Mr. Austin Ruse has an article at
Crisis Magazine last week where he tries to make the case for pro-life
Catholics not just continuing to support the GOP vs. switching to the
Democratic party, but that we have a home in the GOP. However, given only those
two choices, GOP seems to have diminishing returns for pro-lifers. For years
many have suspected the GOP (in general) keeps with the pro-life rhetoric in
order to garner votes and then does nothing to change to the light of the
unborn. Witness two weeks ago when the Republicans couldn’t gather enough votes
in a Congress they control to pass a pro-life bill outlawing most abortions
after 20 weeks if pregnancy.
I have read Mr. Ruse’s argument
over and over by others, and while I don’t agree with it, I can understand why
many Catholics will continue to support the GOP for the reasons Mr. Ruse gives.
However, what I don’t understand
is Mr. Ruse’s attack on Distributists who (in general) do not advocate
supporting the Democratic Party. Mr. Ruse starts his close with the following
diatribe:
As
for Catholic Social Teaching, the cudgel this group likes to beat us with, who
says Catholic Social Teaching requires us to follow the policy prescriptions of
the hard left? ……
This makes no
sense to me. Most of the people I know who are concerned by the GOP’s
lack of understanding of Catholic Social teaching would definitely not support
the Democratic party no matter the failings of the GOP, and would also argue
that the policy proscriptions of the
hard left don’t follow the Catholic prescription of subsidiarity.
Finally, he
decides to start throwing insults instead of making a coherent conclusion:
While
we’re at it, let’s get the Federal government out of the land business. The
Feds own a third of all US land, up to half and more of many western states.
Let’s have a modern day land-rush for all those Distributists out there who are
just itching to fish, farm or make cheese—though one suspects they’ll stay
exactly where they are, blogging and adjunct teaching.
As a Distributist, a blogger, and
an Adjunct for a technical college who doesn’t just itch to work a homestead
but actually does, I suppose I could take offense, as could many others. May be Mr. Ruse has someone in particular in
mind, but he uses a broad brush – exactly what he criticizes in those who
criticize the GOP’s commitment to life issues. (I suppose the adjunct remark is
to imply the adjuncts are just not good/smart/etc enough to get another job?)
Perhaps it isn’t the time for a
third party to rise and take the place of the GOP or the Democratic Party as
many of my ilk would like, but it is clear that increasingly neither party has
a coherent vision compatible with primary life issues (abortion, contraception,
euthanasia) or secondary life issues (subsidiarity, economy, poverty, social
teaching, war, etc.)
From my view, both major parties
seem more interested in staying in power than anything else. That is why they
won’t vote on controversial issues near an election. This is why they come out
against policies they supported previously based on the support or opposition
of the opposing party. It is about power.
A case could be made to continue
to support the GOP, but saying that Catholics have a HOME in the GOP, as Mr.
Ruse trues to argue, seems to be stretching it. Mr. Ruse becomes even less
convincing when he decides to take broadsides at people he clearly knows very
little about. (And Mr. Ruse should recall that the likely biggest 2-3
contributors to the next GOP presidential nominee will likely be pro-same sex
marriage as they were in the last election.) I would argue that a stronger case
could be made to support neither party. The GOP would either have to
re-evaluate and re-up their pro-life commitment or be regulated to a secondary
party. (Of course the argument that we then would be stuck with very a majority
of anti-life Democrats until the GOP decided to change would be a compelling
argument against this course.)
I guess this is why it is said
that politics makes strange bedfellows. This is why, I suspect, many want to
stay out of the bed these days!
Oremus pro invicem!
