FOR THOSE OF US who find it impossible to cast a vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump on Nov. 8, this poem by Artur Miedzyrzecki, written during Poland’s Solidarity revolution, has a certain resonance:
What does the political scientist know?
The political scientist knows the latest trends
The current states of affairs
The history of doctrines
What does the political scientist not know?
The political scientist doesn’t know about desperation
He doesn’t know the game that consists
In renouncing the game
It doesn’t occur to him
Irrevocable changes may appear
Like an ice-flow’s sudden cracks
And that our natural resources
Include knowledge of the venerated laws
The capacity to wonder
And a sense of humor
“The game that consists of renouncing the game” doesn’t mean refusing to vote for president. I intend to write in a candidate I judge fit for the office, which is not a description I can apply in good conscience to Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump. However one resolves the presidential dilemma this year, perhaps serious Catholics can agree on two other matters: civic responsibilities over the short-term and the long haul.
Mrs. Clinton’s unintentionally self-revelatory crack about the “deplorables” – into which category she would likely drop every Catholic committed to religious freedom, marriage rightly understood, colorblind equality before the law and the right-to-life in all stages and conditions – suggests that smart voting down-the-ballot is crucial this year. If the Scourge of the Deplorables is elected, it will be essential, over the next four years, to maintain the tension between an aggressive Clinton administration and the national legislature. If Mr. Trump takes office, it will be just as urgent to have a Congress as committed as possible to life, religious freedom, constitutional government and colorblind equality as a counterbalance to who-knows-what will be coming out of the White House.
So the short-term task seems clear: Do everything possible to elect a pro-life, pro-religious-freedom-in-full Congress, then work to hold members to those commitments between now and Jan. 20, 2021.
As for the long haul, orientation is crucial and a proper orientation begins with a frank acknowledgment that American political culture is sick. I don’t believe the illness is terminal, nor do I believe that four years of either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump in the White House will necessarily finish off the Republic; if that’s true, then we’re in such bad shape that we’re already finished. But the sickness in our political culture is serious and it reflects the pathogens that have been at work for some time in the general culture. What are they?
– A raw individualism that conceives “freedom” as radical personal autonomy because it thinks of the human person as a twitching bundle of desires, the satisfaction of which is the full meaning of “human rights” and the primary task of government.
– A lack of commitment to the common good, which shows up in everything from bad driving habits to declining volunteerism to tax cheating to declaring a pox on politics and sitting out elections.
– The vulgarization of popular culture and entertainment, which has so wounded politics that they’ve become another form of reality-TV, producing a spectacle that should shame us into a collective examination of our consciences as consumers.
– The confusion of “success” with sheer wealth by individuals, businesses and corporate boards, which empties economic life of its vocational nobility and inculcates a counter-ethic of beggar-thy-neighbor competition that’s a danger to markets and a threat to the capacity of free enterprise to help people lift themselves from poverty.
– A grotesque misunderstanding of “tolerance” and “fairness,” rooted in an even more comprehensive delusion about what makes for human happiness, which isn’t “I did it my way.”
We must rebuild American political culture so that, at its presidential apex, it is far less likely to produce such a mortifying choice as the one created by this election.
George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
I believe Mrs Clinton left off an important word, BEHAVIOR. It is the behavior of some that could be considered deplorable. When we speak grammar is important as the absence or a word can make a big difference. It is good when we examine situations, but it would appear that you are not favourable to candidate Clinton. To further observe the Behaviour one could easily support the word in descriing the behavior of many from top to bottom.
Some of us from the old school knows how it use to be , and recognizes the changes in our young in comparison to past. Will the past of return? Will discipline values stem return, maybe. but first there are numerous problems and their offsetting problems that must be addressed fairly. Hatred, discrimination, violence against women, equality for all, removal of eurocentric privilege, exonphobia, poverty etc.
So you believe in supporting government “addressing” what you believe to be problems are what Christians are called to do? There is no such thing as personal moral reform needed if we vote in the proper elites to manage it out of existence? You apparently believe evil is sociological and not personal at one abstract level (an unchristian assumption) while frivolously insisting that the “behavior” of people who vote for Trump is inherently evil, and Clinton’s hate-filled insults would have been acceptable if her hatred were more focused on behavior.
For all your commentary about the proper use of words, you are clearly frivolous about the honorability of not accusing people you implicitly hate for their being guilty of an unspecified hate, discrimination, and violence against women. The other items on your laundry list are fantasies of a mindset that can not accept God given non-equivalent personal attributes among every individual in humanity.
A reading of the Gospels should make it obvious that equality of innate human worth does not mean equivalency for all life circumstances.