liking or approving of any of the possible outcomes in any general way, only not regarding possible outcomes as equally desirable or undesirable. (In American presidential politics, this will almost invariably mean regarding one of the two major-party candidates as preferrable to, or less problematic than, the other.)

3. In any election that offers more than one possible outcome, opinions among the electorate will differ widely, not only regarding the preferability of one candidate or another, but also the reasoning and the criteria for arriving at such judgments, even among those who agree on a particular candidate. (This is emphatically the case with our sharply divided American electorate.) There may in fact be no one policy, priority or factor that unites all who prefer a particular candidate, other than their common preference for their candidate over the major-party rival.

4. Preferring one possible outcome to any others — regarding one viable candidate as preferable to or less problematic than any other viable candidates — seems to more or less entail hoping (or regarding it as in the interest of the common good) that the preferred possible outcome occurs, that the less problematic viable candidate wins. This in turn seems to more or less entail hoping that potential voters who share our preference for one viable candidate over any other(s) in fact vote for him in greater numbers than potential voters who feel otherwise will vote for his rival (on a state-by-state basis, in enough states to give him an electoral college victory). In other words, we believe that best possible outcome of the election as regards the common good depends on voters like us, voters who share our assessment of the candidates, voting for our preferred viable candidate, by a critical margin.

5. What we wish to see other voters like ourselves do for the sake of the common good, we bear some responsibility or obligation to do ourselves. If we believe the common good is best served by voters like ourselves voting a certain way, that is how we ought to vote. How much responsibility we have in this regard may vary with circumstances (such as which state we live in), and other courses may sometimes be justifiable, including in some cases voting quixotic, which may also serve the public good in various ways. However, the benefit for the public good of voters voting in numbers for the least problematic viable candidate is never nonexistent (and always proportionate to the cooperation in evil), so the obligation to vote for the candidate we regard as the least problematic viable candidate is never nonexistent. And what we are in any degree obliged to do is always permissible to do.

That's the short version. My next post will start to explore the argument in depth.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

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October 01, 2008

Elections, Part 3: Qualified McCain advocacy

(SDG)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

SDG here (not Jimmy).

John McCain supports embryonic stem-cell research.

Although his support appears to be somewhat qualified and conflicted, and there are signs that he may be moving away from supporting ESCR, his history of consistent support for an intrinsic evil remains a grave concern in his candidacy.

No, I won't paper it over with a euphemism. In my last post I argued that "A candidate who advocates legalized abortion, euthanasia, ESCR or human cloning gravely disqualifies himself for public service, not just for what he or she may do but for what he or she stands for." By that standard, McCain gravely disqualifies himself for public service on at least one of those four counts.

That Obama gravely disqualifies himself on all four of those four counts certainly makes McCain the less problematic and thus preferable candidate. In my next post I hope to deal with the ethics of voting for the least problematic viable candidate, which is, I contend, always permissible. For now, I want to focus a bit more on potential consequences of a McCain–Palin administration vs. an Obama–Biden administration.

As I've said, I'm deeply skeptical of all four candidates, and uneasy about all possible outcomes. I have no strong feelings regarding which side is better equipped to lead on the economy, health care and other crucial issues.

I do suspect that McCain is better equipped than Obama to lead on foreign policy. That's not necessarily what they're calling a game-changer, though, since (a) I could be wrong (I am a political knucklehead) and (b) it is not wildly unlikely that McCain's health could impair his ability to serve.

McCain's temperament is a legitimate subject of concern. His penchant for fast and risky decisions can make him look decisive and knowledgeable and bold, as when he responded to the conflict in Chechnya; but it can also lead to mistakes.

Obama is clearly smart. Any questions I had on that front were settled on Friday night. He's also articulate and charismatic, a combination we haven't seen in a presidential race since Clinton, and before that since Reagan. (In terms of articulateness and charisma, I mean; I'm not putting Reagan in Clinton's or Obama's league intellectually.)

Obama is also inexperienced. I suspect that's not as big a deal as some might think. It may be embarrassing for a candidate to suggest that Iraq is not a serious threat, or that Chavez came to power during the Bush administration rather than the Clinton administration, or that unconditional presidential-level meetings with rogue dictators is a good idea; but hey, your advisors clue you in and you move on. I'm sure Palin would be making some of these gaffes if she were on the grid as much as Obama. The "It's all about judgment" line is neither the whole truth nor completely wrong.

Here is something that is a game-changer for me.

Among serious concerns in our society today are power grabs by different elements within government. Several concerns in this regard have been raised in recent years regarding the executive branch, most recently in connection with the bailout effort.

Arguably the most sustained, influential and successful power grabs in recent U.S. history, as far as I can tell, is that of the judiciary.

The judicial system seems to me to concentrate a great deal of power, particularly at the top, in the hands of a small number of people who are unelected and unaccountable, who can hold their positions essentially for life and whose decisions have far more lasting impact than that of many public officials. Subsequent justices are expected, on principle, to respect previous verdicts in a way that other officials are not. There is no stare decisis for presidential executive orders, for instance.

As far as I know, recourse for abuses of power at this level, or for addressing flaws in the system in any way, are dauntingly remote. Practically speaking, about the only readily available course of action I know of is to promote judicial self-restraint over judicial activism by nominating candidates who espouse judicial restraint, i.e., originalism or strict constructionism. This is a very limited and problematic approach, but I don't see that there is any other immediately available option.

So much is this the case that a president's Supreme Court nominations may well be his most far-reaching act in office. What did Gerald Ford do in office that had rivaled the long-term impact of nominating John Paul Stevens?

The issue is especially crucial because the judiciary has been instrumental in subverting both the judicial and the democratic process in imposing the fiction of an anti-life "right to choose." Other grave evils highly damaging to society, such as same-sex "marriage," are highly likely to be imposed by judicial fiat given a judiciary with sufficient political will and lack of self-restraint.

In general, left-leaning Democratic presidents reliably nominate candidates for the Supreme Court who are reliably evil–activist. The record of right-leaning Republican presidents and the nominees thereof is, unfortunately, more mixed. We do seem to have gone three for three now, and the one before that was a seemingly unavoidable wild card. There almost seems to be a kind of corrupting influence inside the Beltway that sucks justices to the dark side. We can only do what we can do.

McCain has taken a lot of flak from conservatives for his leading role in the "Gang of 14." This is a complex issue and I'm not sure what I think about it. I'm not sure nuking the filibuster would have been the best outcome. And it does seem that some of Bush's lower-court nominees can reasonably be accused of conservative activism no less blatant than that of many liberal activist judges.

I oppose judicial activism in principle, not just based on of how it is used. I don't want activist conservative judges any more than activist liberal ones. I want judges who know their job description, who stick to interpreting the law and leave emanations and penumbras to the psychic readers. Give me nine liberal Supreme Court justices who support abortion rights, same-sex marriage, euthanasia and so on, but who also know how to read the words on the page, and who believe that these rights should be advanced by the legislative and democratic process rather than by judicial fiat, and I'll be happy.

Certainly McCain says just exactly the right things about what kind of justices he likes and what kind of nominees he would put forward. Better still, I think McCain probably gets the principle of judicial restraint vs. activism better than Bush, who I think was more likely to go on personal trust rather than qualifications (Harriet Myers anyone?).

So I find this comparatively reassuring, though it's impossible to be entirely reassured. Knowing how much McCain loves to reach across the aisle, etc., who knows what the heck he'll actually do in office? And that's prescinding from the potential disparity between how candidates may say they'll judge and what they actually do on the bench.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no doubts what kind of candidates Obama will put forward, and get, and what kind of verdicts we will get from them.

This is the single most important issue that I think can be most confidently held in advance to represent a clear difference in outcomes based on who wins the election. It is a decisive issue for me, if not the decisive issue. I don't quite want to reduce it to "It's The Supreme Court, Stupid," but that wouldn't be wholly wrong either. At any rate, along with the substantial differences between the candidates on the life issues, it is a decisive reason for rejecting Obama and for regarding McCain as preferable candidate.

But what about the claim that we can't or shouldn't support a candidate who supports any intrinsic evil, even if the other candidate is worse on every fundamental issue? That will be the subject of my next post.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

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September 24, 2008

Elections, Part 2: Against Obama advocacy

(SDG)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

SDG here (not Jimmy).

In my previous post I said "There are good reasons not to be thrilled with either of the two major candidates." I want to reiterate that. I don't see the election this year as a holy crusade of Good Guys Against Bad Guys.

Specifically, I don't see any Good Guys in this race, or even among the also-rans of the primaries. I'm skeptical of all the candidates — and of the judgment of anyone who isn't. At this point, I believe any sensible person ought to be profoundly uneasy about all possible outcomes. I don't begin to understand the much-mocked quasi-messianic euphoria on the one side, and on the other side, despite some energizing of the base after the VP pick, there is still plenty of room for misgivings.

The story of the hour, of course, is the historic financial crisis and the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie. Fingers are pointing in all directions. Proposed narratives that lay all the blame on a single doorstep — the Administration or the GOP generally, the Congress or the Dems generally, Wall Street — strike me as dubious. Narratives that blame the abuse of money and power by all of the above, not necessarily in equal degree, seem much more plausible. I won't muddy the waters with whatever ignorant notions I might have about how much guilt to assign where.

More to the point, it seems likely to me that there is no persuasive sense that either ticket necessarily represents the obviously right team to deal with the crisis. Any effort to cast the financial crisis as an obviously compelling reason to vote one way or the other would seem to suggest either extraordinary insight or else conjectural special pleading. Until I have reason to believe otherwise, my money (whatever that turns out to be worth next week) will be on the latter.

There are undoubtedly serious issues to be explored (and obfuscated) here. How much power does the executive branch actually need here? How much will they get? How may it be used or misused? How badly and unnecessarily may taxpayers be shafted, and what if anything can or will be done to minimize this? How egregiously have the rich and powerful abused their influence to their own advantage over the years, and what if anything can or will be done about that?

These are complex questions, and Catholic teaching, rooted in divine revelation, emphasizes that the enormity of the perennial abuse of the poor by the rich. There is also a long, sad track record suggesting that the practical answers are unlikely to approximate justice to any great extent. Rail against this by all means. Just don't suppose that either ticket represents the white hats here to save us.

Other important problems loom. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq pose serious issues. Was it right to go to Iraq in the first place? How much unnecessary harm has been caused by bad or wrong decisions, including treatment of prisoners? What is the best course of action now? What approach to health care is best? How can we best care for the environment? What about other conflicts and crises around the globe? What about energy? And so on, and on.

With all these legitimate and pressing concerns, it may be understandable that some may look with fatigue at seemingly long-unchanging battle lines between well-entrenched sides in an issue like abortion, where too often candidates and politicians have offered lip service rather than leadership, and conclude that, in the absence of real hope for change on this subject, the political contest ought to be about other things.

After all — the style of thinking goes — has any pro-life candidate of either party at any level of government ever made enough of a difference on abortion to warrant hope that the outcome of this election might matter too? In this presidential election, how much will it really matter with regard to the unborn which party takes the White House? What about the argument of Catholics like Douglas Kmiec and Morning's Minion who suggest that Obama's overall agenda is either unlikely to affect abortion numbers, or might even help reduce abortion rates more than any pro-life action from McCain?

This style of thinking is understandable. It is also, I submit, fundamentally flawed and contrary to authentic Catholic principles.

Let's review some basic considerations.

We all know that in Catholic moral and social thinking not all moral issues are of equal weight, nor do all involve moral absolutes. For example, in an oft-quoted passage from his 2004 memo to Cardinal McCarrick, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, contrasted the grave and intrinsic evils of abortion and euthanasia with the less black-and-white issues surrounding capital punishment and waging war:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not, however, with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

In this passage Ratzinger is addressing moral principles in the context of worthiness to receive communion, and while he excludes the possibility of a diversity of opinion on the morality of abortion and euthanasia, he does not specifically address the question of support for or opposition to laws legitimizing or proscribing abortion and euthanasia.

However, in his landmark encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), which develops the ideas of the "culture of life" and the "culture of death," Pope John Paul II argues that the right to life is "the fundamental right and source of all other rights," and that the "first and most immediate application" of the connection between civil law and moral law absolutely excludes "laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia":

Now the first and most immediate application of this teaching concerns a human law which disregards the fundamental right and source of all other rights which is the right to life, a right belonging to every individual. Consequently, laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual … In this way the State contributes to lessening respect for life and opens the door to ways of acting which are destructive of trust in relations between people. Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity. (EV 72)

Because the right to life is the ground of all other rights, efforts to seek or pursue the "common good" while denying or undermining the right to life are fundamentally fraudulent:

It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized. Only respect for life can be the foundation and guarantee of the most precious and essential goods of society, such as democracy and peace. (EV 101)

Again, from John Paul II's Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (The Lay Faithful):

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination. (CL 38)

The US bishops pastoral statement Faithful Citizenship concurs:

There are some things we must never do, as individuals or as a society … A prime example is the intentional taking of innocent human life, as in abortion and euthanasia. In our nation, "abortion and euthanasia have become preeminent threats to human dignity because they directly attack life itself, the most fundamental human good and the condition for all others" (Living the Gospel of Life, no. 5). It is a mistake with grave consequences to treat the destruction of innocent human life merely as a matter of individual choice. A legal system that violates the basic right to life on the grounds of choice is fundamentally flawed. (FC 22)

Faithful Citizenship concludes: "The direct and intentional destruction of human life from the moment of conception until natural death is always wrong and is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed" (FC 28).

It is not enough, then, to hold that abortion and euthanasia are intrinsic evils. Catholics must also regard laws legitimizing them as intrinsic evils antithetical to the foundational principles of civil society and law. A culture in which intrinsically evil acts attacking life itself are claimed as basic human freedoms — a legal system in which such acts are protected (and even funded) as basic human rights — is corrupted and poisoned at the very root. It is a society "without foundations," a house built on sand. Such a society can only represent a culture of death.

This is the crucial flaw in Kmiec's approach. Here is Kmiec's pitch:

Obama does not advocate the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, and orthodox Catholics do. We do for the very clear reason given by [Cardinal Francis] George in a Sept. 2 letter — namely, "one cannot favor the legal status quo on abortion and also be working for the common good."

That's exactly right, but what's wrong is for Republican partisans to claim this to be Obama's position. It's not. Rather, Obama believes there are alternative ways to promote the "culture of life," even given the law's sanction of abortion. …

Both reasonable extrapolations from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics and a recent Catholic in Alliance for the Common Good study find that improving the economic well-being of the average family in general, and of the women facing the abortion decision in particular, can save unborn lives.

In these brief sentences, Kmiec radically distorts both Obama's agenda and Catholic teaching. Technically, it is true that Obama does not merely "favor the legal status quo on abortion." Rather, he is firmly committed to further solidifying and advancing the legal status of abortion by signing the Freedom of Choice Act, which would apparently eradicate various limitations on abortion allowed by post-Roe Supreme Court decisions. He would also expand public funding for abortion (e.g., rescinding the Mexico City policy), and would surely seek to liberalize access to abortion in other ways.

More fundamentally, though, talk of "alternative ways to promote the 'culture of life'" while actively promoting abortion is rank contradiction. It is not enough merely "not to favor the legal status quo on abortion." As John Paul II wrote, "It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life." Kmiec's argument seems downright disingenuous.

Even on a pragmatic level, the calculus of concluding that this pro-abortion candidate's overall agenda might possibly impact abortion numbers more positively than that anti-abortion candidate's overall agenda is dubious enough. Admittedly, if it were really true, and known to be true, it might be considered a knotty issue. Certainly the sheer scale of abortion numbers — millions of guiltless human lives legally snuffed out every year — dwarfs the enormity of other even other per se equally grave issues like euthanasia and ESCR, as well as serious issues of non-intrinsic evil such as the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Anything that reduces the incidence of abortion is obviously to that extent a good thing.

However, in the first place, the argument assumes what is at best unknowable, if not outright dubious. Who really knows what will happen to the abortion rate in the next four or eight years even regardless which party is in office, or what effect any particular administration's policies will or won't have on it? If we can't even say for sure why abortion rates have behaved as they have in the recent past, how can we claim to plot varying trajectories going into the future? If it's all about actual outcomes, who knows how a candidate's stated agenda will affect his performance in office — or how successful he will be at implementing his agenda?

It may be true, as Kmiec argues, that "improving the economic well-being of the average family in general, and of the women facing the abortion decision in particular, can save unborn lives." Of course, it's also true that the "economic well-being of the average family in general" rests at least significantly on factors beyond any president's control, even assuming that Obama would pursue the right policies successfully while McCain would not.

More pointedly, actions like rescinding the Mexico City policy (which Obama would certainly do) and signing the Freedom of Choice Act (which he is determined to do, and which he may well have at least as much chance of succeeding at doing as "improving the economic well-being of the average family in general") would cost unborn lives. How exactly does Kmiec's calculus account for that?

In the end, though, what makes Kmiec's reasoning not just dubious but finally indefensible is that the root issue is not merely numbers, but the radical corruption of the first principle of justice in law. Even if, theoretically, a pro-choice candidate's agenda were to reduce the incidence of abortion, it would be gains built on sand as long as the law continues to call evil good and good evil. It is the first and most fundamental responsibility of civil society to safeguard the right to life of every member of the community. The law must recognize this first and most fundamental duty before it can begin to fulfill it.

In our society today, the juridical fiat, functioning as law, that the right to end innocent human life is guaranteed in our nation's foundational legal document subverts the whole basis of civil law and jurisprudence more critically than any other injustice we face. This is not to elevate abortion above other life issues in terms of moral gravity; it's just that we are not (yet) burdened by a Supreme Court decision positing iron-clad constitutional warrant for, say, the right to "die with dignity." In American rule of law as we know it today, the fiction of the "right to choose" is the knife in the heart of justice. Or the scissors in the back of the skull.

Just as the culture of death is not simply a matter of numbers, it is also not simply a matter of existing pro-abortion legislation and jurisprudence. Political advocacy from candidates and politicians militating against the right to life, including advocacy of abortion, euthanasia, ESCR and therapeutic cloning, is also a taproot of the culture of death. Above and beyond the policies they implement, simply by espousing abortion and euthanasia as "rights" — by defining freedom in the public square in terms of "freedom" to end human life — candidates and politicians actively foster and advance the culture of death. Such advocacy is to political life what pro-abortion legislation and jurisprudence is in the legal sphere — a cancer at the root.

For reasons to be discussed later, we can't write in stone that a politician who advocates an intrinsically immoral policy, even legalized abortion, must always be opposed by all Catholics. (If nothing else, I will argue that a pro-choice politician may always legitimately be supported over a more pro-choice politician, even if in particular cases other courses of action may be judged preferable. A less cancerous root is preferable to a more cancerous one.)

However, one cannot glibly reason that abortion numbers are likely to be unchanged or even improved by a candidate's overall agenda, and so his pro-abortion advocacy doesn't matter. It matters gravely. It is worse than having a hate-spewing racist or a pornographer in office. It is poisonous. A candidate who advocates legalized abortion, euthanasia, ESCR or human cloning gravely disqualifies himself for public service, not just for what he or she may do but for what he or she stands for.

Thus the Vatican's Archbishop Raymond Burke, recently named Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (roughly the Vatican equivalent of the Supreme Court's Chief Justice):

We cannot accept for ourselves a political leadership which does not safeguard the inviolable dignity of human life. Are there other issues? Of course there are, but the primary issue has to be the question of human life.

Does this mean that we should settle for lip service? Is it enough that candidates tell us what we want to hear once every four years and then go their merry way till the next election? For that matter, doesn't McCain support ESCR?

No, we shouldn't, and no, it isn't, and yes, he does, or at least he has, though with qualifications, and there are signs that McCain may be shifting on ESCR (again, more later). I'm not now making the case for McCain, but the case against Obama (or any candidate with an Obama-like agenda). It is enough for now to note that while McCain's qualified support of ESCR is a serious strike against him, Obama's unqualified support is even more serious. On every issue touching directly on the most fundamental right and the source of all other rights, Obama's stance is diametrically opposed to the foundations of the culture of life.

Very simply, Obama is the candidate of the culture of death. He's probably the purest culture-of-death presidential candidate in American history.

Does that mean Catholics can or should support McCain simply because he's not Obama? For now, let's just say: It's a start. I have more to say about this,  and will continue when I can.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Posted by SDG in Government | Permalink | Comments (141)

September 21, 2008

Elections, Voting and Morality, Part 1

(SDG)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

SDG here (not Jimmy).

In this election season, questions about voting and morality are naturally under discussion in the Catholic blogosphere and the larger Catholic world. At times the range of possible answers being proposed and discussed has included some dubious opinions and claims.

There are good reasons not to be thrilled with either of the two major candidates, and it's not surprising that some thoughtful and serious Catholics and others may choose not to vote at all, or to vote for some quixotic third-party candidate as a form of protest against the major candidates.

More surprisingly, some serious Catholics have seemed at times to incline toward the view that, although one of the two major candidates is far less problematic than the other, even the less problematic candidate is still problematic enough to make supporting or voting for either of the two major candidates not only not obligatory, but actually objectively wrong. Rarefied theories regarding the purpose and moral significance of voting have been floated that seem hard to reconcile with Catholic teaching.

Even more surprisingly, some serious Catholics have actually gone so far as to argue that the preferable candidate is one whose agenda is about as radically opposed as it is possible to be to Catholic teaching on fundamental moral issues (including abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, therapeutic cloning and same-sex marriage) rather than his opponent whose views are much more convergent with Catholic teaching on most, if not all, of those issues. (More on this later.)

This last view has become most widely associated with Douglas Kmiec, Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University's School of Law and former Dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Catholic University's law school. After working with fellow Catholic scholar Mary Ann Glendon on Mitt Romney's presidential bid, Kmiec stunned American Catholics by endorsing Barack Obama for president.

While acknowledging that McCain's opposition to abortion is consonant with Catholic teaching while Obama's abortion advocacy is contrary to it, Kmiec seems to feel that the social and economic benefits of Obama's overall agenda could actually help reduce the incidence of abortion more effectively than any anti-abortion actions McCain is likely to undertake. Similar views have been taken by, among others, the anonymous Catholic blogger Morning's Minion at the Vox Nova group blog and Eastern Orthodox convert Frank Shaeffer.

Kmiec also challenges McCain's pro-life credentials by citing McCain's failure to oppose the death penalty. (Perhaps oddly, I have not seen Kmiec mention the more crucial issue of McCain's failure to oppose embryonic stem-cell research. Surely Kmiec knows that Catholic teaching permits a diversity of opinion on the death penalty, but not on embryo-destructive programs.)

Kmiec's arguments for Catholic Obama advocacy have been roundly rejected by prominent Catholic commentators. At times, unfortunately, resistance to Kmiec's views has been taken to extremes: On one occasion a priest wrongly refused Kmiec communion because of his Obama advocacy, a canonically unjustifiable move.

The Church has penalties for procuring an abortion (automatic excommunication), and there seems to be a growing consensus among the bishops that Catholic politicians who actually support legalized abortion should not receive communion. (Strong arguments have been mounted that, following Canon 915, politicians who obstinately persist in manifestly supporting legalized abortion should be denied communion, though consensus on this point among the bishops has been slow in coming.)

However, when it comes to citizens supporting or voting for politicians who support intrinsically evil policies like abortion, Church teaching acknowledges that this can be morally justifiable if two conditions are met. First, one must support the politician in spite of his evil policies and not because of them. Second, there must be proportionately grave reasons outweighing the evil policies (again, more on this later). The question whether such morally proportionate reasons exist in any particular case, like the question whether a particular war is just, is not a matter of binding teaching, but of a permissible diversity of opinion.

This doesn't mean, of course, that all opinions are equally good, or all arguments equally plausible. I agree with those who find Kmiec's reasoning and his Obama advocacy indefensible. But people may hold indefensible views, and engage in indefensible acts, in good faith. Church teaching provides clear lines that cannot be crossed without cutting oneself off from communion. Mere advocacy for particular politicians, even with very problematic views, is not such a line. Although Obama advocacy is (in my judgment) objectively wrong, it is wrong extrinsically, not intrinsically. (For example, Obama advocacy would obviously be morally defensible if, say, Obama were running against Hitler.) But good Catholics can disagree in good faith — though again, not always with equal plausibility — about what is or is not extrinsically wrong.

Among those rightly dismissing Kmiec's arguments is my long-time friend, Catholic writer and blogger Mark P. Shea. Mark is strongly critical of both major candidates, but he clearly sees — as most informed and non-dissenting Catholics see and as even most reasonably fair-minded observers can see — that anyone giving priority to fundamental Catholic moral concerns must regard Obama as far and away the more problematic candidate.

At the same time, Mark is, entirely legitimately, no fan of McCain. I've always had significant reservations about McCain myself, and in a recent blog post I discussed why I might not vote for him, particularly if he chose a pro-choice running mate. (He didn't, of course, and his choice potentially addresses some concerns while arguably raising others; I'll be posting more on this soon.) I am thus sympathetic to Mark's choice not to vote for either of the two major candidates, but to register a protest vote for a quixotic impossible candidate instead.

Where I think Mark goes wrong is in leaning toward the view that not voting for either of the two major candidates is not only a morally legitimate option, or even a morally preferable option, but the only morally viable option. Although he argues, far more credibly than Kmiec, that McCain is the less problematic candidate, Mark seems at times to feel that McCain is still problematic enough that McCain advocacy is also objectively wrong. This view has been maintained and defended even more assiduously (and problematically IMO) by Mark's co-belligerent, anonymous blogger Zippy Catholic.

Some caveats here are necessary. In leaning toward such views, Mark naturally means to express an opinion, not a definitive fact. It is an opinion about objective right and wrong, but still an opinion, and Mark would certainly acknowledge that it is an area of permissible dispute, and in principle he could be wrong. Second, I take it for granted that Mark makes no judgment about the culpability of McCain advocates, any more than either he or I judges Kmiec's culpability for his Obama advocacy. Third, Mark clearly doesn't put McCain advocacy on a par with Obama advocacy, either regarding plausibility or degree of evil. Still, it does seem that Mark feels or has felt that there are two unequal but objectively wrong choices — voting for either of the two major candidates — and only one morally legitimate course, not voting for either one.

I find this position untenable. In any contest between two or more viable candidates, I submit that it is always morally legitimate to support and vote for the candidate one regards as the preferable — or least problematic — viable candidate. (By "viable candidate" I mean of course "candidate with a realistic chance of winning.")

In fact, not only is it always morally legitimate, by default supporting and voting for the preferable or least problematic viable candidate should be the usual, preferred course of action. Other courses of action should be comparatively extraordinary, though in particular circumstances it may reasonably be judged preferable or more prudent to take another course.

For example, there may be legitimate reasons in a particular contest for considering it preferable (though not morally necessary) not to vote at all, or to vote for an admittedly nonviable, quixotic candidate as a form of protest. However, one can never rightly claim that it is morally necessary not to vote for any viable candidate, or that those who do support or vote for the least problematic viable candidate are (however sincerely) objectively wrong to do so.

Again, in a three-way contest, one may regard all three candidates as somewhat viable, but may still credibly choose not to vote for the least problematic viable candidate, if one feels that the second–least problematic candidate is more viable and thus has a better chance of defeating the most problematic candidate. Others may feel, also credibly, that the least problematic viable candidate is still worth supporting, even if he is a long shot.

Such decisions can be very difficult, because if opposition to the candidate viewed as most problematic is split among two challengers, the candidate viewed as most problematic by most people may eke out a victory. Whether this works out for the best or the worst, or to the advantage of one party or another, may vary with circumstances. From a democratic point of view, it is probably an unfortunate outcome, but for better or worse it is the nature of our current one-person, one-vote system. Whether another system would be better is a question for another time.

Another good question for another time concerns the nature of the system that yields the particular viable candidates we get. However that may be, once it becomes clear that one or another of a very small pool of people will in fact win the election, my thesis is that it is always morally legitimate to support and vote for the candidate one regards as the preferable or least problematic viable candidate.

In upcoming posts, I'll try to make the case for this thesis and answer objections to it. I will also discuss the particulars of fundamental moral principles and Catholic teaching in connection with the two candidates, and why I think McCain is the least problematic viable candidate.

For some, if I can make this case persuasively, this may be good news. Many, like Mark, may feel conflicted, opposing Obama but feeling unable to vote for the only viable alternative. Mark has said to me that he's not voting for McCain because he feels he can't; if he felt he could vote for McCain, he would do so. I want to make the case that, in fact, he can if he wants to — and so can others.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Posted by SDG in Government | Permalink | Comments (74)

August 18, 2008

Why McCain may lose my vote

(SDG)

SDG here (not Jimmy).

This weekend John McCain and Barack Obama were each interviewed by that Purpose Driven Life guy.

I watched about ninety seconds of Obama before I had to read to my kids, and later I watched, I don't know, maybe ten minutes of McCain before getting involved in something else.

At any rate, I saw enough of McCain to cheer his straight response on when life should be protected ("At the moment of conception") and his citation of his 25-year pro-life record — and again when he responded equally bluntly about Supreme Court nominees, an issue McCain himself explicitly connected to the abortion issue.

On that last point, asked which Supreme Court justices he wouldn't have nominated, McCain named ("with all due respect") all four bad guys, and went on to emphasize the President's responsibility to nominate justices committed to sticking to the Constitution rather than "legislating from the bench," a phrase he used twice in describing "some of the worst damage" done by justices.

He couldn't have given a much better answer than that. And with Supreme Court nominations in the very top echelon of my concerns in this election — and my complete confidence in Obama's ability and commitment to put forward nominees every bit as activist/evil as the likely retirees, if not more so — that's something I really needed to hear from him.

So why — how — is McCain teetering on losing my vote?

Because he's been sending signals that he may pick a pro-choice running mate.

If he does that, I absolutely will not vote for him. Period. I can understand others feeling differently, but that's how I see it.

Why?

(First, a BIG RED DISCLAIMER: This post represents my thoughts, not Jimmy's. I don't know how Jimmy will be voting or how this issue will affect his vote.)

My feeling is that I'd rather see the GOP go down in flames, even if that means President Obama for four or even eight years, and let the GOP try to get it right next time. I'd rather throw away my vote on some hopeless third pro-life candidate, so that when the GOP leadership and party advisers wake up the morning after the election and sees the margin they lost by, and then look at the votes sucked away by that third-party spoiler, they'll be more likely next time to do what's necessary to get that margin back. (It's still important to vote, even for a guy who can't win, so that the party can see the votes they didn't get, and understand why.)

If McCain is elected President, his vice president will be well positioned to succeed him as the party's next presidential candidate (which could easily happen only four years from now). This time around we fended off a White House bid from pro-choice Rudy Giuliani, but Giuliani made tactical mistakes, and for awhile he looked like a credible contender. Anyway, Giuliani was only America's Mayor. Vice-President Ridge could be a much tougher nut to crack.

If McCain picks a pro-choice running mate, his 25-year pro-life doesn't mean squat: He's not committed to the pro-life cause. If he's going to position a pro-choice Republican for a White House run, he's setting up the GOP to degrade its pro-life stance from merely nominal to strictly optional. Every president, especially every successful president, leaves his stamp on the party for years after he leaves office. The Democratic Party is still very substantially what Clinton made it, and the Bush 41/43 influence will continue to be felt in the GOP for years to come.

There are a lot of things I'm not happy about in the GOP. There are a few key issues — this is one, though not the only one — that have kept me voting GOP most of the time for most of my life. I can't cast a vote that may eventually result in a pro-choice presidential GOP ticket.

Now, maybe McCain is just making noises about being undecided because he's trying to win "undecided" voters by appearing moderate and creating the impression that he doesn't have a pro-life litmus test. Maybe he's going to pick a pro-life running mate after all, but wants it to seem that, whoever it ultimately is, he sort of happens to be pro-life, rather than making it clear that he's excluding pro-choice possibilities from the outset.

If so, it's a bad strategy. McCain isn't going to beat Obama by rushing to the middle. He needs to shore up his base. If McCain or the GOP thinks that the base is so frightened of Obama that they'll vote for him no matter what, he's sadly mistaken.

Posted by SDG in Government | Permalink | Comments (85)

March 07, 2008

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,"

(Tim Jones)

A California  state appellate court judge has said "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.".

We don't need it, you idiot. We have a natural right to home school our children. We hold this truth to be self-evident. the Constitution, and specifically the Bill of Rights is not anything like an exhaustive list of the rights of individuals, but is meant as a modest hedge against oppressive government encroachment like the nonsense you are trying to pull. You can't expect the founding fathers to list everything that people have a right to do.

I want to join Mark Shea in encouraging active resistance to this ruling... street protests, walk-outs by public school families who support the home schoolers, bake sales... what have you.

Here is Governor Schwarzenegger's web page, through which you may e-mail him. Below is traditional contact information. Tell him what you think, but be more respectful than I am in this post. Heh.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
                        State Capitol Building
                        Sacramento, CA 95814
                          Phone: 916-445-2841
                        Fax: 916-558-3160 ( new number )

Posted by Tim Jones in Government | Permalink | Comments (46)

May 11, 2006

St. President

(Michelle Arnold)

In Italy, where they are still trying to elect a president, votes have been cast for a rock singer, the daughter of Italy's last king, and for St. Pio of Pietrelcina who is better known as Padre Pio.

"With no hope of immediately electing a president, lawmakers have been throwing away votes for the past two days while party leaders negotiate a consensus candidate. A secret ballot has allowed them to get creative.

"For one elector, the political deadlock offered a rare chance to vote for Padre Pio, a 20th century mystic monk who had the stigmata -- bleeding wounds in the hands and feet similar to those of Christ -- and was made a saint in 2002.

"The speaker of Italy's lower house of parliament immediately annulled the ballot paper. Padre Pio died in 1968."

GET THE STORY.

Italy's current scramble for a president kind of reminds me of California's 2003 recall election, in which candidates included everyone from former child star Gary Coleman ("Diff'rent Strokes") to porn pusher Larry Flynt (Hustler) to the eventual winner, muscleman turned movie star turned Kennedy kin Arnold Schwarzenegger. The only difference is that the votes in the California election were not a joke but all too real.

Posted by Michelle Arnold in Government | Permalink | Comments (4)