What’s Wrong With Double-Poxer Pro-lifers?
In my occasional travels through cyberspace, I have noticed that many pro-life Catholics are so fed up with the current state of American politics that they refuse to vote for either major party. Mark Shea is perhaps the biggest example of this. Indeed, one of his readers has accused him and his ilk of being “double-poxers.” They say a “pox upon both your houses” to Democrats and Republicans alike. They will vote for a third-party candidate, or not vote at all, and this, Shea’s reader asserts, is impractical thinking that will all but ensure a Democrat victory and the appointing of radical, activist judges who are pro-abortion.
I am in agreement with Shea’s reader, but I have a different way of putting it. Shea’s reader does not go deeply enough in his analysis of why “double-poxing” is wrong-headed. The double-poxers are not just impractical: they fail to see the guiding telos of the socialism homogeneously embraced by Democrat Party leadership. In order to assess the current political situation, one needs to go beyond the issue of practicality (though that is important) and even beyond specific issues such as war, torture, euthanasia or even stem-cell research and abortion. One has to acknowledge the true nature of socialism.
Socialism seeks to impose the mechanized central government as the religious authority in people’s lives. This is why socialists hate the family and the Church. Socialists cannot accept the idea that any society other than the State might have an authoritative bearing: thus, the natural society of the family and the supernatural society of the Church are grave threats to their political goals.
Of course, I’ve repeated myself several times about this on this blog, but the chain of ideas is borne out by chains of fact in countries such as Venezuela, Spain, Brazil, and Ecuador. The recently-elected, socialist government in Ecuador is in full and open warfare with the Church, just as the Democrat Party will be in the U.S., if given absolute power.
All of the policies of the Democrat Party, like those of their kindred spirits throughout the world, flow from their idea of governance. The idea of “abortion rights,” for instance, is as natural to their political orientation as the air they breathe is to their very lives. And they are only opposed to war or torture if they find that it is being carried out by the American, capitalist government they so despise as their archenemy.
They have no ontological basis from which to oppose war or torture. So, they equivocate on Islamic terrorism, just as their forebears equivocated on the inumerable atrocities perpetrated in the name of internationalist socialism in the twentieth century.
The only hope at present, to thwart the coming socialism, is a solidified and unified Republican Party getting either congress or the presidency. However futile our ultimate efforts may be in this regard, it seems to me that pro-lifers should work to help the Republicans.
I fear that Satan is having his one last grasp at world-power, before a turning occurs. I suspect that the universalist socialist nightmare is becoming a waking terror at this point. It will collapse under the weight of its own unmanageable soft-tyranny, but it certainly seems as if no one can effectively oppose it at this point. Still, that does not excuse us from making an effort.
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Makes sense to me.
Honestly, I don’t try to justify my political choices by my religious views– if I need to do so, one or the other is badly damaged. They’re both supposed to spring from the same source inside of a person– your belief of what is true.
Comment by Foxfier — September 20, 2008 @ 10:52 pm
I’ve always said that I intend to vote McCain, come immediately home, and bathe.
That said, I understand the temptation to sit out the election.But in addition to ensuring that the most pro-abortion candidate ever wins, it would certainly cause immeasurable damage in future elections.
What I mean to say is that by removing the pro-life constituency from the voting population, we’d be destroying any influence we have within either party. It would pave the way for the GOP to embrance the Giulianis and Christine Todd Whitmans of the party. And the Dems would be able to push for extermination of other demographics beyond the unborn, disabled, and elderly
Comment by Steve — September 21, 2008 @ 10:31 am
GKC was a bit ahead of you on that.
“Once abolish the God and the Government becomes the god.”
It is very tempting to become a ‘doublepoxer.’ But I’m not giving up so easily on the USA.
Comment by dad29 — September 21, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
Great post. In addition, major turnouts of third-party voters only enable their least favorite candidate to win. Left-wing magnet Ralph Nader helped Al Gore lose and The sitting president was worse than Gore to the Nader voters. Ross Perot stole votes from Daddy Bush and we ended up with Clinton. Same with Ross Perot and Bob Dole in the 1996 election, we still ended up with Clinton.
The definition of insanity is to repeat behavior and expect different outcome.
Comment by GPossenti — September 22, 2008 @ 8:13 am
If we take politicians and political parties as having not just a position, but also a directional velocity, then I would argue the the past twenty years or so have demonstrated that the Republicans are not moving in a different direction than the Democrats, they are just moving in the same direction at a slower speed. How can it be said that the Republicans are opposed to the centralized state when twenty years ago they had a president willing to at least pay lip service to eliminating the Department of Education, while today they have one who expands federal control over education by signing the No Child Left Behind Act?
Thinking of strategy in terms of only the next four years has not seemed to work. It has only seemed to lead to a series of slow defeats that many are willing to call victories because the ones responsible were “their” candidates. This strikes me as extremely imprudent. The point of voting for a third party candidate is to send a signal to the Republicans that they cannot count on the support of pro-life, pro-family and pro-limited government voters without actually doing some substantial things to advance these voters’ agendas. Such a long term strategy may lead to short term defeats, but it seems to me that it is necessary for claiming long term victory. Otherwise the country will keep moving ever so slowly towards centralized control while those most likely to oppose it do nothing because it is being done by “their guy.” The other guy may have been worse, but they would have at least fought him tooth and nail.
Comment by brendon — September 22, 2008 @ 9:12 am
How can it be called sending a signal when it didn’t work the last four times?
Comment by Foxfier — September 22, 2008 @ 10:08 am
Agreed Foxfier.
It’s like the movie “Dumb & Dumber”. The crooks break into Lloyd and Harry’s apartment, take a look, and the first crook says, “Maybe we should trash the place, send them a message”. Upon second look at the disgusting bachelor pad, the second crook responds, “I don’t think they’ll get that message”.
Basically, there are so many more demographics that are far greater in population than the disgruntled, never-happy-with-anyone third-party-voters. The candidates themselves don’t read the ballots, their people don’t read the ballots. Have you ever seen a count for “Jesus Christ” or write-ins at the bottom of the TV screen on election night? The numbers are smaller than Air-America’s entire listenership.
Comment by GPossenti — September 22, 2008 @ 10:31 am
Foxfier is correct. The question is which, if any party, are reformable. Hierothee has pointed out reasons why he believes that the Democrat party is not and the Republican part is. I would suggest that any reform will come from active involvement in party politics. I cannot see how sending an amorphous “signal” that puts a party controlled by extremists who have a defective anthropology and a dangerous oligarchic view of how to pacify the masses while “protecting” them from themselves will help to transform the Republicans. However, neither do I think that conservative ideology need be the benchmark for whether the Republican party is redeemable.
The key is to establish a party that has a healthy view of the need to balance solidarity and subsidiarity. While one will still never find everyone in agreement as to the best prudential options for achieving such a balance (e.g., some may even support a federal department of education, though with a vastly different charter), but as long as this is the common goal we will not see the trend toward the problematic policies that both parties, albeit in different measure, now exhibit.
This is not to mention the large number of unborn babies that will be sacrificed to the attempt to convey such an indirect message; one that will be interpreted by each party in such a way that will provide it some political advantage.
Comment by David — September 22, 2008 @ 10:39 am
Holy Mother, Pray for us.
St. Michael the Archangel pray for us.
Comment by Jon — September 23, 2008 @ 11:17 am
I’m a double-poxer. The main reason is that I disagree with some key Republican policies, and because I don’t believe the Republicans are very serious about ending abortion. McCain, if elected, will likely appoint pro-life justices to the court, but, as we’ve seen, that is no guarantee that Roe v. Wade or lesser pro-abortion decisions will be overturned. Moreover, if Roe v. Wade were overturned, the Republicans would lose their most galvanizing, polarizing, and money-raising issue. It’s unrealistic to imagine that a political party, whose main aim is to attain and retain power, would make any serious efforts towards its own obsolescence.
Comment by Pentimento — September 30, 2008 @ 5:47 pm
Pentimento,
You’ll just have to see my most recent post. There is absolutely no contest between Republicans and Democrats.
Comment by hierothee — September 30, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
Archbishop Burke of St. Louis even said, “At this point the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitely into a ‘party of death’ because of its choices on bioethical questions as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book, ‘The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.’”
The biggest contrast is that Democrats seek to remove all restrictions and even force taxpayers to pay for abortions, while the Republicans, have no intention of furthering abortion rights, but restricting them.
Comment by GPossenti — October 1, 2008 @ 8:24 am
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/09/burke-dems-party-of-death.html
Comment by GPossenti — October 1, 2008 @ 8:26 am
The current Democrat Party candidate for president is far more than just pro-choice, he has worked hard to protect infanticide in order to try and prevent erosion to the Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton abortion-embracing America.
The Democrat candidate, on four noted occasions, worked to prevent born alive infant protection acts from passing into law in Illinois. These bills were aimed at stopping a most heinous way of aborting alive children, called induced labor abortion. This form of killing the alive unborn was becoming alarmingly popular nationwide, as evidenced by the United States Congress passing a ban on the procedure which Barack Obama sought to protect and keep legal.
Induced labor abortion has two advantages, according to abortionist testimony: one, the abortionist kills the alive child outside of the woman’s body by inducing premature labor and birth of a struggling-to-breathe child who is left to die unattended, alone; two, the tissues that can be harvested from children killed this way are ‘more pristine’ for sale/shipping in the fetal tissue harvesting industry industry which had–when Obama was in the IL legislature–reached more than a billion dollars, supplying research facilities all over the world.
If that is not the sort of evil JPII spoke out against, I have missed history of the past twenty years!
To knowingly vote for a man who believes protecting infanticide killing of alive children is acceptable in order to prevent Roe v Wade from being overturned is to embrace evil, actual, palpable EVIL.
Comment by M Galloway — October 4, 2008 @ 10:18 am
M Galloway,
I’d have to agree. Again, I think this election poses a much starker option than double-poxers are willing to admit.
Comment by hierothee — October 4, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
I’m actually considering voting for McCain now, partly because of these comments. I will be praying about this. Thanks to all.
Comment by Pentimento — October 5, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
Well, I’m back to the double-pox drawing board now, having been absolutely repelled by the inflammatory rhetoric of the McCain campaign in the past week. Sorry, but the enemy of my enemy is not, in this case, my friend.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 11:11 am
What inflammatory rhetoric?
You mean pointing out that he is a long-time, admitted associate of an unrepentant terrorist? The same guy who admitted he didn’t think he did enough damage during his terror career, in the NYT, on 9/11? (Amazing timing, there.)
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 11:14 am
I mean the deliberate stirring-up of hatred and violence against Obama in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from McCain’s own incoherent message. McCain and Palin are playing with and stoking the fires of what is worst in our American psyche. In my opinion, this ugly tactic deserves to lose him the election.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 11:19 am
Do you have examples?
The only one I see trying to stir up hated is Obama’s side, which can’t seem to go a week without finding a way to say “And I’m black!”
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 11:21 am
The news in the past week has been rife with examples of the exclamations of attendees of Mccain/Palin rallies, most of which carry the subtext of “And he’s black!”, elevated to threats of violence. There’s no need to go into them here; you can easily do a Google search if you’re in fact unaware of them by now.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 11:25 am
You have heard of plants, haven’t you? Rather like all those “life-long republicans” that suddenly support Obama…but it turns out they weren’t actually republicans? Or the “undecided” folks who had Obama blogs for months in advance?
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/10/09/nyt-blogger-discovers-another-lifelong-republican
This is assuming that there were actually racist statements yelled by people in the crowd– where’s the video? The audio? The statement was supposedly made to a black soundman for a network. No mention what color the guy who yelled it was; it’s wrong, regardless, if it happened.
Hm, we’ve got an anti-Palin article claiming that some guy in the crowd yelled “kill him” when Ayers was mentioned.
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2008/10/07/milbank-claims-pro-palin-mob-shouted-racist-epithets-media-death-ayers
That makes a total of *two* people at McCain/Palin rallies, and no video, no audio, and nothing to connect them to the campaign.
Thin, thin gruel.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 11:41 am
Rod Dreher has a piece in the Dallas Morning News today about the virtues of being a double-poxer in this election:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/DN-dreher_12edi.State.Edition1.1e91a65.html
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 11:49 am
I ask again– what are your examples inflammatory rhetoric from the McCain/Palin campaign?
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Sorry, but I don’t think this combox is the place to parse McCain and Palin’s statements, nor their failure to admonish hysterical rally attendees, nor to question the accuracy of the campaign’s reporting. All of these things can be found and engaged in on other websites. I also don’t see this combox as a place to defend McCain’s campaign tactics; all of this strays a bit too far from the intent of the original post. I’m not interested in your fight. I simply wanted to register my status as a double-poxer and some of the reasons for that. I’m disengaging from this discussion now; God bless you.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
So….you don’t have any actual reason, you just wanted an excuse.
Your perogative, but it’s not nice to accuse folks of being nasty.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Then:
been absolutely repelled by the inflammatory rhetoric of the McCain campaign in the past week
Now:
I also don’t see this combox as a place to defend McCain’s campaign tactics
Apparently, this is the place to attack the McCain campaign, but giving examples or defending said campaign is totally unacceptable.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
Comity artist, John McCain, told a nice little lady at one of his townhall meetings standing up to state she was afraid of Obama becoming president that, ’Senator Obama is a nice family man, a good man whom McCain would not be afraid of to be president.’ Sorry, that’s just stupidity, not comity.
Barack ’ACORN’ Obama is not a nice man, he’s a nightmare for the Republic.
Barack Obama is not a nice family man, he‘s a proven liar. A nice man doesn’t work legislatively to protect infanticide in Illinois. A nice man doesn’t train and fund an army committing vote fraud treason to disenfranchise honest votes of We The People. A nice man doesn’t wag the race card, manipulating black people in an effort to intimidate folks into shutting up and getting out of his way while he strong-arms via intimidation on his way toward the presidency, surfing layers of lies and outright deception for which the media gives him cover.
A real man doesn‘t lie. A whining self-appointed little godman lies.
Barack Obama is a liar, lying about his connections with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, lying about his place of birth, lying about his defense of infanticide, lying about his alliance with the criminal enterprise ACORN gang, and lying about his campaigning for a murderous thug in Kenya.
Barack Obama is a liar in motion, changing his tune at every turn when a campaign proposal doesn‘t produce the expected acceptance of the previous lie he‘s uttered. Ask Hillary Clinton‘s supporters just how maddening is the ever changing contradictory set of proposals from ‘nice’ mister Obama!
Barack Hussein Obama is not a nice man. Hell, he’s not even a man: he whines behind carefully crafted deceptions and lying minions, only surfacing to whine another ‘change’ in his principles–changed because the earlier lies weren’t doing what he expected so he ‘changes’ the claimed values he espouses. This man will say anything, change anything, and do anything, to claw his way to power, and he and his lying minions have proven they will herd black voters into his service making automatons out of children and teens.
Even the Clintons are campaigning for this vile man! Look at what the Democrat Party and democrat drone voters have become …
If I had a mic at a John McCain townhall meeting, I would state that Barack Obama is not a nice man, because a nice family man does not work to keep infanticide protected as a way to kill little ones in Illinois. A nice man does not recruit, train, fund, and send into our communities an army for treasonous vote fraud. A nice man doesn’t fly to Kenya on taxpayer dollars to campaign for a murderous thug, and continue to support such a thug when he signs an agreement to institute Sharia Law if elected. A nice man doesn’t lie his way through primaries and toward the presidency using race baiting as a tool to try and silence any opposition. A nice man doesn’t exploit black people to be his willing racial dupes while he’s protecting the slaughter of black babies.
A nice man? Not Barack Obama! And he’s the ‘best’ the Democrat Party could stand up to run for power?
Comment by MHGinTN — October 12, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Fierfox, this discussion has been amply covered elsewhere. I don’t see the need to rehash it here, nor do I have the time. I responded to the original post, and was updating my response. If you think I attacked McCain, well, then, you defended him, so I suppose we’re even. Evidently we differ on the interpretation of the same events, but please, let’s leave the fisticuffs to blogs that are more explicitly concerned with politics, rather than with the cosomos, liturgy, and sex. Sorry to disappoint you. You are free to have the last word here.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
Pentimento,
This election is not about supporting McCain or the Republicans. If there were another choice, McCain’s positions on abortion and destructive embryo research would make him morally unacceptable. The election is about avoiding the greater evil. It is about saving untold numbers of babies who will die; Obama has promised this if he takes office, the first day he is in office, your tax dollars will go to killing babies overseas, in military hospitals, through the UN. This is not to mention his promise that his “first priority” as President will be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.
Until McCain promises policies that will directly target causing the deaths of tens of thousands if not millions of innocents, there is no moral argument that accords with Catholic teaching for any vote other than one that will keep Obama out of office.
Comment by David — October 12, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
David, thank you for your comment. It makes far more sense to me than the ideologically partisan comments that preceded it, and which only served to push me further toward not voting at all. I am convinced that there is no place for an orthodox Catholic in either the Republican or Democratic parties, and that we have no real horse in this race, but I am going to pray hard about it; please pray for me too.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
Pentimento,
You have my prayers. I would offer that there must be a place for orthodox Catholics in both parties and that is to work for reform from within, if one is able to do so without formal or unjust material participation in the inherent evils that each might promote. Prudential judgment suggest to me that one is more likely than the other right now. However, I understand what you mean that it is not easy for the non politically involved Catholic to actively support either party. The only time I will register with a party affiliation at this point, is if the state I am living in at the time requires it for voting in a primary.
However, because of our two party system and our our grave social responsibility to participate in promoting the common good through avenues open to citizens, to the extent our states in life permit, we cannot sit on the sidelines unless this is the only way to do the greatest good or avoid unjust material participation in inherent evil.
Again, my prayers are with you.
God Bless
Comment by David — October 12, 2008 @ 3:47 pm
Pentimento-
My name is Foxfier, and the conversation boiled down to this:
“McCain is Nasty!”
“Oh, why?”
“He said bad things!”
“Like what?”
“You tell me!”
“Well, here’s some accusations, but they don’t stick very well.”
“This really isn’t the place to defend McCain.”
“Wait, what? You gotta be kidding me!”
“This has been covered elsehwhere! I won’t say where, but if you don’t go and prove my case, well, shows you!”
Objecting when someone makes rather grim accusations and refuses to offer examples is *not* partisan.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 3:55 pm
Foxfier, I don’t mean to accuse you of disingenuousness, but you seem quite well-informed, and it was clear from your response to my comment that you knew what I was referring to when I mentioned the inflammatory rhetoric. I don’t think it necessary to list sources for the news that has been virtually everywhere in the past week about the recent negative campaigning undertaken by McCain and Palin. Anyone interested can do a simple search; I myself am not interested in engaging in a political mud-slinging match in this combox. OK? Please pray for me.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
Pentimento-
I have heard baseless accusations and thought, from the massive heat of your response, that you had something more than gossip about what someone heard in a crowd of thousands; something from the campaign, since that is how your phrased your indignant accusation.
Innuiendo and gossip *have* been all over, which is why I offered those links; what is lacking is actual substance. While there may be one of us behaving disingenuously, it is not me.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 4:23 pm
If you news is innuendo and gossip, then so be it. I suppose we can’t believe anything.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Should be: “If new is innuendo and gossip,” etc.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Pentimento-
As I said, if you just wanted an excuse, fine. It’s on your head.
But I’m not going to even pretend that you’ve got a just reason to accuse some good folks of inciting racism if you won’t even try to give an example.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
Good then, it’ll be on my head, as you say. If you read my comments above, however, you’ll note that I did not in fact “accuse” any “good folks” of “inciting racism” — that is something you infer — but you may think what you like. Likewise, if you read my comments, you’ll see that I am simply trying to rationalize, if not justify, my likely double-pox status, since I find both candidates insupportable for various reasons that are different for each. I have no wish to get into an argument with you about politics, which is why I have resisted your attempts to goad me into one. I’ve made my position clear, and you’ve made your belief in the goodness of the McCain campaign clear, if somewhat through innuendo. That’s not a position that I share, but I wish you well.
Comment by Pentimento — October 12, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
Your exact words:
Well, I’m back to the double-pox drawing board now, having been absolutely repelled by the inflammatory rhetoric of the McCain campaign in the past week.
and
I mean the deliberate stirring-up of hatred and violence against Obama in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from McCain’s own incoherent message.
Alright, so you claim that McCain’s campaign has been using inflammatory rhetoric to deliberately stir up hatred and violence against Obama, but that isn’t about Ayers.
But you still won’t give a single example of this rhetoric.
This is not about politics, this is about you making claims that, barring any evidence, are slanderous.
Comment by Foxfier — October 12, 2008 @ 5:44 pm