Posted on 11/07/2012 8:26:03 AM PST by annalex
These are a few thoughts that I have, as a Catholic layman and American nationalist. I am also a monarchist, and so I recognize the basic futility of a democratic political process in a culturally divided electorate: the country has been for the past several election cycles largely ungovernable because it has lost a common ethical consensus. However, even in this predicament, elections serve a useful purpose. That is because regardless of the efficacy of the democratic process, politics remain one tool available to us to forestall a national collapse, and, possibly, cause a cultural revival and reunification. These two are our fundamental political objectives. More precisely, a Catholic Conservative should, I think, espouse these medium-term commitments:
There is nothing a monarchist would change with respect of these goals. We, monarchists, understand that a monarchy can only happen as an organic development in the political life of a unified nation under God. I believe that given American political culture with its respect for self-government and property rights, a form of new feudalism will evolve constitutionally, and the new feudalism will give rise to a monarchy when this nation is sufficiently unified around our unique national idea.
Did the re-election of Obama set back these goals?
I believe that our goals were set back not last Tuesday but during the primary process. Governor Romney was perhaps, most “presidential” of the field of candidates, but even so, he structured his campaign on several false propositions: he avoided social issues and failed to propose an economic agenda that would captivate the American middle class. He correctly identified Obamacare as most odious feature of Obama’s policies, but he failed to link it to its impact on the religious freedom, which was its most vulnerable element. Having instituted something at least vaguely similar to Obamacare in Massachusetts, he was in no position to attack Obamacare’s central premise of government takeover of the medical industry.
I further believe that had Romney been elected, the conservative goals would have been set back worse than they are set back now. That is because a Romney’s victory would have vindicated the idea that the Republican Party can win elections without the social conservatives and without the conservative libertarians such as Dr. Ron Paul. Let us hope that the GOP learns the lessons of this year:
In the meanwhile, we are left with what the collective wisdom of the American people gave us: four more years of divided and therefore bounded by its partisan divisions federal government. This is, I believe, the best we could have hoped for. Let us use these years to grow the Tea Party, make it a better-rounded political force by engaging it more fully in our culture war, and be firm and brave defending our glorious Church from the enemies on the Left.
For what it’s worth I did a write-in in California (blue) as well as in Missouri (red), albeit I admit it would have been more vexing had I lived in a battleground state.
I voted straight Republican otherwise. It is the presidential politics where the two-party system is killing us.
You’re right - the economy isn’t dead yet. Until it is, spiritual principles will not return on a wider scale and enable a national majority of people of faith. And, until the GOP gets it’s priorities straight (a soul searching), I don’t know that they are the Tea Party’s ‘vehicle’.
The argument you can make is not that you're not responsible for all the ills that will befall us, but that you believe that worse ills would have befallen us if Gov. Romney had been elected.
You are responsible for the ills you have helped bring about by your vote. You are not responsible for the ills that may have been avoided by your failure to vote for Mr. Romney. If Mr. Romney had one, I'd be responsible for those prospective (but not certain) ills.
From my perspective, the ills that you fear were prospective, possible, even quite possible. But not inevitable. The ills for which you are responsible are inevitable. They are, barring an entirely supernatural intervention by God (which He could just as easily accomplish with a President Romney) are now set in stone.
We will not repeal Obamacare.
We will not avoid ruinous tax hikes.
We will not see justices appointed to the Supreme and lower courts who might be inclined to overturn Roe. We will almost certainly see at least one or two conservative, anti-Roe justices replaced in the next four years.
We will have taxpayer-funded (that's you and me gettin’ to pay for them!) abortion.
We will see further destruction of our rights and liberties.
Once Obamacare is fully implemented, that, by itself, is pretty much game over. It changes our national DNA. We become one, big client state. There was a chance to turn back under a President Romney. There will be no chance no matter who is elected in 2016. Look at Great Britain, where, even with a badly failing National Health Service, the “conservative” party must now foreswear touching the NHS.
The same thing happened with Social Security and with Medicare. For those populations “served,” people quickly become unable to imagine life without them.
All these things are baked in the cake.
And they are ruinous, in and of themselves.
We must now go back to the beginning. We are now strangers in a strange land. We will need to spend generations, perhaps a century or two, trying to recover our culture, in part, through political means. There is no guarantee that we might succeed. In fact, I'd say the odds are long. The world is now guaranteed, though, to become more dangerous, more hostile, especially toward Christians, and for our nation to become a former great power, to the great, great detriment of ourselves and the rest of the world.
We can no longer preserve our culture and try to strengthen and rebuild. It is now lost, especially through the expedient method of politics. We are the Christians, again, in pagan Rome.
I never really wanted to be a martyr. But I may get my chance, yet. And as faithful Catholics, so may my wife and sons. Thank you very much.
sitetest
The economy is one aspect with crisis potential. Another is the Left’s victory in the culture war. Right now, all these gay marriages, free contraception, death panels, collectivization of the medical profession and the like are stuff that happens to someone else. When it molests your child, pulls the plug on your grandma, and your pastor is carted off for insensitivity, people will start waking up.
You are responsible for the ills you have helped bring about by your vote. You are not responsible for the ills that may have been avoided by your failure to vote for Mr. Romney....From my perspective, the ills that you fear were prospective, possible, even quite possible. But not inevitable. The ills for which you are responsible are inevitable. They are, barring an entirely supernatural intervention by God (which He could just as easily accomplish with a President Romney) are now set in stone....
....I never really wanted to be a martyr. But I may get my chance, yet. And as faithful Catholics, so may my wife and sons. Thank you very much.
I exhort you to read my post #38 again. And to knock off the blame game.
On that, I agree. But I see a benefit in at least seeing that for a fact.
the ills that you fear were prospective, possible, even quite possible. But not inevitable.
With the GOP dead set on the theory that to win elections we have to field the leftmost liberal from Massachusetts that still calls himself a Republican, they would have been inevitable, and worse, they would have been incorrigible. If not Romney himself then another GHW Bush, Dole or McCain after him would have handed all that down to you, and in a bipartisan manner, too.
Yours is the same mentality that gave us the national debt: if we only borrow another trillion, maybe that "prospective, possible, even quite possible" national default will not be our epitaph. Just like on fiscal policy, on social policy it is time for us to come for our money. Field a romney and loose. You have been warned.
Where there's life, there's always hope.
Where things are merely prospective, they aren't inevitable.
I didn't think politics were going to save us. We are too far gone for that.
Only repentance and turning back toward God will save our country.
But where there is still time, there can still be a turning away from sin, and hence, disaster.
Thus, even if it gave us only a few more years before looming catastrophe, we might have made use of that time, we might have avoided complete collapse. Or not! We may have run out of time, anyway.
But I'd rather have more of a chance than less of a chance.
Now, disaster will not be avoided. As the movie said, there will be blood.
And lots of it.
“Field a romney and loose. You have been warned.”
I didn't field a Romney. I voted otherwise in the primaries. But once he was the nominee, it became pretty clear: possible, even likely long-term catastrophe with Romney; unavoidable, relatively short-term catastrophe with the Kenyan.
As well, there is the matter of degrees. The fall will be far harder, far more damaging, far more difficult from which to recover with the Kenyan than with Mr. Romney.
With a President Romney, the loss of our mediating institutions - our schools, our hospitals, etc., was a possibility, some time in the future, avoidable. With the anti-Christ, these things will be on us in short order. With a President Romney, actual jailing and possible exterminations of Christians, especially Catholics, for the practice of the faith, was a long-term possibility. Now it is almost unavoidable, and sooner rather than later.
At this time, even if the vast majority of Americans repented of our crimes, it is too late. Disaster looms.
sitetest
There is always hope, both practical and supernatural. The new avenue of hope opens with Romney’s defeat: a chance for the GOP machine to fix its primaries process, for the GOP policy wonks to re-wonk conservatism and to give credibility, tactical support and polish to the Tea Party, and to re-engage the voting public with something better than what-to-do-with-that-upper-tax-bracket there-are-no-abortion-laws-that-I-will-change candidates.
Waiting for a few more years before the deck goes vertical is not a hope, it is foolishness. Time to act is now. Here’s a realistic goal: take the Senate in 2014 (20 Dem seats in play, several in red states), when there is no romney to get in the way.
What hope remains is solely supernatural.
“The new avenue of hope opens with Romney’s defeat: a chance for the GOP machine to fix its primaries process,...”
This is a foolish remark. Politics is no longer anything that will save us, help us to avert, or even put off for a time, the destruction we face as a nation.
The next election is in 2016. It will no longer be possible by then to undo Obamacare, which, by itself, defeats us as it turns us into a secular, Western Europe social welfare state where, by virtue of its ability to define “health care,” the government - now controlled by the most radical leftists who have ever been elected in the United States - gets to define everything. Morality, social structures, what defines a family, what defines the tenets of a particular religion or faith, the rules of our mediating institutions - our churches, our schools, our private civic associations - everything.
We already saw in this last election that we are at the tipping point of creating dependence among so many that they will never vote to undo their dependence. Obamacare hastens and deepens that dependence. In the next four years, without any additional action on the part of the Congress, we will move past the event horizon of the black hole.
Cardinal George said that the HHS mandate will cause the church to shutter her schools, hospitals, every mediating institution run by the church, within two years. He says this hoping to scare the anti-Christ into compromise. He, along with all the other bishops, just isn't very bright. That is where the Kenyan wishes to go. It's a twofer for him. He gets rid of the competing civic institutions AND he causes a crisis in health care (and education) that will permit the erection of single-payer, entirely government-controlled health care.
“Waiting for a few more years before the deck goes vertical is not a hope, it is foolishness.”
Torpedoing the ship right now because we don't like waiting aboard a ship that is slowly sinking is the greater foolishness.
“Here’s a realistic goal: take the Senate in 2014 (20 Dem seats in play, several in red states), when there is no romney to get in the way.”
It isn't Gov. Romney that prevented morons Akin and Mourdock from being elected. It isn't Gov. Romney that got in the way of Scott Brown. Mr. Smith more likely dragged down Gov. Romney in Pennsylvania than vice versa, as the governor ran way out in front of Mr. Smith (who lost with less than 40% of the vote, if I recall correctly). It isn't Gov. Romney who caused the bitter primary fight in Wisconsin that left Tommy Thompson broke and unable to fight for that seat.
Besides which, the anti-Christ doesn't actually need any new legislation. All he needs to do is maintain the status quo, and it's over. And in that he has extraconstitutionally expanded executive orders beyond all imagining, with a supine press, and even Republican House, a few more of these, and he'll be able to change Obamacare into single-payer even without new legislation.
As for judicial appointments, unless your magical new primary process results in replacing all the Republicans in the Senate, even with a newly-minted majority, they will confirm pretty much all his Supreme picks and most of his other picks.
The barbarians are in the gate. This election was the possibility to force them out of the city long enough for reinforcements to arrive. In re-electing Satan's bitch, we have surrendered the city to the sacking of the invaders. We have given them all that is valuable for them to ruin, destroy and despoil. There is no turning back, now.
You have voted for certain, immediate destruction versus possible harm, even great harm, in the long-term.
sitetest
I hear you.
Sure it is. Unless Obama cancels the Constitution, there will be other elections; the question is in what mindset the electorate will be.
The next election is in 2016. It will no longer be possible by then to undo Obamacare, which, by itself, defeats us as it turns us into a secular, Western Europe social welfare state
If the electorate is wiser and the Republican party is better focused on social issues, it will be possible. The chances are certainly better than if a centrist president who does not understand why Obamacare is so bad works out a compromise and produces Obamacare LITE with the Republican bipartisan stamp on it.
He gets rid of the competing civic institutions AND he causes a crisis in health care (and education) that will permit the erection of single-payer, entirely government-controlled health care.
That is probably his plan, yes. My bet is, the American people won't like it very much in 2014.
It isn't Gov. Romney that prevented morons Akin and Mourdock from being elected
Interesting. Now Akins and Mourdock are morons for having coherent pro-life views and expressing them. And Romney is a genius for being pro-life except for cases when he is not pro-life? However, I did not say that Romney prevented them. As far as Romney personally is concerned, he was a fine candidate who did his best presenting his centrist views; he just could not turn out the vote because his view have not inspired the GOP base. He could not have defended Akins and Mourdock because he does not agree with them; I don't blame him for not trying. However, the GOP establishment did sabotage at least Akins campaign actively, whereas they could have defended him easily. That is the kind of quisling GOP that I am quite happy got beaten.
unless your magical new primary process results in replacing all the Republicans in the Senate, even with a newly-minted majority, they will confirm pretty much all his Supreme picks
That, too, entirely depends on the mindset in the electorate.
I find it amusing that I, a monarchist, have better faith in the resilience of American democracy than you.
I'm a little busy today, so this response is conditioned by a lack of time. I don't have much time for editing or concise writing. Apologies in advance for incoherencies, typos, etc.
Anyway, no, politics isn't the solution, here. Our problems run a little deeper. Our social pathologies are no longer solvable by politics, and our politics can't be recovered until we do something about our social pathologies. They will require cultural, spiritual renewal.
As an example, the government, our politics, can't fix 40% illegitimacy (which includes 70%+ illegitimacy in the black community, 50% in the Hispanic community and even 30% among whites). The fatherlessness that arises from illegitimacy and divorce drive most of the bad stuff in our society and our politics.
Schools broken? You can blame the teachers union, and they deserve a good bit of blame. You can blame the elites for “dumbing down” our educational content. You can blame government for making schools one more bureaucratic empire to build. But the heart of the problem is that so many young people come to schools already maimed. They are maimed psychologically, socially, academically, spiritually, because, well, their fathers just didn't give enough of a damn about them to marry their mothers.
Women don't have access to quality daycare? That's an issue exacerbated by an order of magnitude when large percentages of the community are single moms with illegitimate children (or children abandoned by their fathers through divorce - or children forced from their fathers by their mothers, again, through divorce).
Problems of poverty? The anti-Christ’s policies may have exacerbated the problems - and extent - of poverty, but he didn't invent it. Quick fact: About 16% - 17% of households now live in poverty, and something like 20%+ of children now live in poverty.
But intact families have a low, single-digit rate of poverty.
An intact, mom+dad family nearly always does well enough to take care of mom, dad, and all the children.
The only thing government can do is ameliorate the effects of fatherlessness, of divorce and illegitimacy. And as an expanding segment of the population sinks into this life, this culture, they view that government amelioration as the “solution,” rather than as what mitigates the damage until the underlying problems are addressed.
Thus, the problem becomes that a certain portion of the electorate wants bigger government, and that portion of the population is growing. That demographic is expanding, not shrinking. And we are now at the point where there are a few more of them than there are of us. Gov. Romney's 47% plus a few married, well-off, white, guilt-ridden liberals.
Talk of reforming the Republican Party nominating process is magical thinking. It doesn't deal with reality, and it doesn't deal with the underlying problems that we face.
As to what elections can and can't do, here's a link to an essay by someone who goes by the moniker Sultan Knish:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/11/game-called-on-account-of-darkness.html
He points out that the left uses the system to build, develop, execute, and lock in its agenda. He shows how the left has worked long and hard to win the culture, and now, the politics flow naturally therefrom. We conservatives are always fighting against a headwind, because all the institutions of our culture, all the cultural assumptions, are now property of the left.
When the left doesn't quite have the strength to win fair and square in the democratic process, it gets victories anyway it can and then fences those victories in through means it steals from us. We can see this with Roe, where the left took the question entirely out of the democratic process, and invested it in liberal elites cowed into thinking they could not do otherwise than to agree with “informed opinion,” and that has artificially stultified our politics concerning abortion for 40 years, now. Because of the ingrained respect we conservatives have for constitutional processes, and because the Supreme Court has an arguable case to make for respect for its decisions, the left is able to make opposition to Roe look almost... unpatriotic! Even unconservative (I have often seen it argued by leftist scum)!
The left is good at this sort of thing. They are already doing it with Obamacare. By giving away enough freebies, whether it's frivolous junk like condoms and birth control pills, or more serious stuff like guaranteed insurability with no penalties whatsoever for failing to be insured prior to becoming ill, or forcing folks to allow families to keep children on their policies until age 26, these goodies appeal to that part of society which is engaged deeply in the social pathologies previously mentioned.
They will be loathe to give up the goodies Obamacare gives them, all paid for by increasingly-high taxes on the “rich” (anyone with a low six-figure income, and up).
As well, Obamacare will become increasingly entangled and implicated in our daily lives. A simple repeal TODAY would already be nearly impossible as the system has been grafted into the business model of insurance companies, of Medicare, of Medicaid. But at this time, a repeal that left intact certain pieces could yet be accomplished.
In four years, it will be nearly impossible for even good and just men to figure out how to disentangle the beast, the parasite of Obamacare, from its host, the health care system of our country.
And the elites won't stand for it. And the folks mired in social pathology won't stand for it either.
Even today, we say how unpopular Obamacare, but that unpopularity isn't all that great. We're talking something north of 50% disapprove of Obamacare, but something south of 60%. As more and more folks get their health care through Obamacare, especially as it accommodates their social pathologies, it will become increasingly unthinkable to undo what has been done.
And the anti-Christ will have four more years to further embed the program in our national DNA.
“’He gets rid of the competing civic institutions AND he causes a crisis in health care (and education) that will permit the erection of single-payer, entirely government-controlled health care.’
“That is probably his plan, yes. My bet is, the American people won't like it very much in 2014.”
Some Americans won't like it. The increasing irreligious population won't care less. And we'll have nothing by which to stop it. The Obamacare legislation provides enough power to the executive that he needs nothing else to crush any institutions that get in the way of the arbitrary mandates the regime decides to impose.
Mr. Akin’s comments on legitimate rape constituted a coherent pro-life view?? LOL!! That is truly delusional!
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that beneath that entirely idiotic exterior, there actually IS someone with a coherent pro-life view, but his remarks, WHICH WERE ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE, did not represent such a view. Mr. Mourdock’s comments were less egregious, but COME ON, FOLKS!! We've been at this abortion thing for 40 years! Any politician worthy of running at the national level (and that's what a US Senate seat is) MUST have the wits to avoid making comments so easily caricatured, so easily taken out of context, and so easily turned into a fuel for the whole “war on women” propaganda.
It may not be fair, but we pro-lifers cannot make those sorts of mistakes. The media is our enemy and the general culture has been taken over by leftists so that even just speaking plain sense hurts the ears of ordinary folks.
“unless your magical new primary process results in replacing all the Republicans in the Senate, even with a newly-minted majority, they will confirm pretty much all his Supreme picks
“That, too, entirely depends on the mindset in the electorate.”
No, it doesn't really. Your views evince a sort of magical thinking that is not conservative. At least, not organically conservative.
Even if we manage, by the grace of God, to enter into a time of cultural and spiritual renewal, not everyone changes all at once all at the same time. We will have to change the culture FIRST before we see much progress in our politics. But changing the culture will not result in a fast turnaround of our politics.
The election of Gov. Romney would not have stopped the cultural and social decay we currently experienced. The re-election of the anti-Christ, though, accelerates that decline, and guarantees harsh and hard times for us as we await the change that we actually need.
A Romney presidency would have fixed, in the short-term, some of our economic problems, and would have provided some hope to put in place some of the things that will be needed to improve our society and culture.
Most importantly, it would have given us a little more time.
“I find it amusing that I, a monarchist, have better faith in the resilience of American democracy than you.”
As a Catholic, I put no faith in any political system, whether republican, monarchist or otherwise. The Church has always stood apart from political systems, realizing that they are the invention of men, not God, but that God didn't necessarily provide us with a political ideology by which to organize societies. The Church teaches us to be loyal to our countries, to try to help bring about a just society, no matter what form the government takes.
As America was founded as a republic, I think it is foolish - and wildly dangerous - for her to try to be anything but what she was from the beginning. Similarly, I think it was profoundly foolish, and did great ill, for Europe to sweep away its monarchies over the past few centuries.
Now, in America, we are sweeping away our republicanism. This is, in part, because we are seeing swept away the culture that sustained a free republic - a religious people who acknowledge the Creator and His laws.
sitetest
I like you post and agree with it.
Of course I did not mean to propose that America’s problem, spiritual at its core can be resolved by politics. Not any more than you was suggesting that by electing Romney that spiritual problem would get any better, — surely you did not mean that.
My decision, not an easy one, to break away from the natural instinct to vote for a marginally more conservative candidate was not because by writing in the best candidate that reach certain prominence and doing so publicly, I foresee a solution to the spiritual problem. Mine is indeed but an incrementally better application of my vote, for reasons outlined in my previous posts. So far as politics is our concern, a vote for Romney (or, of course, for Obama) was a vote cementing our political demise. If we have a chance as a nation it is in the direction outlined by the Tea Party: broad reform of the political culture, rather than sitting on the GOP plantation and looking to eke out one more electoral cycle. Such reform is impossible if it is limited to the primaries because the party machine has learned to circumvent primaries. Is such reform likely? — I don’t know, but I refuse to wait to get boiled like a frog, and you should too.
I don't see that either approach brings long-term solutions.
It's just about amelioration of suffering in the meantime. Corporal works of mercy-type stuff.
Gov. Romney's agenda promised at least some economic recovery, regaining of jobs for the unemployed, increased energy independence. It also promised less deepening of the social and cultural crisis that we face, less encouragement of dependency, less encouragement of abortion and other anti-life ills.
Not much to shoot for, but better than nothing, as we wait on Him who can bring contrition, repentance, and true healing.
sitetest
It did promise that, while his defeat promises a realignment inside the GOP away from mechanical combination of center-right special interest and toward principled pro-life conservatism.
A long-term solution is re-gaining of true national elite capable of leadership, embrace of Christianity as our national soul, and on that basis reassembly of American nation that celebrates unity in truth rather than democratic fragmentation.
“It did promise that, while his defeat promises a realignment inside the GOP away from mechanical combination of center-right special interest and toward principled pro-life conservatism.”
Actually, I think it’s more likely that we social conservatives are going to be jettisoned from the party. There are many folks trying to pin this on us. Idiotic? Certainly. But the GOP IS the Stupid Party. I think this time, they may succeed.
In which case, we social conservatives may find ourselves without a political home. And then, it WILL be time, politically, to go the third party route (what other choice will we have, having been thrown out of the Republican Party?), and we will flounder for some time, politically, becoming ever more feckless. And death will reign in America for the interregnum.
“A long-term solution is re-gaining of true national elite capable of leadership, embrace of Christianity as our national soul, and on that basis reassembly of American nation that celebrates unity in truth rather than democratic fragmentation.”
Something like that could be the result of God successfully calling us to repentance. But it’s a long way off.
Meanwhile, with the re-election of the anti-Christ, there will be blood. And it will mostly be ours.
I’d have liked to avoid this.
sitetest
I don't think we ever had a home. We had a certain coalition but with the pattern evident in GHW Bush, Dole, McCain and Romney candidacies -- in other words, the entire losing streak excepting an outlier in Dubya (not that he served us much good) there would be no basis for us staying. With Romney, especially, two litmus tests failed: at least nominal Christianity and at least plausible pro-life convictions.
Yes, they may go for the suburban secular vote and drop the conservative pretense. The demographics may point in that direction.
No matter what they do, we have to think of ourselves as a permanent opposition party and possibly a regional party, providing a block on most egregious encroachments from Washington, but without a governing prospect.
Observe, however, that a separate conservative party, free from the demographic urges toward appeasement, will become attractive in ways the GOP could not be attractive: as the salt of the American earth. I think, the American conservatives will not have the GOP numbers, but we will not dwindle to single digits. We could be a 30-40% congressional party tomorrow, and hold keys to government that way.
"The Reformation unintentionally undid the medieval synthesis of faith and reason. Now we romantically seek a spiritual life free from authority and tradition, or rationalistically seek truth as if human beings were autonomous and self-sufficient."
"The day may come when Catholics can support neither of the main American political parties or their candidates. Some think it’s already arrived. Alasdair MacIntyre, the Notre Dame philosopher, argued along those lines a few years ago, explaining why he couldn’t vote for either a Democrat or a Republican."
"Elections are tough times for serious Catholics. If we believe in the encyclical tradition—from Rerum Novarum to Evangelium Vitae; from Humanae Vitae to Caritas In Veritate—then we can’t settle comfortably in either political party. Catholics give priority to the right to life and the integrity of the family as foundation stones of society. But we also have much to say about the economy and immigration, runaway debt, unemployment, war and peace. It’s why the US bishops recently observed that “in today’s environment, Catholics may feel politically disenfranchised, sensing that no party and few candidates fully share our comprehensive commitment to human life and dignity.”
"Any committed Christian might be tempted to despair. But the truth is that it’s always been this way. As the author of Hebrews wrote, “here we have no abiding city” (Heb 13:14). Augustine admired certain pagan Roman virtues, but he wrote the City of God to remind us that we’re Christians first, worldly citizens second. We need to learn—sometimes painfully—to let our faith chasten our partisan appetites."
"In the United States, our political tensions flow from our cultural problems. Exceptions clearly exist, but today our culture routinely places rights over duties, individual fulfillment over community, and doubt over belief. In effect, the glue that now holds us together is our right to go mall-crawling and buy more junk. It’s hard to live a life of virtue when all around us, in the mass media and even in the lives of colleagues and neighbors, discipline, restraint, and self-sacrifice seem irrelevant."
- Archbishop Charles Chaput
The day may come when Catholics can support neither of the main American political parties or their candidates.
This presumes that the two party system is integral to American politics. It is not. If neither party can support a voting block of Christian conservatives then another party will be formed that accommodates them. I see in America room for at least three parties, left to right: Radical Left (welfare class, gays, old style progressives); Suburban Secularists (socially liberal fiscally non-ideological middle class); and Conservative (socially and fiscally conservative). In this system any party can block legislation in congress and neither party can win presidency without a cross-party appeal. The merit of such system is that it fosters nationalism as a basis of political unity.
Now, this is not in contradiction with the fact that a Christian is by definition looking firstly to his home in heaven; leaving aside the hesichast (quietist) tradition, most Christians and certainly most Catholics recognize that they have a social obligation toward their country.
“I don't think we ever had a home.”
Then, if you like, a place to rest our heads mostly unmolested.
“With Romney, especially, two litmus tests failed: at least nominal Christianity and at least plausible pro-life convictions.”
Gov. Romney's Mormonism is problematic. In some sense, it IS nominally Christian. The problem is that it's clearly not substantially Christian.
As for his pro-life “convictions,” these seemed plausible to that half of the country, at least, that did NOT vote for him. LOL. And even many who voted for him, I think, viewed him as sincerely pro-life. It is ironic that those who questioned his pro-life “convictions” were a subset of those most dedicated to the cause of life.
Myself, I think the question of his “pro-life” convictions is a little more complicated than, “is he?/isn't he pro-life?”. That's a topic for a whole other thread. For myself, I came to the conclusion that he was sufficiently pro-life to provide at least enough of a fig leaf not to irreparably damage the Republican Party's stand as a party of life.
A Giuliani candidacy would not have provided that fig leaf.
I don't think the rest of your analysis holds up. I'm not sure that a thorough-going pro-life party would attract much more than about 20% of voters. That's what every reliable poll ever conducted shows: those who are uncompromisingly pro-life constitute about 20% of the electorate.
You could easily broaden the appeal to 40% or more if you accept some pro-life compromises. Like, the “hard cases,” or maybe a little euthanasia around the edges, or a little embryonic stem cell research.
But heck, why bother going third party if we have to compromise, most folks will say.
Let's face it, support even for a “substantially” pro-life legal regime isn't terribly broad (perhaps 55% of the electorate would find that acceptable), and probably fairly shallow (many of those folks will fall away if you take away their free rubbers and pills, or argue for fiscal constraint, or get all judgmental & stuff about illegitimacy, etc.).
John Derbyshire posits that as whites shrink to minority status in the US (which is allegedly about 40 years off), we will think more like a cohesive ethnic group, and we will form a party around our white “ethnicity,” and being the single largest racial group, we will be able to at least negotiate tolerable political outcomes. He also foresees that as non-white minorities, in the aggregate, become the majority, that they will be less likely to make common cause with each other, and our “multi-culti” nation will see three or four major, mostly ethnically-based parties and maybe a few minor parties, that will result in shifting alliances to accommodate political solutions.
It's an interesting theory.
Myself, I think it's far too optimistic, as it suggests a certain continuation of the path that we're on.
I think we're more likely to have a discontinuity or two that will cause significant disequilibrium of the system. The re-election of the anti-Christ is the direct, proximate cause of the coming discontinuity. It's tough to know, to predict, what lies on the other side of the disequilibrium. It may be good, it may be bad, it may be worse.
This is why it was important to elect Gov. Romney - to provide space and time for God's action before the coming sorrow. Now the great sorrow is upon us as a nation and it will not be avoided.
At this point, it's all in God's hands.
sitetest
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