An excellent exposition on why voting for the “perfect” pro-life candidate may guarantee the victory of the pro-abortion candidate.

I don’t want “perfect;” I want actual attention to the problem.  Abortion shows up as a serious political issue every couple years and then is predictably shoved to the back.  I’d feel more comfortable voting for Romney if I actually believed he would do something about the 3,300 innocent unborn lives lost every day.  Do we have any credible statements from him that he would do anything substantive about abortion?  As much as I don’t approve of “Andrew” and his self-satisfaction, I think that the pro-life movement has been the “useful idiots” of the GOP since Reagan’s day and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

He only hits me when he gets really angry, not all the time!  He promises he’s going to change, really!”

I can understand the position taken by John. I would make several points:

1. My state is NOT a swing state, and my vote doesn’t matter. Period.

2. Were we talking about a hardcore abortion president vs a candidate with at least moderately pro-life record, I would be standing with you. However, given Romney’s past, and his recent statements, particularly his off hand comments that abortion basically isn’t be important to his campaign, among MANY others, I don’t think that’s the case here. Romney was very pro abortion when he decided he wanted to be governor of Massachusetts. He seems to have become ‘pro life’ when he decided he wanted to be president.

3. Neither Obama nor Romney actually exist. Both ‘men’ like all candidates for high office are, to quote Fred Reed, a committee consisting of three speechwriters, a gestures coach, two pollsters, a makeup artist, an image consultant, and several crooked advisers. They are each what their publicists tell you they are. A campaign is intended to hide the candidate, not to reveal him. So really, when it comes down to it, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU’RE REALLY VOTING FOR.

4. Focus your efforts on LOCAL elections. That’s the only place you have real input, the only place your vote actually DOES matter.

Mr. Zmirak wrote:
“How manly it feels, refusing to ‘compromise.’ How satisfying it is to flounce away from the playground with your marbles tight in your whitening hand: ‘That will show them. I won’t be fooled again by the party that holds out the carrot of Roe v. Wade to make us jackasses pull the cart. I’ll write in Ron Paul. Or Pope Pius IX. Or Eamon de Valera. I won’t compromise—I’m too much of a man for that.’”

Zmirak’s argument rests on this passage, and it is little more than an anecdotal strawman that appeals to humor and not reason. Not voting for the lesser of two evils has nothing to do with proving our “manliness.” I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, except God. I cannot consent to give authority to someone who I am morally certain will unjustly spill blood. That blood would then be on my hands. I will not cooperate with evil. That is how I prove my fidelity to God. I could give a damn about others’ perception of my “manliness.”

THIS VIDEO OF BISHOP PAPROCKI SAYS IT ALL!

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=36803

I would agree with Mike (and Alasdair MacIntyre, and going back further, G.K. Chesterton):

Vote Local.

Being active in local life of the community is not only fundamental to our nature, but allows us to create a layer between the national government and the people. On paper our country has many of these local governments, but in reality many are neglected due to our various cultural forces (disordered individualism, the media’s hype about national politics, increasing standardization leading to indifference, et cetera).

Sometimes it is better to temporarily ignore national politics and the strive towards abstract “community” (seen in Straussian neo-‘conservatism’ and Deweyist neo-liberalism) and focus on the particular and familiar.

Two things worth remembering:
1. They can’t cheat if it isn’t close.
2. We are also voting for vice-president.

John, I’m a citizen of Louisiana, which as you know is among the reddest of the red.  Four years ago my wife prevailed on me to vote for McCain, who won the state by a greater margin than any other.  So my vote was thrown away.  This time I plan to vote for the Constitution party.  Don’t tell my wife, OK?

When do we stop pretending that both political parties benefit from the abortion rhetoric while neither of them will ever do anything substantive to do anything about it?

John, I usually love your work. I found this pretty disappointing and bogus. Your fool-hardy drunken idiot acquaintance is hardly an across the board example of all who refuse to vote for people who “say” they’re prolife, when in fact their actual pro-life convictions are questionable. Just as you say you’ve voted the “no compromise” route with no success, many of us have voted the “Oh no! The sky is falling… better vote republican or the whole world will melt in fire and brimstone” line, and found it to be just as lack-luster. People need vote their conscience. What we need are better formed, more convicted consciences, and less people bullying other people into what they think is the “right” way to vote.

Adolfo:

Your remark, while amusing to those who consider it solely in the abstract, falls flat when one tries to apply it.

To understand why, consider this scenario:

Suppose there were only two men in the world, and a woman was going to wind up married to one of them no matter what she did.

And, suppose that both of them had been wife-beaters in the past, but of the two…,

Mr. A was a regular and enthusiastic wife-beater, a spokesman for the practice of wife-beating, and had a habit of surrounding himself with friends and circumstances which made wife-beating more extreme and easier to achieve; and,

Mr. B was an on-again, off-again wife-beater, who acknowledged the wrongness of wife-beating in a half-hearted tone, and who habitually surrounded himself with friends, some of whom did little to deter his wife-beating, and others of whom actually did quite a lot to deter him;

And, supposing that the woman would automatically wind up married to Mr. A unless she specifically went out of her way to express a preference for Mr. B…

...should she go out of her way to express a preference for Mr. B, despite his flaws?

The answer, obviously, is YES, SHE SHOULD.

Adolfo, the “He only hits me when he gets really angry, not all the time!  He promises he’s going to change…” joke is funny UNLESS one is using it to talk the woman into NOT expressing her preference for Mr. B.

But if that’s how one is using the joke, then it isn’t funny; it’s cruel propaganda, because (given the facts of the scenario) if you talk her out of expressing a preference for Mr. B, she’ll just end up married to Mr. A, who’ll beat her that much more often and who won’t even feel sorry about it.

Look, I am second to no man in keenly feeling the frustration with the past history of Republicans. But I am also unwilling to let my feelings overrule my better judgment. I will not allow another man’s failures to exercise justice and prudence prevent me from exercising justice and prudence.

We will wind up with either Romney or Obama as President for the next four years (barring the Second Advent rudely intruding).

So our situation is not that of a woman who really ought to leave her abusive boyfriend to go and seek a nice man. Our situation is that of a woman who has a choice between a very flawed with a past history of abuse for which he has expressed repentance and regret with less-than-full-throated determination, and a sort of Charles Manson figure who persistently expresses full-throated enthusiasm for all the wife-beating he can get daily, and twice on Sundays.

That is our situation. And our moral obligation is thus clear: Those of us in non-battleground, not-even-close states can afford to vote third-party or write-in or whatever, in an effort to strategically manipulate whichever party always wins our state into working harder for our vote next time. And those of us in battleground states are morally obligated to vote strategically for the least-worst achievable outcome…and that’s Romney.

This does not mean we should endorse the sometimes lily-livered or craven accommodationism of the GOP’s moderates (including Romney) on this topic. Their Elmer Gantry or Neville Chamberlain antics are partly responsible for the deaths of 50+ million children.

But only partly responsible. In fact one must admit they are far less than 50% responsible, given the Democrats’ great gusto in offering sacrifices to Moloch. The Democrats pretty much own abortion, as they pretty much own slavery, Jim Crow, early 20th-century eugenics, the alignment of the American labor movement with socialism, the persistence of Marxism among tenured academics, the general tawdriness of popular culture, the sexual revolution, and the whole gay-normalization movement. One can and should pin certain sins on Republicans as well; chiefly corporate cronyism and unnecessary war…but inasmuch as the Democrats have picked up the slack and made themselves identical to the GOP on such issues (they don’t call it the “Goldman Sachs Administration” for nuthin’), these now represent a distinction without a difference.

So a sense of proportion is called for. Abortion is a crime which cries out to heaven; and a sense of outrage is entirely fitting. But we are at war with the devil in all of this; and in combat one must often leave the zone of unhelpful emotion and coolly work towards the best achievable outcome, even struggling with deeply-flawed allies, praying often that God will supply what we cannot.

So in this case.

Paradoxes are maddening, but that doesn’t make them any less true. Consider the Paradox at the Polls: <a href=“http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2012/10/god-gave-us-the-vote-so-we-could-make-fools-of-ourselves-while-his-will-prevails.html”>

As citizens of a democratic republic, we are the government!!! Life gives us the choices it gives us while not always giving us the best and certainly never the perfect. To vote for a third party candidate that has zero chance of winning may send some type of a message but also may ensure that the worst candidate actually wins. Since we truly are the government, the choices we make makes us culpable for the outcome.

This is beneath you, John.

There is the Kingdom of Heaven, and there is modern American politics.  Nothing in the latter realm is worth perjuring oneself over if it means being diminished in the former.

How vain must one be to think that the obscene politicking of one’s fleeting, impermanent nation are more important than even a single soul?  How presumptuous must one be to so vigorously imply (for you do not apparently feel compelled to just come out and say) that your readers should simply vote Romney whether they like it or not?  Never mind what your conscience tells you, everyone—just punch out that hole for the GOP and everything will be ever so marginally better, at least in some ways.  Best not look too deeply into the others.

Those whose conscience moves them to vote Romney should do so.  Those whose conscience suggests otherwise should not heed editorials like this one, even if they’re written by one of the best Catholic writers in the United States (which Zmirak is).

Remember the lesson of Matthew 22:15-22.  When confronted by a similar “either-or” choice, Jesus chose not to be bound by it at all.  Modern American voters have the same option, even if they must suffer the consequences—as Jesus did, as well.

I also object to this editorial’s title.  Onan agreed to participate in an act that carried pleasure and responsibility in equal measure.  He took the pleasure easily enough, but rejected the responsibility—it is in this that the sin inheres.  Is Zmirak saying that those Catholics who cannot bring themselves to vote for Romney (even if they also do not vote for Obama) are merely exercising the pleasure of the democratic franchise without also accepting its responsibilities?  If so, I think this is coming it a bit high.  Does he really believe that such voters enjoy voting for a candidate they know will not win?

So you are giving up on God (again) to vote Mammon and Mars, in an effort to defeat the guy who worships Mammon and Moloch.  Exactly what I would expect from a Libertarian who, while you don’t subscribe to the first two sins that cry out to heaven, you’re all for the second two.

New Catholic, for those of us whose state is solidly in one camp or another, a Romney vote is futile or else uselessly redundant.  That would be my definition of “spilling it on the ground”.  By all means exercise prudence in discernment if your state’s up for grabs.  But in states like mine where the outcome is manifest, the moral duty arguably is to support an “other” candidate advocating a more identifiably Christian manner of governance.

Consider something called “the Mexico City policy”.  When Clinton became president, he suspended the Mexico City policy, under which the USA would NOT send funds to subsidize abortions in foreign countries.  When Bush II became president in 2001, he reinstated the Mexico City policy.  When Obama took office in 2009, he again suspended the Mexico City policy and resumed financing abortions in foreign countries. This decision is strictly a President’s prerogative under Executive order.  It doesn’t need to cobble together a majority of the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
So for babies outside the USA, it DOES make a difference!
TeaPot562

I’m voting for Ryan.

Pleasure of satisfying one’s feelings of superiority while refusing the responsibility of doing good?

Thanks, Cord. And I agree with Romulus: In a solidly “red” state, it would be wasteful to vote for Romney (but NOT other Republicans, who might be quite solid), if a more principled candidate is on the ballot.

In a swing state, I think it’s almost criminal not to vote for the strongest candidate against Obama—who opposed the “Born Alive” act, and racked up the most pro-abortion voting record in the history of the U.S. Senate.

The trouble TeaPot562, is that I fully believe an equal number of unborn children will die in the war with Iran, as would be saved by the reinstatement of the Mexico City policy.

All that is is a trade of Mars for Moloch; and it fails utterly to do anything about the root of the problem:  The lack of respect for the dignity of human life, ALL human life, between conception and natural death.

Yes!  Dr. Zmirak is in the house - something we need more of here.

I can bring myself to vote for Pilate over Herod - this time.  But over the next four years, couldn’t we lay the groundwork for a viable third option?  Is it really written in stone that America can have but two major parties at a time?  And even if so, could we not build a coalition big enough to marginalize at least one of them?

You get it.

Vote for the pagan, the heretic, the mason, because he says he is pro-life? How many died in the 8 years of Clinton v.s.W?

Bishop Sample banned Bishop Gumbleton, but the latter would be willing to risk arrest (with whining) over war factories, the latter sits on his Cathedral.

But to Ron Paul.  The humble, honorable man with integrity.  How gauche.  We need a corrupt lying cheater who promises to do evil in our favor instead.

Is it really written in stone that America can have but two major parties at a time?

Given our Constitution’s provision for a single chief executive and the manner in which he’s to be elected, I fear it is.  A parliamentary government led by a prime minister would give greater chance for minority parties to have a seat at the table.  That seems impossible for us.

  If one believes this country is on the verge of social and economic collapse, as I do,  I would actually prefer that it happen on Obama’s watch.

Planned Barrenhood is firmly behind one candidate and opposed to the other. Need I say more?

What an utterly bizarre piece from a writer I usually respect.

So, we are to “man up” and avoid electoral onanism by voting for the man who paid for his son and daughter-in-law’s IVF treatments and use of a surrogate (e.g., reproductive prostitute) to manufacture a grandchild or three on the grounds that this man, Romney, is really, truly pro-life and will fight to end abortion, or at least limit it, or at least signal once in a while to the swooning crowd that he’s again’ it (provided you don’t press too closely for details)?

Luckily for me, I’m a woman, and have no need to engage in such false idolization of the worst sort of faux masculinity that occasionally mistakes the least significant actions for, you know, actually doing something real, in the pro-life sphere or anywhere else that Catholic teaching matters (which is nearly everywhere, when you come to think of it).

Thank you, Mr. Zmirak. If only abolitionists had had your maturity and good sense, we would all still be voting Whig and keeping our fingers crossed that maybe the next Whig president would appoint the right sorts of judges to overturn the Dred Scott decision.

This kind of maturity and good sense is exactly why the Republican party knows it doesn’t have to change, and exactly why we will never have a viable alternative.

Your writings are usually pungent and thoughtful. This was pungent and without substance. Setting up an Andrew straw man to defame those who may have substantive arguments against voting is intellectual brow-beating that thinly veils fear-mongering.

The truth is that our vote affects our soul more than a national election. It would be more intellectually honest if you said that you would rather people vote against Obama because of fear, rather than decry and defame those who see their vote as holding little effect.

Thank you, John Zmirak! You are completely right and echo what I argued over at another Register blogger’s facebook page this morning—not one baby will be saved by voting third party, not one. Aren’t the lives of these little ones worth something? Defunding PP, overturning Mexico City, repealing Obamacare and the HHS mandate (which will ruin us), a good shot at fair federal judges and justices—these are all so critical! But some Catholics want to make the perfect the enemy of the good by throwing out their own straw man argument—that for the good of our own souls we cannot vote for any candidate at all who is not perfectly, in every way - pro-life. This fantasy candidate (and it is a fantasy in 2012) does not exist. Not even the ‘holier than holy’ Ron Paul—WHO, BTW when he had a chance to vote for life by voting for PRENDA this summer (which would have saved baby girls from sex selective abortions)—voted AGAINST IT. There is no perfect candidate. But this year we have a huge choice to make: vote for someone who is virulently pro-abortion and anti-religious freedom or vote for someone who, though not perfect can be held to account for his pro-life promises. For me, the choice is clear. It should be clear to anyone with ears to hear. http://www.sba-list.org/melissa

Ah yes, all the “substantive” pretexts for refusing to aid the defenseless in the imperfect way that we can (when is there a perfect way?) using the fallen, human instruments that we have (what else do we ever have) to achieve the limited good that we can. In fact, I let Andrew rehearse them all, explicitly or implicitly. A careful reader will find them ALL in Andrew’s own discourse above.

Now, what are the REASONS why someone living in a ‘swing’ state—the only folks I’m addressing here—would insist on voting for a fringe presidential candidate at a time like this when the ruling political party is actively persecuting the Church for her defense of the truth about life, love, and marriage? I cannot read souls (thank God!) so I don’t know which motive drives whom. But there are only four motives that seem plausible to me.

a) The voter is scrupulous, and feels that imperfections in the life or prudential policies of the Lesser Evil candidate will somehow “taint” his soul—that he will be held accountable for every flaw in that candidate, so the only safe thing would be to write in “Christ the King” every four years.

b) The voter is Andrew, see above. He is driven by impotent rage and a nihilistic desire to bring down the temple around him. Sadly, he is no Sampson.

c) The voter does not in fact support the Church and the Culture of Life, and hopes to peel off pro-life, pro-Catholic votes to serve some other agenda.

I strongly suspect that the people most vocal on this subject in defense of “Onan Voting” in fact are described by c), and they are trying to manipulate and corral those who suffer from a) or b). I know that if I could infiltrate Democratic circles, I would be trying to play on liberal voters’ scruples about Obama’s use of drones, his “kill list,” his failure to close Guantanamo—whatever I could, to get his voters to stay home or write in “Leon Trotsky.”  If you think that liberals are “above” using these tactics, think again.

I’m a tad bit confused by the reference to Reagan at the beginning of this article. My takeaway was that, in light of **actual results** and not merely the personal intentions of the voter, a vote for Reagan was not after all such a pro-life vote. So in that case a vote for the strongest candidate turned out to be throwing one’s vote away. But then John Zmirak appears to come to the opposite conclusion, that voting for the strongest candidate who is more pro-life is the best thing to do, even if “more pro-life” is extremely relative (does anybody honestly believe a Romney appointee would be superior to Reagan’s?)

If a voter can make an honest and well-informed judgment call that a candidate’s election won’t do diddly squat to end or even slow down abortion, then I don’t see how a vote for a less viable but more pro-life candidate is a throwaway vote at all. Rather, a vote for the stronger candidate is a signal that standards have lowered on how pro-life you gotta be to be considered the “more pro-life” candidate…which aptly describes how the GOP has devolved over the last several election cycles. One can reasonably argue that this strongest-candidate strategy brings us closer to the brink of where Canada’s at today, when NEITHER major political party is pro-life at all. I really think that the GOP is flirting with that prospect, and votes for candidates who only *relatively* more pro-life than The Other Guy is giving them permission to do so.

Frank Weathers is more eloquent than I am on this subject:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2012/08/to-let-the-democracy-of-the-dead-teach-me-how-to-vote-like-a-catholic.html

Here is his quote from the Archbishop of Paris in 1921:

“It is your duty to vote. To neglect to do so would be a culpable abdication of duty on your part. It is your duty to vote honestly; that is to say, for men worthy of your esteem and trust. It is your duty to vote wisely; that is to say, in such a way as not to waste your votes. It would be better to cast them for candidates who, although not giving complete satisfaction to all our legitimate demands, would lead us to expect from them a line of conduct useful to the country, rather than to keep your votes for others whose program would indeed be more perfect, but whose almost certain defeat might open the door to the enemies of religion and of the social order.”

Oops. In my comment above I said “four motives.” I meant to say “three”: “surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope… Let’s START AGAIN.” (Monty Python, Spanish Inquisition Sketch).

John, there really is a fourth reason: the voter is informed enough to rank Romney’s pro-life posturing at its true value, while being aware of Romney’s desire to expand the doctrine of pre-emptive war to a few more countries, continue Obama’s secret kill list, continue the practice of “enhanced interrogation,” and otherwise act against liberty, truth, and virtue.  But, of course, none of that is nearly as important as making sure the next SCOTUS nominee will be a Souter or an O’Connor clone, right?

There is virtually no difference, sadly, between what Republicans and Democrats will do either in foreign policy—as the VP debate made clear. And as Miss Manning admitted, Obama is ALREADY doing all the things she suspects Romney might do. So those points are moot, and I stand by every word I wrote. If Miss Manning really doesn’t care whether Obama wins or not, it’s because she has other values that matter more to her than the sanctity of life.

That last statement against Ms. Manning was quite ungentlemanly and lacking in virtue.

“will somehow “taint” his soul”...
Somehow? It’s not that mysterious. In most other areas of life, Catholics accept the concept that your actions, omissions, words and thoughts first and foremost affect **you and your soul** more than they affect anything else. We say that implicitly every Sunday in the Confiteor. Except in each election, the act of voting is held (for different reasons by different parties) to be above and outside normal rules of ethics, though with a double standard twist: a vote for Imperfect Candidate A is in no way an endorsement of his policies that you may find morally repugnant, so go ahead and plug your nose and cast your ballot…but a vote *against* said candidate is spoken of as a grave sin that endangers [insert All-Important Cause here] and might as well be a vote for The Other Guy!! Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.

That said, I don’t believe that a vote for either Romney OR for a more perfectly pro-life 3rd party candidate is deserving of any “so you want to kill unborn babies!?” accusations. I have seen some very sound arguments for why either of those alternatives will, in the long run, do grave harm to our most cherished goals and ideals, including those 3,300 per day. Therefore as I see it one can in good conscience make opposite choices out of the exact same motive and the difference between them is only which has the better command of the facts, analysis, and predictions (I didn’t want to jump to the phrase “prudential judgment” because it’s been so abused lately). I can see how a vote against Romney (full disclosure: I live in such a solidly Blue State that these arguments do not strictly apply to me) could contribute to a tragic loss. But I can also see how a vote for Romney could contribute to a watering-down of the pro-life message to the point that our country is left with no “viable” political party or candidates left who even do so much as pay lip service to our convictions…and then the entire debate really will be moot, because we’ll all be obliged to vote 3rd party.

The fact is we only have three choices: Obama, Romney, or a protest sign without a vote. (Voting for Ron Paul is the third choice.)

As for whether you can in good conscience vote for Romney, what it really boils down to is two questions:

1. Does a president have to be completely without sin, or agree with you on every single point in order to get your vote? Or can you vote for whoever comes closer?

2. Is it better to avoid voting, or to vote for the better of the two candidates? (Again, Paul is a protest sign, not a vote.)

And for those who claim that Romney will make all the same mistakes as Obama, there’s a third question.

Would you rather have a president who claims to be marginally pro life, and at least neutral for the economy, or for one who is zealously pro death and is selling the constitution to the lowest bidder?

  “It is your duty to vote. To neglect to do so would be a culpable abdication of duty on your part. It is your duty to vote honestly; that is to say, for men worthy of your esteem and trust. It is your duty to vote wisely; that is to say, in such a way as not to waste your votes. It would be better to cast them for candidates who, although not giving complete satisfaction to all our legitimate demands, would lead us to expect from them a line of conduct useful to the country, rather than to keep your votes for others whose program would indeed be more perfect, but whose almost certain defeat might open the door to the enemies of religion and of the social order.”

  –Fr. John A Ryan, DD, formerly the Professor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America, democracy of the dead (requiescat in pace)

There is no intrinsic evil proposed by Romney not already practiced or favored by Obama (torture, aggressive war, etc.). There are several grave evils practiced by Obama that the Republican party (and strong pressure groups within—see Harriet Myers) oppose:
1) The mass murder of the unborn on demand
2) The persecution of the Church and her institutions for their refusal to fund contraception.

If the Republican party had watered down its prolife plank; if several pro-choice justices in the recent past (not way back in the 1980s) had been appointed by Republicans, there might be a case for giving up on politics—as Catholics per se have effectively had to in France, England, etc. This is not that moment. This is a moment when the Church is under attack, and has a choice between an imperfect defender and an inveterate enemy.

St. Augustine supported the pagan emperors against the barbarians. To do any less is to act like… well, a Donatist.

See you next week in my next blog.

Hi Prof John. Good to see you back, hope you are well (funny, I googled your name just last week, saw you were writing wonkish reviews. He abandoned us peasants, I said to myself…). Totally agree that, with 1.2 million abortions per year, it is the issue. There is no sense of talking about “freedom”, “rights”, blah, blah, blah, as long as this is going on. Might as well return to the caves…The destruction of babies in the womb is the ultimate, infinite slavery, the exploitation of God’s gift to create life, to now be use as mere commodity, a marketing device, where the very life that results becomes a byproduct to be discarded like a used plastic cup (oops, I forgot, plastic has more rights, we have to recycle plastic to save the planet). There is no greater form of dark selfishness in the entire history of humanity. In addition to crappy politics, government policies, laws that allow this, it is also time to look at the crappy economics that underpin abortion. We got to face the fact that there people make money, lots of money on these 60’s “free for all pelvic rights” dogmas. It is in the $trillions if one adds up all the industries that profit from this. The left is obviously on the take. The problem now is that the right is also at risk. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is 100% pro choice and a strong supporter of Romney. Anyways, it’s good to have you back! Tom
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID7o5L3CaRU
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq-ZGktYWWA

Constant vigilance is the price of freedom. Whoever wins, our battle has just begun. America will have the government that it deserves. I read above that Sandra O’Connor balanced her abortion decision not on “privacy” but on “liberty”, one of the unalienable, endowed by our Creator, rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness inscribed in the Declaration of Independence. The Ninth Amendment to our Constitution says that people may have rights that may not be enumerated in the Constitution. Government does not give rights. God gives rights and Life. Only God may take Life or Liberty.

God said to Job: “Were you there when I laid the foundations of the world?” and the atheist answers God: “I was there and you do not exist.” A finite mind cannot conceive an infinite God, but the atheist does. The atheist not only conceives an infinite God, but that atheist tells the infinite God that God does not exist, that existence does not exist, that the Supreme Sovereign Being, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover does not exist. How smart is that?
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants. ... If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Voltaire
What kind of God would the atheist invent? A God WHO does not exist.

There has long been a latent bloodthirstiness among Catholics, a legitimate anger insofar as it is a reaction to the horror of legalized, government-funded and –promoted abortion. We now have a presidential candidate who, if given a second term, will do all he can to destroy this country and the freedoms of its citizens. It strikes me as significant that Catholic anger is at precisely this time taking the form of a refusal to stop a president whose goals (though they include further promotion of abortion / contraception and the legalization of post-birth murder) amount to the mutilation of America.
Notice that there has never been such a surge of third-party-vote promoters among Catholics (not that I know of), until precisely the time when voting Republican means putting a stop to an anti-American tyrant. Perhaps many Catholics see this election as their chance to step conveniently out of the way as their country is brought to its knees. Why else would so many Catholics, who normally vote Republican, suddenly change their vote when such an obvious enemy of the country as Obama steps up? I think I understand this choice among Catholics. I happen to think it is a cynical and morbid course of action, but it makes perfect sense as a means to the end of destroying a country that many Catholics have learned to hate because of its pro-abortion laws.
“Nonsense,” you might say, “Catholics don’t want Obama to win! He’s a persecutor of the Church!” Well, there’s certain poetic justice and romantic intrigue in bringing persecution to the Church and fire and brimstone down on the country that persecutes her. It’s a sort of sentimental way of bringing back a golden and heroic Catholic age of high ideals. It’s an opportunity to be “more Catholic than the next guy.” By voting third-party we can each be a Catholic who looks into a dark and horrible future with his jaw set like flint. If, on the other hand, we are successful in stopping Obama, then we’ll only trudge along, same as ever, retaining only our freedoms (with which progress can be made in healing society by long and slow participation in God’s will—BORING).
Meanwhile, some actual libertarians, many of whom have voted third-party for decades, are putting Catholics to shame! Some of these reasonable (if idealistic) voters are rushing to vote Romney in recognition of the urgency of Obama’s threat to our freedoms and the survival of rights among US citizens.

Excellent post. Sad there are serious Catholics who seem to be ok with Obama winning this election. And @poetcomic, geez, how fatalistic. If you think America is about to burn down, that doesn’t mean it’s ok fan the flames. Go read some of Paul Ryan’s speeches and try to have a little hope, ok?

whom do you most want to oppose, Obama or Ryan? It seems like some Catholics are more worried about Ryan being imperfect than about Obama being evil.

Stephen, amen! I couldn’t have put it better! We are in for a world of hurt if Obama wins, but many can’t or refuse to see it.

Posted by Christina Martin on Saturday, Oct 13, 2012 6:20 PM (EST):whom do you most want to oppose, Obama or Ryan? It seems like some Catholics are more worried about Ryan being imperfect than about Obama being evil.”
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Great point, thank you.

“If Miss Manning really doesn’t care whether Obama wins or not, it’s because she has other values that matter more to her than the sanctity of life.”

Bravely spoken, Andrew!

Tom K.: Ah, the ready wit of the plodder! In fact, Miss Manning demonstrated that on every other issue she ADMITS to caring about, Obama is as bad as Romney… while on the Life issue he is infinitely worse. So she appears to be a fierce, single issue voter (like Andrew). But that issue isn’t Life. So while her attitude mirrors his, her priorities are actually worse.

Nice try, though.

Cling to the hope, Doc, but for the duration of Empire, Roe is here to stay. To be sure, the Dems will nominate Justices who understand the Constitution clearly mandates a need to show proof of two abortions before allowing a high school degree; but the Republican Party generally, & personified by Mitt, is no less determined to keep a 5-4 Roe majority, in order to keep getting, to coin a phrase, the Onan vote every four years.

As they say, the hell with a third party: t’would be nice to have even two.

“There is no intrinsic evil proposed by Romney not already practiced or favored by Obama.”
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I think I’d rather listen to Archbishop Lori of Baltimore: “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.”
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My penetratingly logical mind tells me that if both candidates stand for intrinsic evil, then it’s wrong to vote for either one.
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I know, I know, it all sounds too much like moral theology 101. We’ve all grown up and moved on. But before we get to “NOT voting for Obama is really a vote FOR Obama,” line of argument, let’s take a look at some the assumptions being made about me if I refuse to vote for Romney - I must either (a) demand perfection in my candidates, (b) secretly support abortion even though I don’t even realize it, or (c) (the most sinister) care more about my immortal soul than the fate of millions of unborn children.
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(a) I don’t demand perfection, just some evidence of a moral center - by that I mean that the candidate holds some morally upright principles in public life no matter what. I’m not voting for a policy platform, or against another, but for a person - and I don’t see this in Romney. This is not a personal judgement on his soul, just a prudential view of the man as a candidate based on the evidence of his past actions - as opposed to his current promises.
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(b) I don’t support abortion, but am vehemently against it, which is the reason I don’t support a candidate who supports it for rape, incest and LOTM. Since when is this “pro-life”? - it isn’t, just a contradictory made-up plank concocted not too offend pro-lifers too much.
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(c) I choose to ignore “arguments” that are really moral bullying.
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BUT - you say, this is all well and good - I can see why you don’t actively support Romney, but you have a duty to vote against Obama. Here’s where the “NOT voting for Obama is really a VOTE for Obama” trump card kicks in.
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Sorry, I vote FOR a person. A person runs the country, not a policy, not a set of talking points, and certainly not someone whose only credential is he’s not the other guy. If no one meets the lowest standard of my vote, he doesn’t get it. And believe me, that standard is pretty low: he doesn’t support intrinsic evil. Otherwise, I have no standard at all, and the country is really in bad shape, and my vote really is wasted.

Whenever I read of Catholics who urge us not to vote for the most electable pro-life candidate, I mutter: “Andrew.”

This might be the slimiest, most intellectually dishonest strawman arguments I’ve read in a long time. Between that and your outright slander of Erin Manning, you’ve lost a reader here.

But probably because I secretly support abortion, or something.

So she appears to be a fierce, single issue voter (like Andrew). But that issue isn’t Life. So while her attitude mirrors his, her priorities are actually worse.

This is one of the most stunningly mean-spirited sentences I’ve ever read from an otherwise faithful Catholic. How in the name of heaven could you possibly know what motivates Erin Manning? And if it isn’t fidelity to the truth, and a desire to support a candidate with a moral center, who seems to be seriously engaged on the pro-life issue, who doesn’t advocate a grave intrinsic evil (particularly when you consider that he favors the health/life of the mother exception, which permits practically unlimited access to abortion), what is it?

This line of reasoning is far, far beneath you. But like “Andy, Bad Person” above, I’m sure you’ll just read a secret desire to advance the pro-death agenda of the Democrats into my words.

What is it about presidential election years that causes certain members of the Catholic Right to lose its collective mind and engage in the most mean-spirited, intellectually dishonest forms of debate imaginable? Simply remarkable.

“Whenever I read of Catholics who urge us not to vote for the most electable pro-life candidate, I mutter: “Andrew.””
This took me by surprise! Based on your characterisation of ‘Andrew’, I thought you were going to write:
“Whenever I read of Catholics who urge us not to vote for the most electable pro-life candidate, I mutter: “So you want to kill unborn babies?”
Honestly, that’s how it reads. How can an article about a belligerent, accusatory pro-lifer who attacks others for lack of dedication and wrong priorities, turn into an attack on people who refuse to vote for a ‘pro-life’ candidate, calling into question their dedication and priorities?
I get your point about refusal to compromise, I’m just surprised you made it with such an ambiguous analogy.

If Miss Manning really doesn’t care whether Obama wins or not, it’s because she has other values that matter more to her than the sanctity of life.

Classy.  That’s a good way to make friends and influence people.

Let us know when your personal vote determines the outcome of a presidential election.  It ought to happen any time now, since you live in a swing state.

Glad to have you back, Zmirak! You’ve been sorely missed.

As I wrote above, there are indeed a group of voters who can rightly be called ‘well-intentioned but scrupulous.’ And I’m sure that many of those who plan to vote third party in swing states fall into that category. Scrupulosity, you’ll remember, is the equal but opposite error to laxity. Scruples drove Luther out of the Church.  And I fear that they are now driving some good people to shirk the Church’s best interests and safety, and the cause of minimizing the evil of abortion insofar as we can at this point.

Here are some intrinsic evils currently supported by the U.S. government—ALL of which a candidate would need to renounce and promise to work against in order to meet the Scrupulous standard:
* Federal health plans that reimburse for contraception.
* Civil divorce and remarriage among baptized Christians.
* The toleration of pornography on the Internet.
All those are intrinsic evils, just like torture—check the Catechism.

Now, if you are unwilling to support any candidate who doesn’t promise to get rid of 100% of those evils (remember, we can’t support laws with “exceptions”), even against a candidate who supports all those evils, PLUS abortion, torture, aggressive war, who ALSO has begun a persecution of the Church… well then, you are consistent, and I honor your motives if not your prudence.

You are also, however, far out of step with the Church’s historic practice, witness:

* The bishops who gladly took subsidies and cooperated—to the point of serving as public officials AND convening at Imperial request the Council of Nicaea—with Constantine, while he still promoted the intrinsic evils of gladiatorial combat, slavery (which entailed, for women, prostitution), and aggressive wars.
* Pope Leo III, who crowned as Holy Roman Emperor the polygamous Charlemagne.
* The Catholic fleets of Lepanto, many of which were rowed by Muslim slaves. That fact didn’t stop the Pope from sending his own navy to help—or from marking that victory with a feast day of the Church.
* Leo XIII, who cooperated closely with Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria—an emperor who personally mandated duels to the death among the officers of his army.
* Solidarity, which cooperated against the Communists with secular liberals whose social agenda it abominated.

If I might cite secular history—most abolitionists did NOT spurn the Emancipation Proclamation because it only covered slaves in Confederate states. They saw it, rightly, as enormous progress—as a prolife law with “exceptions” would certainly be.

The list could be extended indefinitely, by anyone with a better knowledge of history than my own. The Church has never practiced or demanded the level of purism practiced by the Scrupulous. She has often accepted protection from persecution from imperfect rulers, while striving to better their conduct. She has NOT insisted on their absolute conversion to Christ as the condition of Christian civic participation, nor made the virtue of patriotism conditional on the pristine morality of the State. St. Augustine, who considered the pagan emperors a band of robbers and pirates, still counseled good citizenship to Christians.

That is the sane and sober policy, and one in accord with the practice of popes for 2000 years. We stand at an hour of grave danger for the Church’s institutions, and of ongoing mass slaughter of the unborn by the most pro-abortion administration, not just in America, but in the Western world. (Secular Europe has much more protective abortion laws than we do.)

Defeatists and purists I cordially invite to go read someone else’s blog. You’ll get no quarter here.

So now it is “purist” to draw a line and refuse to personally endorse by vote candidates who support policies of murdering the innocent.

Just how much of a murderer does someone have to be before refusing to vote for him is no longer “purist”?

It is one thing to write an exhortation to vote for a candidate, or to pen a defense of the same.  It is another thing entirely to smear any who don’t agree with your vote with strawmen and ad hominems.  As a paying subscriber, I have registered my disapproval with NCR.  Shame on you.

So let me see if I’ve got this right.  Folks who think, “Not Obama, but maybe not Romney, either” are:
-the emotional equivalent of mean drunks, and are
-childish; also either
-guilty of the equivalent of the grave sin of Onan, or
-guilty of the less grave sin of scrupulosity, but
-are also *stupid* and
-single issue voters or maybe not single issue voters but
-will be responsible for the deaths of babies.
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Okay.  Tell us what you *really* think, Dr. Z.!
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Seriously, though: screeching names and epithets at fellow Catholics really is less like clutching their balls in the vise-like grip of your devastating reason and far more like farting in the wind.

freddy ,
I think the last action you cite resembles more the result of throwing away votes on a third party or no-party candidate.

“It is another thing entirely to smear any who don’t agree with your vote with strawmen and ad hominems….”

I’m sorry you must be lost, this isn’t Shea’s blog.

Kathleen,
Glad to see that your knees are working perfectly!

I think the real key here among those who agree that it’s a mistake to vote “other” is that while we must urge what we believe to be best, we must also not judge other people’s motives if they see it differently.

I firmly believe we must make our vote count… even if we are in a completely decided state.  Whether Romney wins or loses, the number of votes he gets (not just the electoral vote) will affect the attitudes of people for several years to come. The election results will have some influence on msm reporting. The election results will certainly lead to believers feeling motivated or defeated.

HOWEVER…it is my place to urge people to do right, not to judge people for doing what I think is wrong. I have enough sins that I know are sins that I don’t really have room to judge others for suspected sinful motives.

Onanism. Huh. I guess you gotta write what you know.

Ross Perot cost George H.W.  Bush the election after Bush raised taxes. Since then, the GOP has lowered taxes and refused to even consider raising them. If a Republican lost because he wasn’t pro-life enough, they might react the way they did after not being anti-tax enough. Supporting a candidate who isn’t going to do anything about abortion - and who has said he isn’t going to act on abortion - isn’t an imperfect step towards saving some babies. It perfectly sends the message that you don’t have to actually be pro-life, or do anything pro-life, to win the pro-life vote.

It is an urban legend that Perot cost Bush the election.  Bush cost Bush the election.  It remains to be seen whether Romney will cost Romney the election.  Meanwhile, the question the GOP should be asking itself is how on earth, with a President this bad in an economy this lousy, their guy is not up in the polls by 15 points.  Hint: The answer is not “The evil media” or “Erin Manning”.  The answer is that this odious cynical duplicitous man is the very best the Thing that Used to be Conservatism could muster to ram down our throats.  So now it is reduced to shouting at people like Erin to shut up, get in line, and ignore their consciences instead of bringing the case to Obama supporters about why they should switch their vote to him.

Mark,

whether Ross Perot cost Bush the election, 1) the perception among Republicans is that he did, and 2) Republicans responded by becoming fanatically anti-tax.

If the GOP lost because they aren’t pro-life, they might respond by becoming actually pro-life, just like they responded to losing because they were insufficiently anti-tax. You possibly did not read past the first sentence of my comment. Just like in the long-run, a Clinton victory led to lower taxes (for good or ill), an Obama victory might encourage the GOP to actually take a pro-life stance.

I don’t see anywhere that Zmirak said that Erin Manning should shut up. He simply drew the appropriate conclusion as to what they are proposing to do: make ineffectual their ballot by casting it for a boutique candidate with zero chance of winning. And he points out that this has the potential to result in real world policies that result in increased death to unborn children. The monkeyhoots of outrage on her behalf and in her honor reveal that her supporters think she is a shrinking violet incapable of honest dialogue rather than a thinker worthy of consideration.

My personal take:

I thought about voting third party.  But I have come to the conclusion that the Obama administration is the much greater evil and clearer danger.  The HHS mandate trumps all. Perhaps we may be putting off the inevitable, and life will soon be like a Michael O’Brien novel no matter what we do.  But we still need to fight back, and part of winning that fight is to put Barack Obama out of office. 

To Dr. Zmirak, Mark, Erin, Zippy,Dale, and all the other people I know, admire, and love involved in this discussion:

May I suggest Psalm 132 (133)?  And for the temerity of suggesting this, I’ll throw in for myself Psalm 13 and twenty minutes of one of my old Marty Haugen cassettes ...

Johnny Z is in da house.  Rock on, dude, and long may you write. Feels like I can breathe again, after being smothered by the smug.

So I should vote for Romney who will destroy the remaining shreds of the constitution, Magna Charta, our liberty, our prosperity (except for the crony capitalists like Bain), and even our lives if he starts a conflagration in or with Pakistan or Iran.

I understand you wish to summon up the worst demon from hell and give him your soul if he promises he might, if he has the opportunity, do something about abortion.  But while he is unlikely to do less than Skull and Bones W did - even with a GOP House and Senate, the collateral damage is unlikely to go unnoticed.

If after 4 or 8 years of Mr. Massachusetts Mormon, Roe still stands, yet we have a war, gasoline is $25/gal and people are literally starving, corruption has gotten to the point where students with unpaid loans are literal slaves in privatized debtor prisons - Bain Bastilles if you will., beautiful homes are bulldozed instead of foreclosed, farmers are arrested for doing sustainable agriculture, ... I could go on ... maybe you will feel good about giving your seed to Lillith and saying “I followed my conscience”, even while your hellspawn is all around you.

Nah, Josh, those people who have had the tremendous kindness to defend me here know I’m not a shrinking violet; they know that I’m too wordy to respond to something like this in a comment box:

http://redcardigan.blogspot.com/2012/10/zmirak-and-price-and-shea-oh-myor-post.html

They also know that I’m *Mrs.* Manning.  Or Erin.  Or Red Cardigan.  But the last American presidential election held when I was still a “Miss” was the one between (that great Christian hero and conservative paragon) incumbent George H.W. Bush and challenger (evil communist baby-killer) Bill Clinton.  I was still young enough back then to listen wide-eyed to the people who proclaimed that failure to re-elect Bush Senior meant open persecution of the Church and the end of Christianity in America, and following the election I fretted with other students my age about how long we’d be able to go publicly to Mass without being arrested. The rhetoric never really changes, does it?

I find it amazing that so many so-called Catholic Christians respond with such unfairness to each other on both sides of this argument. Do you really thinking insulting and misquoting each other makes you holy?

You know, to the contrary I think this whole discussion was a worthy one. In his inimitable manner, Zmirak gave his best shots, made some interesting points, but also got a few clips back, even arguably with interest.

It appears to me that Mrs. Manning received the response her initial snotty and condescending put-down of a comment asked for, especially on someone else’s turf. Had she been more respectful in expressing her disagreement with the author, I would venture the thread would not have taken the track it did, at least with her.

“I believe every woman in America should have contraceptives… I don’t believe employers should decide whether women have contraceptives.” The quotes might not necessarily be right, but as a response to a defense of Obamacare, funding planned parenthood, and the HHS mandate, that’s not encouraging.

In context, Romney basically came out in favor of the HHS mandate. Good luck with that “lesser of two evils.”

Have you ever compared Ron Paul’s immigration ideas with the teachings of the Church? Or with the constitution?

Hilarious, really. I have laid out in excruciating detail how absurd, ahistorical, and contrary to 2000 years of papal practice are the claims of those who say we may not support a less-evil candidate against one who is actively persecuting the Church—and they have nothing substantive to say. There is a reason for that:

There is nothing they CAN say. They are NOT trying to persuade people rationally, but to manipulate them. They are NOT defending the historic position of the Church, but are grasping at straws to defend a bizarre, eccentric position designed to suppress the turnout of prolife Catholics for the less antilife candidate. I have speculated here about their possible motives… more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. Nothing any of them have said here—OR ANYWHERE ELSE—merits the slightest intellectual respect. I challenge them again to engage my substantive points aboout Catholic history and papal policy. But I won’t hold my breath.

Instead they will respond by trying to play with the reader’s reptilian brain, suggesting I was “mean” or “uncharitable” or unchivalrous, or whatever other adjective they can dig out of the thesaurus. When I obliterate their positions, they will accuse me of “attacking” them.

Well, DUH. Of COURSE I was attacking you, as Thomas More attacked Martin Luther. I think your assertions are false, so obviously, provably false, that I am COMPLIMENTING your intellectual abilities by assuming that you are LYING. If I thought you really believed the things you are saying I wouldn’t argue with you—I’d send you a box of cookies and a weighted blanket.

So let me be even clearer than I have been before:

There are SCRUPULOUS voters, who are provably wrong but perhaps beyond convincing. My hope is that I can lead readers to pity them, and dismiss them.

There are NIHILIST voters, who want to destroy America so we can enter a Dark Ages and presumably start from scratch—and rebuild Christendom. My hope is that I don’t encounter any such voters in a bar.

There are CRYPTO-LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, who might find abortion regrettable, but who care far more about the prospect of using their EBT cards at Whole Foods. My hope is that I expose these infiltrators for what they are.

I fully expect a wave of attacks by crypto-liberal Democrats, and welcome it. You can judge a man by his enemies.

Dr. Zmirak, who exactly is saying “...we may not support a less-evil candidate against one who is actively persecuting the Church…”?  What I have said, and what I’ve seen elsewhere, is something like this: in a race where both candidates support some intrinsic evil, it is possible morally to support one of the candidates given a) that one candidate supports less that is evil or will do more to limit the harm of the greater evil supported by the other and b) that there are proportionate reasons to support the candidate you reasonably believe and rationally expect will limit evil.  The devil, as always, is in the details.

If you sincerely and honestly believe that Mitt Romney will do less harm than Barack Obama and that there are proportionate reasons to vote for him, then no Catholic I know of would tell you not to vote for him, as you will be voting according to the dictates of your conscience.

I do not believe Romney will do less harm, not because I am scrupulous, a nihilist, a crypto-liberal Democrat, or not really pro-life (which last charge you directly leveled against me).  I don’t believe it because when I consider Mitt Romney’s alleged pro-life, anti-HHS credentials, I see a man who was pro-abortion until a decade ago and championed “abortion rights” for most of his political career; I see a man who as governor of Massachusetts forced Catholic hospitals to dispense abortifacients to rape victims; I see a man who participated in the funding of the IVF manufacture of three of his grandchildren; I see a man who is so anxious to allay fears from pro-“choice” women voters that his campaign tonight released an ad to confirm that Mitt Romney’s not against all abortions and is enthusiastic about contraception; I see a man who said this in tonight’s debate:

“I just know that I don’t think bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not, and I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they have contraceptive care or not,” Romney said. “Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives and the president’s statement on my policy is completely and totally wrong.”

(That last, by the way, raises serious questions about Romney’s committment to undoing the HHS mandate; having said that he doesn’t believe “employers” should get to tell women whether or not they can have contraception, is Romney really going to go to the mat and expend political capital broadening the exception for religious employers very far beyond the present policy?)

Now, if you, considering the same information (and there’s much more, of course), remain convinced that Romney will limit harm and that voting for him is proportionately good, that is fine—we are disagreeing about a prudential decision, and I respect your conscience.  The question is, why can’t you respect mine?  Why is it necessary to insist that those of us who, in light of our Catholic beliefs and the information we have gathered, do not see Romney as a man who will limit harm and thus choose not to vote for him, are evil or deficient in some way (e.g., scrupulous, nihilist, crypto-liberal Democrat, not really authentically pro-life, etc.)?  Are you not going far beyond the Church’s actual teachings on civic duties when you essentially insist that all Catholics (or at least those in swing states) must vote for Romney, unless they are either evil or deficient?  On what grounds do you make such a claim?

What about the fourth possibility: that some people do not share your assessment of Romney’s merits, hence they do not consider the benefit of a Romney victory sufficient to justify their remote material cooperation? 

Statements such as this, from the second debate, would seem to undermine the alleged benefits of a Romney victory:
“ROMNEY: I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.”

We’re going to get sick of seeing that quotation, and maybe there’s some kind of explanation for it; but it seems to indicate that skepticism toward Romney’s merits is warranted.

My choice has been clear from the start, but this post and comments have certainly stirred up some areas for thought and prayer.

May I add, however, that if you cannot vote for either presidential candidate, PLEASE do not take that as carte blanche to stay home from the polls and NOT VOTE AT ALL.  There are compelling issues of Catholic interest on the ballot in every district in the country, and we are morally obligated, in my opinion, to speak to the direction of our cities, counties, state legislations, and our members of Congress….not to mention myriads of referendums.

Pray, but get out there, even if only to choose the most qualified new additions to your local school board….

Mrs. Mannning, I never did claim that you weren’t prolife—but rather that it apparently wasn’t a make-or-break issue for you, that you might have other priorities (e.g. national security, war avoidance—I didn’t specify). Those are two quite different claims.

Thank you for laying out a prudential case. I don’t agree with it, but I’m glad you’re making it clear you DON’T believe it’s immoral for Catholics to vote for Romney, just unwise.

I know well that Romney is flawed. I know that we are in this awful political situation now—voting for such a flawed man to fend off the active persecution of the Church and the further enshrinement of abortion—because of the catastrophe of the Bush administration with its feckless spending and reckless wars. We conservatives should have fought harder against Bush II getting the nomination in 2000. Once that happened, all these dominos were pretty much lined up to fall.

But he we are:  One candidate has already STARTED to persecute the Church, and will only be emboldened by reelection. The other candidate has stated he WON’T persecute the Church, and powerful parts of his base (including Evangelicals, and Catholics who don’t oppose contraception, but resent the government meddling with the Church’s institutions, and the whole of the Tea Party, and consistent libertarians) will all press him to keep that promise.  He has also stated he wants to limit abortions. Whether that’s true or not, in his heart—I don’t think he will make a mistake like GW Bush and try appointing someone unreliable like Harriet Myers to the Court.  He doesn’t want to be humiliated in the press and the Senate when conservatives rebel—and remember how much LESS tame conservatives are now, thanks to the Tea Party.

There is no constituency of fervent Romney supporters on whom he can rely for brainless, sheeplike obedience. Romney knows he is everyone’s “safety school” or back-up date to the prom. He will HAVE to listen to us, at least part of the time, and we’ll get part of what we want. That’s the best we can hope for—and it beats the heck out of welcoming back the dog who already tried to rip out our throat.

Yes, Romney might take us into a foolish and dangerous war with Iran. But Obama would too… just six months later.

So I think it’s absolutely clear that Romney’s election would diminish the chance that we all end up living in a Michael O’Brien novel. And that’s something even Michael O’Brien should support.

AWESOME, Erin!!!

That is all :)

Erin,
Great comment!—a thoughtful and well reasoned explanation of your position.  So glad to see it elicited an equally thoughtful reply from Dr. Zmirak.  I’d love to see the Register cut and paste your two comments as a new article!

It’s generally not the hardcore “Andrew” Catholic pro-lifers who refuse to vote for a candidate with less-than-perfect pro-life credentials. Using the pro-life theme as an excuse to not vote or else vote 3rd party is often the ploy of “seemless garment” Liberal Catholics who would not vote for Jesus himself if he ran on the Republican ticket

These “progressives” always find some excuse to say that the most staunchly pro-life conservative isn’t “really” pro-life. If the candidate opposes cradle-to-grave welfare, they say he’s uncharitable and thus not pro-life. If he supports the death penalty in rare cases (as do the Catechism,Church history,the writings of Aquinas, and the Bible),they say he’s not pro-life. If he believes in occasionally killing terrorists… you guessed it. He’s not pro-life.

It’s not drunk loafer pro-life zealots we need to worry about, but rather the Notre Dame/Catholic Worker/America Magazine pseudo-Catholics.

I’m glad you’re making it clear you DON’T believe it’s immoral for Catholics to vote for Romney, just unwise.

I’m not sure that helps.  If it is unwise to vote for Romney, it is imprudent to vote for him; and it is immoral to act imprudently.  You can’t take a stand on these matters without taking a moral stand.  Personally I think people should stop pretending otherwise out of a misguided desire for civility.

But he we are:

Yes.  And the reason we are here is not because too many Catholics are drawing a line in the sand and refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils.

This is, it seems to me, a very odd argument to make, coming from the man who commissioned this piece from me in 2007:

Who’s Infallible Here, Anyway? The Human Life Review Chooses Party Over Church

N.B.: The title of that article was not mine; it was John’s. My title was more moderate, as was the piece itself, before John edited it to make more pointed those sections that directly contradict the column he has written above.

Okay, I was wrong. In the piece itself I admitted I used to be a lot more like Andrew.

More importantly, the situation is far worse now, with the institutional Church under open persecution by the federal government. Like Churchill in 1942, I’m not going to be choosy about my allies.

To clarify: I was wrong in 2007.

Keeping in mind, John, that you now think you were wrong in 2007, at the young age of—what? 44?—you might be a bit more gentle in your comments now with such people as Erin Manning, who simply believe what you did a mere five years ago.

John Zmirak’s argument is exactly right in this election.  I do not expect much from Romney, but Obama has already clearly shown that he intends to use federal power to make Catholic institutions conform to liberal secularism.  Obama must be defeated, and he and his supporters must know that Catholics were instrumental in defeating him.

I am rightly outraged that people are implying (not outright saying) that it might be sinful to vote for a candidate who supports ANY intrinsic evil. This carping on the scruples of Catholics, in time of persecution, is contemptible. Mrs. Manning clarified her position, and made it clear that she doesn’t hold the stance that I was attacking, so insofar as that’s true, she wasn’t my target.

I don’t think it is wrong to vote for any candidate who supports intrinsic evil.  I think it is wrong to vote for any Presidential candidate who supports policies of murdering (any category of) the innocent.  That included John McCain in 2008, and it includes Mitt Romney now.  I’ve given extensive and detailed arguments for my reasoning.  That kind of contrasts with this post and the author’s comments, in my opinion, which amount to raving “this is the most important election EVER, so you must vote for Mitt!” in as condescending a manner as possible.

You were “rightly outraged” in 2007, too, John. In fact, from the first time I met you—in 1996, I believe—I don’t think I’ve ever known you to be anything other than “rightly outraged.”

That doesn’t, however, mean that you’ve always been right, as you’ve admitted above. Another five years down the road, you’ll undoubtedly still be “rightly outraged,” but you won’t necessarily be saying what you’re saying in this piece.

For that reason alone, tempering your responses to those who disagree with you might be worth considering. It’s a lesson that I learned much too late.

So, Zippy, considering my historical examples cited above, you think that the bishops of the Church and the pope of the time were wrong to collaborate with Constantine—who permitted gladiatorial games. And Pope Leo was wrong to crown Charlemagne, who butchered the pagan Saxons until they converted. And Leo XII was wrong to work closely with Kaiser Franz Josef, who encouraged dueling. Were the bishops of Spain wrong to accept protection from the bloody-handed Francisco Franco?

I’m not so pure that I have to be more scrupulous than all those popes. But hey, knock yourself out.

I see that you haven’t read my response to your generalized material cooperation rant:

http://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/st-compromise/

And if you just browse my current main page before you ask more questions it will probably save time.  Plus Mark Shea has a roundup post with all of his arguments up now.

FWIW, I have not met anybody who is saying or implying that it is necessarily sinful to vote for a candidate who supports any intrinsic evil.  There are several reasons for this. 

First, the problem is not with intrinsic evil, but with grave intrinsic evil.  It is intrinsically evil to steal a cookie when your mother forbade you to have one.  It is not gravely evil.  A president who cheats at cards may be doing something intrinsically evil, but it would not stop me from voting for him if his policies are not gravely and intrinsically evil.

Second, the Church doesn’t say it’s sinful to vote for a candidate even when he *does* support grave intrinsic evil—even when he supports abortion and euthanasia, according to Ratzinger—if a person is doing so for some reason he has concluded constitutes a proportional reason to limit some greater evil.  I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what such a proportional reason might be in the case of Obama, which is why I will never vote for Obama.  But Cdl. Ratzinger grants it in theory.  Since I cannot penetrate the minds of total strangers who vote for Obama or Romney, I cannot say that they are sinning in doing so.

Third, *might* they be sinning in supporting a candidate who supports grave intrinsic evil?  Sure.  Cdl. Ratzinger says as much.  If you vote for a candidate *because* of their support for grave evil instead of because you are trying to limit some other worse evil, you are an accomplice to the grave evil that candidate supports.  So a Pelvic Leftist who votes Obama *because* of his zeal for abortion or a member of the Rubber Hose Right who votes Romney *because* of their zeal for torture is an accomplice to grave intrinsic evil.  But I don’t know anybody who is doing that, nor am I likely to (unless, of course, they directly tell me that they are supporting Their Man because they just loves them some of that abortion, unjust war, indefinite detainment, unilateral secret murder and torture and really relish the chance to ignore and defy God and Holy Church.  People never say things like that to me, therefore I would never say or imply that anybody who votes for a candidate who supports grave intrinsic evil is sinning. 

Third, if you run into one of these mysterious people who say or imply that it is *necessarily* sinful to vote for a candidate who supports any grave intrinsic evil, tell them this from me:

5. You are saying that anybody who votes for Romney is a sinner.

No. I’m not. I get that many people feel bound, in conscience, to vote for Romney to limit evil. If that’s what you are doing in voting for Romney you not only are not sinning, you are attempting virtue, which is all the Church asks.

However, many people can’t just rest with the Romney Sucks Less Than Obama argument.  Rather, in attempting to construct an argument for their choice, they often (indeed, typically in my experience) tend to batten on all sorts of profoundly unCatholic rationales for doing so: everything from “It’s okay to do evil for a good end” (a beloved American heresy called “consequentialism”) to sneering at concern over mortal sin as “perfectionism” to actively denouncing the exercise of conscience to deliberately repeating “useful” lies to pretending that Romney is “prolife”.  Not all Romney supporters do these things and (as Dale Price shows) it is possible to simply make the call for Romney as the Sucks Less Than Obama candidate without larding on any bad arguments for doing so.  “I’m trying to limit evil by voting Romney” is a perfectly respectable position.  It’s just not my position.  I’m trying to limit evil by voting for somebody who does not advocate grave intrinsic evil.

Thanks for clarifying that. So we’ve disposed of the implication that it COULD be sinful to vote for Romney as the lesser of two evils, in the hope of limiting abortion somewhat, or at least of protecting the Church.

Given that, we moved entirely to the prudential question of whether or not the Church and the unborn are made a little bit safer by the defeat of Obama, or by his victory and a collection of written-in votes for Father Feeney or Huey Long.

Thanks for clarifying that.

You’re welcome.

So we’ve disposed of the implication that it COULD be sinful to vote for Romney as the lesser of two evils, in the hope of limiting abortion somewhat, or at least of protecting the Church.

Yep.  So long as it’s done to try to limit evil.  The problem is not the act of voting itself typically.  It’s the often extremely destructive and often profoundly anti-Catholic and anti-Christian rationalizations people making such a choice adduce in order to justify their decision.  So, as I mention in my article, most people can’t seem to rest with “Romney sucks less than Obama.”  They feel compelled to, for instance, sneer at people as vain, self-regarding narcissists and speak as though their troubled conscience is utterly contemptible and a thing to be ignored for the greater good.  They have told me to ignore the Church teaching on consequentialism as load of bull.  They have repeated documented lies about Obama (“He’s a Muslim!”) just in order to land a punch.  They have denied documentated facts about Romney (He supports abortion “for the health of the mother” meaning “always”) in order to lie to themselves and others that he “prolife” and not mere “anti-abortion when useful”.  And as time has worn on the prolife movement has suffered, as a result, a massive amount of mission creep and an increasing loss of credibility as it ceases to be about being a witness for life and becomes more and more a wholly owned subisidiary of the GOP.  You know, basically what you were saying in 2007.

Given that, we moved entirely to the prudential question of whether or not the Church and the unborn are made a little bit safer by the defeat of Obama, or by his victory and a collection of written-in votes for Father Feeney or Huey Long.

Living here in Obama take all Washington, my vote is as wasted on Romney as on Chthulu.  And the reality is that, as Zippy has pointed out, your vote’s impact on the outcome of the election is vanishingly negligible.  But your votes impact on you—and on the kinds of things you are willing to say and do to people like Erin Manning and Zippy Catholic and Tom K. in order to win—is not negligible.

Actually, I think it certainly can be sinful to vote for Romney as the lesser of two evils.  More importantly, I think it can be objectively wrong to do so; if a person knows that it is objectively wrong and does it anyway, that would be sinful.  I think this ultimately has to be addressed as a moral question.  It is one thing to be appropriately modest in the face of the fact that any of us as fallible human beings might have it wrong.  It is another to let that degenerate into an anything goes relativism.

And I would add this.  While I have not met anybody who thinks it is *necessarily* sinful to vote for the lesser of two evils in order to limit evil.  I have met somebody—you John—whose entire thesis is that anybody who does not agree with your prudential judgment is 1) guilty of a sort of spiritual onanism (a grave sin), 2) a vain self-regarding narcissist, and 3) deserves absolutely no quarter. 

In short, it’s a bit rich for you to claim that you are “rightly outraged” by these (so far phantasmal ghosts) who are allegedly reading you out of the Church for voting for Romney in the comments on a column that was specifically designed to suggest that anybody who differs from you on a prudential judgment as guilty of mortal sin and deserves to be treated with sneering contempt by all right-thinking Catholics. 

Next time, first demonstrate the mosquito actually exists by citing somebody besides a fictionalized character to prove somebody is claiming that it’s a sin to vote for Romney in order to limit evil.  Then consider using something besides an atomic bomb to swat it.  There are a number of people in the blast radius who are dealing with real issues of conscience who are not helped in their struggle to do what is right by a torrent of abuse from a verbally gifted man who uses his gifts to mischaracterize what they think in order to gin up anger against them and kick them back in line.

Yes, I’m attacking a “phantasm”—except that several of the commentors on this thread, including “Zippy” just above asserted exactly the position I was attacking. But those are just facts, so never mind.

Yes, you’re absolutely right that I should avoid engaging the arguments people step up and write on my article because it might injure someone in the blast radius, by hurting their widdle feewings. Never mind that the Church is being persecuted, and you are doing your best to cripple any resistance. To think about THOSE side effects (Catholic hospitals being closed, Catholic businesses—like that of a lady Catholic philanthropist I met two nights ago, who will have to GO OUT OF BUSINESS or comply with the HHS mandate) would be consequentialist.  I should be concerned about the emotions of combox warriors. That’s what’s really important.

Really, Mark, I cannot muster the respect necessary to engage you any further, so I retire from this fray. Fill up the rest of this box with anything you want. Blog about this in your pj’s for the rest of the week. You have conceded every point I cared about. You’ve admitted that there is no moral case that voting for Romney is sinful. The prudence of voting for this deeply imperfect person INSTEAD OF A PERSECUTOR is obvious. There is nothing left to say.

I didn’t realize you wrote the piece with the prophetic foreknowledge of what commenters would say, John.  And though you tell me that Zippy is somehow insisting that voting Romney is necessarily sinful, what I actually see him saying is that it can be and may be, both qualified statements that don’t seem much different from my point.  I’m sorry you don’t respect me.  I still respect you.  But this piece was not your finest hour and your responses to Erin, Tom, and Zippy—as well as this frankly embarrassing response to me—don’t hurt their or my feelings (though they may hurt the feeling of lurkers, which was my point).  They simply don’t do you credit.  I hope you will rethink the approach you have taken.  At the end of the day we are talking about a prudential judgement in which people make different sorts of moral calculus honorably.  God bless you, John.

Oops.  One last point: “You’ve admitted that there is no moral case that voting for Romney is sinful.”

No.  I’ve said that there is no moral case that voting for Romney is necessarily sinful. In other words, I’ve “admitted” that I am not the Judge of Souls and can’t read hearts.  I can, however, read words and so can you.  You know what I actually said, so why wilfully mischaracterizing what I say in order to win a debating point?  One of the many bad fruits of our political culture that leavens the prolife movement is this kind of strawmanning.  It lends weight to the argument that the damage inflicted on prolifers by our current models of political engagement outweighs the negligible good done by supporting a man like Romney.  You vote is not going to change the election results.  But it has already persuaded you to treat brothers and sisters in Christ who seek to help the unborn as much as you that they are contemptible enemies unworthy of your respect.  Not the fruit of the Spirit.

There are two themes in the last several comments that I think are useful. One is the theme of “reality” or “objectivity,” the other is the theme of “conscience” or “intent.”
The following sentence about voting for Romney is problematic: “I think it can be objectively wrong to do so; if a person knows it is objectively wrong and does it anyway, that would be sinful.” How can one say that something “CAN be objectively wrong”? An action either is wrong or right; one’s CULPABILITY depends on one’s knowledge and intentions. Conscience is (or ought to be) parasitical on reality. In the above quotation, however, conscience is instead the measure of reality. Aristotle was quick to point out at the very beginning of his work on ethics that “every action” ought to be considered as “[aiming] at some good.” I mean, no duh, no one wakes up the morning of election day and says “I can’t wait to vote for ¬¬¬¬¬¬_____, ‘cause I’m evil and believe my vote will help bad things to happen—because I LOVE BADNESS!” We all know this… And yet we argue about election day here in this comment box.
Here’s another sentence that is problematic: “…the reality is that … your vote’s impact on the outcome of the election is vanishingly negligible. But your vote’s impact on you … is not negligible.” Again, this is EXACTLY backwards. So, what my vote does to me is more important than what it does to my country, my church and my fellow-citizens (including the unborn)?
“There are a number of people in the blast radius who are dealing with real issues of conscience…” I’m not sure, given the overall tenor of Shea’s posts, that he can credibly use the words “real” and “conscience” in the same sentence. If your reality is a product of your conscience, then your conscience will obviously remain unformed. Shea, in fact, went so far as to say that to vote for Obama would be no moral problem as long as there was a good conscientious intent for it. But, as I mentioned above, no one just wants evil for the hell of it. Every action aims at some good in the view of the person acting. So, why take any stance whatsoever on the upcoming election? After all, as Zippy mentioned, we should just be “appropriately modest in the face of the fact that any of us as fallible human beings might have it wrong.”
Finally (and this is where being “rightly outraged” becomes justified), all of the above concern about individual consciences to the neglect of real-world consequences amounts to a selfish and uncharitable disregard for the well-being of others. On the one hand you want people to feel pangs of conscience for “what [they] do to” other people in the comments section of a blog. On the other hand you do not recognize the fate of the unborn and that of the Church as having much to do with the individual conscience (the value of Zmirak’s vote—and he lives in a swing-State—is “negligible”). Again, on the one hand you, in your conscientious sensibilities, can’t sustain the shock of an online debate (one would think you’d never come across an argument before!) without feeling it necessary to personally admonish the sinner who dared make a point and stick to it. On the other hand you seem to feel no responsibility for the impact of a heavy persecution of the Church already begun and guaranteed to escalate if Obama is re-elected.

An action either is wrong or right; one’s CULPABILITY depends on one’s knowledge and intentions. Conscience is (or ought to be) parasitical on reality. In the above quotation, however, conscience is instead the measure of reality.

You’ve misread me, perhaps because I traded off clarity for brevity.  Sin is culpable evil; but even when someone is not culpable because of invincible ignorance, his evil act remains (as JPII puts it in Veritatis Splendour) evil: a disorder in relation to the truth about the good.

“Shea, in fact, went so far as to say that to vote for Obama would be no moral problem as long as there was a good conscientious intent for it. “

No.  Shea went so far as to (clumsily perhaps) reiterate Cdl. Ratzinger’s point:

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

I myself can imagine no proportionate reason that would justify a vote for Obama.  I simply grant Cdl. Ratzinger’s point that, should somebody think they had such proportionate reasons, they would not be culpable for sin—and that I am in no position to judge some stranger’s vote.

The rest of your argument, turning as it does on the curious notion that wishing to avoid being an accomplice to grave evil is somehow selfish and voting one’s conscience is somehow opposed to the common good is… curious. It seems to me to be more evidence of the oddly corrupting effect of our politics on our faith.  I can totally grant the Romney Sucks Less Than Obama argument as a perfectly respectable course of action.  It’s just that almost nobody advocating it stays there.  They seem to *itch* to go on and say stuff like “refusing to cooperate with grave moral evil when you can’t find a proportionate reason to do so is selfish and you are a narcissist and spiritual masturbator” (as well as the vast catalog of other bad arguments, red herrings, personal smears, below the belt punches and false analogies I discuss here.

In the end, my moral calculus is based in part on the ideas of a man for whose work I continue to have a high regard: Dr. John Zmirak.  I thought he called it very accurately when he wrote of the deep corruption our fealty to the GOP has wrought on conservative Catholics when he said: “This faithful, angry “remnant” would soon find itself in hock to Republicans disdainful of other Catholic principles – such as just war theory. When the hype machine that lied America into the Iraq war started churning, it was all too easy for most of us who’d found our aid and comfort from secular nationalists and fideistic Protestants to convince ourselves to support the war – if only out of political expedience. “What harm could it do? WMDs or no WMDs, even if ‘preventive war’ violates some non-infallible encyclical, we’ll give them their war in return for the next three Supreme Court justices,” I remember people saying – under their breath.”

And I think the nomination of Mitt Romney and his repellently cynical treatment of conservative Christians as useful tools (all while signaling his intention to leave the abortion regime intact, his intention to leave the HHS Mandate intact, and his intention to launch more unjust wars and reinstitute torture) is just a continuation and deepening of what John was talking about there. 

Both Stephen and John are very concerned about Obama as a persecutor of the Church and an enemy of God.  So am I.  However, historically speaking, the great danger the Church has always feared more than persecution from without is corruption by sin from within.  “Do not fear him who can destroy the body,” says Jesus, “fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”  Arguing that Romney sucks less than Obama is sound.  Bolstering that argument with sneering claims that fear of mortal sin is “perfectionism” or that people who have troubled consciences are stupid and should ignore them is not sound.  It is a laboratory demonstration of what John Zmirak was warning about when he complained about conservative Catholics suppressing their tradition in order to meet the needs of the GOP.

“Living here in Obama take all Washington, my vote is as wasted on Romney as on Chthulu.  And the reality is that, as Zippy has pointed out, your vote’s impact on the outcome of the election is vanishingly negligible.”

John agreed above, in comments, with this point wrt non-swing states.  But Zippy’s mathematical negligibility argument is not accurate in swing states.  Even moreso, it is not accurate to say that the *public advocacy* for Catholics in swing states to not vote for the sucks-less-won’t-persecute-aborts-less candidate is mathematically negligible.  There is nothing mathematically negligible on the effect of Ohio or Virginia voters if someone of Mark’s respectability and readability suggests that those voters’ sucks-less votes are vanishingly negligible.  Suppressing sucks-less Virginia voters may well lead to Obama winning—that is not hypothetical, nor is it a defense of the abuses of this position that Mark rightly points out.  So without defending John’s tone, he is pointing to something real when he fears suppression of the movement to depose the tyrant.

Matt:

While it is always gratifying to my ego to hear people imagine the enormous power I allegedly have to sway the election, I have to say that I think such assessments are massively overblown.  I think I have heard from a handful of people who have, as a result of what I have written, decided to think differently about the act of voting and actually change their vote to somebody they actually want instead to to the guy their party commands them to support.  Some of them have been Romney supporters.  A few have been Obama people. (So much for “If you vote Third Party you are *really* voting for Obama.”) All I really did for them was put into words thoughts they have already been thinking.  I suppose some of those people may be in battleground states, but I still think the math is massively against saying that my impact has been anything other than negligible on the outcome of the election.  However, if my impact on a single person is to get them to think about the impact of voting on the voter, then that’s a win as far as I am concerned.

My argument, including its mathematical component, applies everywhere including swing states:
http://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/american-idol-or-the-material-cooperation-with-evil-two-step/

I often wonder why people have assumed that Mark has convinced more Romney-leaning voters than Obama-leaning voters.  That may not be a good assumption.

Mark and Zippy, I don’t doubt Mark has done great good convincing Obama voters to reconsider.  I never suggested otherwise.  That doesn’t change the fact that he is indeed influential on swing state Catholic voters that might otherwise vote Romney, sincerely humble assessments aside.  Non-negligible suppression of anti-tyrant votes, if a problem, doesn’t become less of a problem by being offset It is factually incorrect to argue that one vote doesn’t matter in a statistically tied jurisdiction.  That is like arguing we can never walk from point A to point B because it is always possible to walk half the remaining distance and not yet arrive. And as I have explained elsewhere, Zippy’s mathematical negligibility argument is self defeating, since if a vote is negligible it is also negligible in helping anything gravely intrinsically evil about Romney.  Zippy’s argument doesn’t apply at all to public advocacy that sways not one but hundreds of swing state votes.  So it is one thing to say Zippy is right outside swing states.  It is another to publicly endorse his negligibility argument as applied elsewhere.  And if I understand Zippy correctly, he is making the Romney-voting-is-immoral argument.  His caveats are marginal, only for the invincibly ignorant and the like.  So John is not arguing against a phantom in that regard, even if Mark diverges from Zippy on that point.

If you have explained my argument that way it can only be because you haven’t understood it.  Because the explanation is wrong.
This post and thread is a poster child for outcome independent effects, because it all takes place whether or not Romney wins.

God bless you, John Zmirak. You are a patient man.

Matt Bowman’s argument for the possibility of Mark’s influence swaying swing state voters (read: Catholics) is convincing and I concur.  I would just add that it is amazing to me that we are even having this tortured (!) discussion at all. Despite the undisputed facts that Obama is a fierce advocate for abortion, voted 4 times to kill babies who had the audacity to be born alive from a failed abortion and is persecuting the Church and people of conscience by mandating we provide abortifacient drugs, pay for sterilizations and all manner of birth control against our religious beliefs—Mark insists on equating this horrible man with Romney, a deeply flawed man, yes—but not one who will advocate FOR the deaths of the unborn as Obama does, has done and will continue to do. Votes matter! Romney has already PLEDGED to reverse the Mexico City policy, defund Planned Parenthood and repeal Obamacare (which includes the HHS mandate). Are not the lives of the unborn saved by these acts worth SOMETHING?

The explanation isn’t wrong, because you haven’t located any moral stain due to a supposedly mathematically negligible vote.  The intent isn’t a stain, it is virtuous, as pointed out above.  The object of the vote isn’t an endorsement of the better candidate’s gravely evil policies, as you conceded on Mark’s blog.  And the vote doesn’t impermissibly cooperate in an evil outcome because it is either proportionately justified to block a greater evil, per Cdl Ratzinger, or if mathematically negligible as you argue, the vote doesn’t cooperate in anything.

“if mathematically negligible as you argue, the vote doesn’t cooperate in anything.”

If I take a swing at you and miss that doesn’t mean that I didn’t intend to hit you.  A mathematically negligible vote that intends to support somebody’s evil policies does not cease to be an attempt to cooperate with evil simply because it fails to elect the candidate.  It’s the thought that counts.

And again, all the evidence is that you haven’t even read my arguments.  You might try quoting me.  But John Zmirak’s slanderous onanistic ravings against fellow Catholics are a textbook example of an outcome independent effect - there it is right there, no matter who wins the election - of his choice of how to vote.

Mark says “If I take a swing at you and miss that doesn’t mean that I didn’t intend to hit you.  A mathematically negligible vote that intends to support somebody’s evil policies does not cease to be an attempt to cooperate with evil simply because it fails to elect the candidate.”

Agreed.  But the action we are talking about has a virtuous intent, or can have one, as conceded above, and as hypothesized because we are talking about an informed Catholic attempting to follow Cardinal Ratzinger’s advice.  It isn’t intending to hit you, which is unjust, it is intending to depose a tyrant. It also isn’t someone who “intends to support somebody’s evil policies.”  The vote for the lesser evil candidate is not, and need not be, an endorsement of or intent in favor of his policies.  It can’t be, because if it was, it would be formal cooperation in evil and never permissible, not even in theory based on proportionality.  I think you have condeded that this cannot necessarily be the intent of voting for a lesser evil candidate, because you have said some people who so intend are not necessarily committing sin—that the sucks-less argument is a respectable one.  This would not be true if a vote for the lesser evil candidate actually “intends to support somebody’s evil policies.”  A virtuous intent, not that one, can be the intent.  So the moral stain has still not been identified, especially in a supposedly mathematically negligible vote that therefore doesn’t actually cooperate in evil.  Zippy now tries to identify the stain by pointing to what he calls John’s slanders.  That is no more valid or applicable to me, or to a generic Catholic trying to vote for the lesser evil candidate, than it is valid for other people to accuse you of all the things you rightfully explain are not implicated in your position.

Zippy now tries to identify the stain by pointing to what he calls John’s slanders.  That is no more valid or applicable to me, or to a generic Catholic trying to vote for the lesser evil candidate, than it is valid for other people to accuse you of all the things you rightfully explain are not implicated in your position.

I agree that specific outcome-independent effects are not logically necessary.  There is no law of necessity that requires you to engage in the sort of slanderous raving that Zmirak engages in here.

But outcome-independent effects are pervasive, and with a bit of introspection you will see that you are not immune.  I answered this objection here, recently, and here, and many other places at other times that I don’t have handy.

The second link was supposed to be to here.

I don’t think the abuse of either Mark’s position or mine is legitimate evidence to rebut the positions themselves.  I still haven’t seen an identification of the moral stain of a vote for a lesser-evil candidate, in light of its absence in intent, object, and circumstantial cooperative effect as I discuss above.

msb is me by the way.  cookies vary

Forget “moral stain”.  It is distracting you and preventing you from getting the point.  Just try to understand that there are outcome dependent effects and outcome independent effects.  Given that, and also given your negligible effect on the outcome, rational moral evaluation under double effect treats the outcome independent effects as dispositive.  Therefore appealing to what things would be like under Obama versus what they would be like under Romney is irrelevant.  The entire moral burden of the act - once we have stipulated no formal cooperation with evil - rests on the effects of your act which are independent of the outcome.  This may be counterintuitive, but nobody who has properly understood it has managed to mount an argument against it.  It always comes back to a denial that voting has outcome independent effects.

You still need to identify an outcome independent effect that makes the act morally burdensome.  You can’t just say that the existence of those effects must be denied.  The effects you’ve tried to identify so far do not stick to the act.

You still need to identify an outcome independent effect that makes the act morally burdensome. 

No, I really don’t.  I don’t have to find the specific outcome-independent effects in your specific case.  I merely have to demonstrate that they exist at all in order for them to usurp the double-effect evaluation, and make it independent of whether Obama or Romney win. 

For some people outcome-independent effects will be discussions they have.  For others it will be bumper stickers and pamphlets.  For John Zmirak it is publicly smearing fellow Catholics.  For you it is taking part in these conversations, among other things.  The suggestion isn’t that all outcome independent effects are bad; it is that once we’ve established that there is no formal cooperation with evil, outcome-independent effects dominate a rational moral evaluation of the act. 

And this is the important bit: what follows is that you can’t justify voting for Romney (or Obama) based on an appeal to how much better things will be under Romney than under Obama.  You have to justify it based on good effects of you joining Team Romney, and balance that against bad effects of you joining Team Romney, independent of who wins.

If I can just get folks to see that much it will have been worth all the brain damage and mischaracterization of my arguments over the years.  You may not conclude that the effects of you joining Team Romney, whether or not he wins, fail double effect.  Heck, maybe they don’t.  But those effects are the ones you have to focus on in order to make a proper rational evaluation of your act.  You have to ignore considerations of how you think things will be if he wins versus the other guy winning.  It is a mistake to include them in this step - the step after we’ve cleared the “no formal cooperation” hurdle - of moral evaluation.

You are just saying that voting for a Romney is outweighed by offsetting negative effects, but that you don’t have to identify what those effects are.  That is a concession that you can’t identify any negative effect of voting for a Romney.  If there’s no negative effect identified, with good intent and a non-evil object, then there’s no need to justify the act in the first place.  As I said, your rationale is self-defeating.  And I happen to think this conversation is a positive effect, though you are free to disagree.

It should be noted that these various pro-Romney arguments could easily be applied to a Catholic’s moral obligation to vote for Obama.
*
No question the Democratic Party & its figurehead are Aztec & monstrous, & that voting against them could thus be moral, as a gamble, according to the arguments of His Holiness when a Cardinal. However, the latter, despite the former, using various of the above pro-Romney arguments, could also uphold a moral obligation to vote for Obama, despite (as with Romney) the risks, on the following grounds.
*
1) A plausible conviction that while Romney will be hypocritically nicer to pro-lifers & Catholics, his policies will in fact but entrench the four decade Republican policy of doing very little substantially, while securing, as ever, that the Court continues to uphold Roe just enough to keep folks chasing the elusive carrot for another four decades.
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2) A no less plausible conviction - given R’s public statements & laughable foreign policy forays, but most particularly the maniacs he’s chosen to advise him on such matters - that the fundamental impact of a Romney administration will be an insane war with Iran of no benefit & great harm not least to American citizens.
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3) That for all the current regime’s hardly negligible hostility toward the Iranian regime, as well as war crimes elsewhere (see Greenwald, et. al.), & profound embrace of evil regarding mass murder, perversion, persecution of Christianity & more, there remains that a Catholic could hold the plausible conviction that, unlike Romney, Obama will not indulge the insanity of such a war.
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4) The plausible conviction in both the long & short term - in itself to be sure, but also due to party spirit, faux patriotism, & very especially the need to subjugate all other concerns to the overriding glory of America at War - that such a war would do far more damage to the struggle for the innocent & minimal decency than even the open hostilities of the Democrats, not least due to the fierce opposition the latter would continue to generate, over against the muting of said struggle in exchange for a war President who but pretends to be pro-life.
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5) The plausible conviction that despite appearances, however salient both seemingly & in themselves, the reality is that the unborn & the struggle on their behalf will accordingly suffer more from a Romney victory than the misery of Obama’s reelection.
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6) That, less plausible, while still a thicker reed than hopes in Mitt Romney, a Romney defeat will cause Republicans in ‘16 to nominate someone both with some semblance of conviction regarding the innocent, & the understanding that their rights will never be vindicated if American elites continue to pursue the amusements of Empire.

7) And that thus, according to the pro-Romney arguments above employed, a Catholic is morally obliged to vote for Obama next month.

The above is in no way meant to be mocking or playful. It is instead plausible enough, despite the very real dangers & horrors of a second Obama term, to prevent me, for one, from voting for either man, on prudential grounds alone; & indeed to fear that our dismay will be even greater should Romney win, despite how deep it must necessarily plunge with the opposite result. But with the latter, at least, we will continue the fight.

The Register insists on more than one post for what follows, but…

It should be noted that these various pro-Romney arguments could easily be applied to a Catholic’s moral obligation to vote for Obama.
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No question the Democratic Party & its figurehead are Aztec & monstrous, & that voting against them could thus be moral, as a gamble, according to the arguments of His Holiness when a Cardinal. However, the latter, despite the former, using various of the above pro-Romney arguments, could also uphold a moral obligation to vote for Obama, despite (as with Romney) the risks, on the following grounds.
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1) A plausible conviction that while Romney will be hypocritically nicer to pro-lifers & Catholics, his policies will in fact but entrench the four decade Republican policy of doing very little substantially, while securing, as ever, that the Court continues to uphold Roe just enough to keep folks chasing the elusive carrot for another four decades.
*
2) A no less plausible conviction - given R’s public statements & laughable foreign policy forays, but most particularly the maniacs he’s chosen to advise him on such matters - that the fundamental impact of a Romney administration will be an insane war with Iran of no benefit & great harm not least to American citizens.
*
3) That for all the current regime’s hardly negligible hostility toward the Iranian regime, as well as war crimes elsewhere (see Greenwald, et. al.), & profound embrace of evil regarding mass murder, perversion, persecution of Christianity & more, there remains that a Catholic could hold the plausible conviction that, unlike Romney, Obama will not indulge the insanity of such a war.

4) The plausible conviction in both the long & short term - in itself to be sure, but also due to party spirit, faux patriotism, & very especially the need to subjugate all other concerns to the overriding glory of America at War - that such a war would do far more damage to the struggle for the innocent & minimal decency than even the open hostilities of the Democrats, not least due to the fierce opposition the latter would continue to generate, over against the muting of said struggle in exchange for a war President who but pretends to be pro-life.
*
5) The plausible conviction that despite appearances, however salient both seemingly & in themselves, the reality is that the unborn & the struggle on their behalf will accordingly suffer more from a Romney victory than the misery of Obama’s reelection.
*
6) That, less plausible, while still a thicker reed than hopes in Mitt Romney, a Romney defeat will cause Republicans in ‘16 to nominate someone both with some semblance of conviction regarding the innocent, & the understanding that their rights will never be vindicated if American elites continue to pursue the amusements of Empire.

7) And that thus, according to the pro-Romney arguments above employed, a Catholic is morally obliged to vote for Obama next month.

The above is in no way meant to be mocking or playful. It is instead plausible enough, despite the very real dangers & horrors of a second Obama term, to prevent me, for one, from voting for either man, on prudential grounds alone; & indeed to fear that our dismay will be even greater should Romney win, despite how deep it must necessarily plunge with the opposite result. But with the latter, at least, we will continue the fight.

As usual, Matt Bowman, you inability to accurately paraphrase me shows that you haven’t understood me.

It all just seems so terribly short-sighted.  Every election we get this “end of the republic/civilization” fear-mongering and are exhorted to keep following a political organization (the Republican Party) that never delivers. 

Short-term thinking and moral compromise has led us to this point, yes, but THIS TIME it’s different? This constant compromise has wrecked the credibility and integrity of Catholics and conservatives and, therefore, our ability to change public policy. Voting for Romney is just another in a long line of surrenders. We’re playing their game just the way they want us to.

We gotta stop this, but if not now, when? How many more times do we compromise? How do we get legit conservative candidates if there’s no precedent for us actually rejecting the lesser-evil guy? No one will take us seriously unless we prove we’re got the stones to withhold our support from a party/candidate that doesn’t measure up and oust the people who don’t support us.  Heck, the Tea Party did it so why are we supposed to just shut-up and take it?

Other thought: the whole scrupulosity charge seems to be based solely on the author’s (Zmirak) unsupported opinion that there is no good reason NOT to vote for Romney. 

Also, one is commanded to follow one’s conscience and the concrete good of following one’s conscience outweighs the abstract good of lending one’s negligible/nearly-negligible vote to a candidate, a party, and a system that have been stringing us along and stabbing us in the back for decades.

One thing I keep thinking about is the vice president. There is always a possibility for either person, if elected, to die in office. We’d be in a world of hurt if we had Biden for president. Ryan, on the other hand, I have confidence in. I also keep thinking about how Romney turned tradition on its head by selecting a smart, nice looking, moral man for his running mate. Most of them choose someone who’s flawed enough that if he opens his mouth, would just make the president look brilliant by comparison. Romney chose someone he may well have considered his own superior. That takes a level of integrity rarely seen in a politician.

The other thing I keep in mind is that I really can’t stand Ron Paul. He’s an anti-constitution bigot who would send children born in the us to a country they’ve never even seen. The biggest moral difference I see between Romney and Paul is that Romney does not appear to understand the moral ramifications of his weakness on key issues, where Paul is not weakly in favor of virtue but an activist against virtue in many ways. I believe he has more to answer for in his conscience.

Furthermore, Romney claims to have had a turnaround on abortion. While I still think he is not strong enough in his pro life convictions, I believe his conscience is moving him in the right direction. I see no growth in Paul.

I will vote for Romney. He’s not perfect, but I believe he is the best candidate. Even between him and Paul.

Given Obama’s positions - I believe it is a grave sin to vote for him.  The same is becoming true for any Democrat given their national platform.
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To support a pro-choice candidate at all weakens our commitment to God and life. 
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Romney’s stand is clearly pro-life and he already has my vote.
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Would Ron Paul have been better?  Possibly, but he has had two chances at the presidency and has not gathered over 10% of the vote, so voting for him is a childish act.

In the wildly unlikely event that anyone is still following this thread:

In reply to Matt Bowman, the harm done in voting for a “less evil” candidate who nevertheless still supports policies of murdering the innocent is that the person who votes that way is engaged in a form of political littering.

I agree with John.  Better to vote for the nominally pro-life candidate who may even live up to his stated views and has promised to repeal Obamacare (which alone has the potential to save millions of lives) than to lose one’s vote in swing states with 3rd party candidates. 

One thing no one has brought up though is the question of the popular vote.  I live in a pretty red state, happily, so after reading this I was considering the possibility of voting for a third-party candidate.  However, there’s one reason I think this would be a mistake.  It doesn’t make a president of course, but when one candidate wins the popular vote and the other wins in the electoral college, it makes for a field day for the liberal media who can then discount him as president.  If Romney wins the election but loses the popular vote, there’s a good chance that both time and money will be wasted over recounts, his ability to get good things done as president will be somewhat lessened or at least delayed, and there’s even potential (sadly) for rioting and major strikes.  If he wins both the election and the popular vote, I think the likelihood of all these problems is lessened.

John:

There is a new columnist at the Register who strenuously disagrees with you and thinks prolifers need to stop being pawns of the GOP and its empty promises and manipulation.  You should get to know him.  Name’s Zmirak.