I am not a professional writer nor am I a political junkie. I have only had minimal direct involvement with elections, doing phone banks for Bush senior and Dole. I almost never put bumper stickers on my car and have never purchased a yard sign. I haven’t been excited about a presidential election for as long as I have been able to vote.

Recently I was cleaning out closets and came across a bag of election paraphernalia from the 80’s. I found buttons, posters and other political flotsam from the Reagan years and realized that the last time I was really excited about the race for the White House was back when I was ten.

Looking back, I realize that every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has run on a “conservative” platform without actually having a clue what conservatism means. This has lead to a string of so-called conservatives moving what defines conservatism farther and farther left; whether it was the aimless conservatism of Bush Sr.,  the “compassionate conservatism” of Bush Jr. or the “reaching across the aisle to kick conservatives” conservatism of McCain, or the “electability over principles” conservatism of Hugh Hewitt and other supposed conservatives.

I realized during college that there wasn’t any reason to get excited about our presidential candidates because none of them really cared about our founding principles or following the Constitution. I’m one of those Americans that believes that as long as we have a constitution, we have to follow what it says for the good of the country. If the country wants to change it, by all means, let’s change it and redefine what American principles are.

As I look over the wreckage of the current election with McCain getting his maverickness handed to him on a platter and squishy Republican senators (Dole, Sununu, et. al.) going down in flames, I would like to humbly propose that it is time for Americans who believe that the Constitution should be a foundational document and not just a decoration in the American History Museum, to sit down and have a real discussion about what it means to be Americans who support Constitutional principles over parties, candidates and power.

I believe that the term “conservative” has been damaged beyond repair by the Bush administration and that the term “constitutionalists” needs to be adopted in its place. We can let the neo-cons keep their meaningless label while they fritter away what is left of their failing power in pursuit of the electable candidate.

Such a project can’t start with candidates. If anyone thinks we can start putting forward candidates now, he is already putting the cart before the horse.

This project to take back America is going to have to start in the same place that it did over two hundred years ago - with the basic philosophic principles that our founders ruminated and fought about as they hammered out the Constitution.

We must be willing to take a hard look at what our national government has become and not only say that certain parts of it need to go but also be able to explain WHY those parts are better left to the states instead of to faceless, unaccountable bureaucracies at the national level.

We must be able to not only explain why the right to life is the foundation of all our God-given rights and essential to the long-term prosperity of America, but also explain how, on the local level, we are going to make the excuses for the destruction of the most defenseless moot.

This is a time for pet ideologies to be put aside and to go through all our political positions to see if they actually line up with what our Founding Fathers envisioned.

Many of us reflexively support the death penalty but can we explain why? Should the laws concerning the death penalty be revised to bring greater justice to the system? Why is it that people can argue with straight faces that pro-life advocates are hypocrites because they may also support the death penalty? Isn’t it really our fault for sticking to slogans and failing to present the philosophical underpinnings of the difference between innocent life and guilty life?

We may believe that the Department of Education needs to be closed but can we explain why education is best handled on the local level?

The Founding Fathers believed in a form of subsidiarity - decisions made at the local level are much more likely to be made correctly than decisions made far away by people who may have no idea what ramifications their decisions have.

I think that as constitutionalists we need to make a clear distinction, as the Founders did, between what is the proper realm of local governments and what belongs to the national government. The Constitution makes it very clear that everything not explicitly laid out in the Constitution is left to the states.

We as a nation have conceded our local responsibilities to the faceless bureaucracies in Washington for far too long. Such concessions are easy to make but far more difficult to withdraw because once power is given to another, regaining that power becomes almost impossible as the Romans saw under the Caesars.

As Americans we need to be able to see beyond national politics to local politics and admit that states and cities do have a vested interest in public education, and that other social justice issues from which we reflexively shy away, are the venue of the local populace, not the federal government. It is time to remove the national government from the realm of charity and welfare and give that responsibility back to local communities. It may give us peace to let “someone else” take care of charity for us by dipping in our wallet without asking but we relegate those in need to the de-humanizing effects of charity by mandate instead of charity out of love.

America once valued self-reliance and had a narrative of pulling yourself up by your boot straps. Many of our greatest leaders were self-educated individuals who took that story seriously. It has served America well for over two hundred years and produced the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. Today, we have become unsure of this path. We think that we can’t succeed because of government interference, race issues and education disadvantages. Instead of taking the lot given to us and refusing to succumb, we look to the government to pull us up, usually at the expense of others. If we want to be a nanny state where the government holds our hands crossing the street instead of us learning to look both ways before crossing it on our own, it is time to put the Constitution on a shelf like most other nations do with their founding documents and move past a government of principles and on to government by whichever group promises to give us the most stuff.

Is this what our Founders fought for? A country of panhandlers looking for the next government bribe in our cup? If this is all we aspire to, then we should put the Constitution behind us because we don’t deserve to call it our own anymore.

Once upon a time, a small group of men believed that we were called to something more than being colonies of England. They believed that the “American experiment” could lead to a truly great nation. Over the decades many other countries, perhaps at no time more than following the second world war, believed it, too. President Regan called America the “shining city on the hill” and people came from all over the world to be part of the promise America offered.

Over time, the shining city has tarnished and the promise rings hollow to many. It is time to reclaim our legacy as Americans, to once again be the beacon of liberty and justice in a world mired in despair. It is time to reaffirm our commitment to founding principles and take back the legacy passed down by so many generations for our safe keeping. It is time to restore America.

I have been thinking long and and hard lately about what Freedom means and where morality figures in. You can’t legislate morality. It is given BY GOD. God created Morality, God created the desire for good. God also gave us the gift of free will. Because of the nature of original sin, Evil prevails in this life. It is far easier to be conditioned for evil. To do good is a struggle. Christ himself was subjected to unimaginable torture for that very reason. He took on humanity suffered and was tempted just as we are. He chose to do good and suffered for it. He did what God asked of him. He had the choice. He resisted temptation.

We have that choice. We can choose to see things two ways. Will my decisions benefit me, or will they benefit all? Will my choice to indulge myself in the the here and now affect my future and the future of those I love? Will I choose to do good, or simply wait until someone else does it first? Apathy, in ways is worse than the purposeful decision to do wrong. Indifference and uncaring can do more evil than any single act of violence.

Countless times in history we have seen the results of this. Hitler’s rise to power after World War One was not some sudden event. It wasn’t a brutal dictator yanking the reins of power from some ruling party by coup. It was slow, it was insidious. Good people stood by as he spoke his anti Jewish propaganda. Good people ducked their heads and pulled their children close as Nazi street gangs began to commit acts of terrorism against Jewish merchants. It happened slowly. A rally in the city park, seeds sown by eloquent language. Those that called him what he was were shushed. Fear grew in the deeps of the night, but too few voices spoke when it could have been stopped. Good people ignored the truth until people started to disappear. All this happened and still, no one did anything. Nations watched but did not intervene until millions were in danger, until hundreds of thousands died in concentration camps and in the battlefields where they fought to remain free. Any fifth grader knows these things. Our history classes in school ensured that we understood the atrocities of the Nazi Party and what the aftermath was.

I am certain the German people, most of them hard working, Christian and decent, woke up in the midst of the war and wondered how they got there. It begins in the home, in the work place. It begins in the heart of each individual who makes the choice to follow God or to serve themselves. It begins when we justify our selves in saying that the morality we are supposed to uphold as Catholics is only one small part of our decisions, when we choose our political leaders. If we choose to ignore the mandates laid out in the Bible and in the teachings of our faith and vote on the economy, or on which candidate seems to have the better plan on how to win a war, we let a lot slip by that is dangerous. It isn’t jus Barrack versus McCain, Biden verses Palin. It isn’t about the politics or the Parties. It really isn’t about funding or the cutting off of funding for this or that failed program. We are choosing the people who shape our nations laws. We choose the man or woman who puts for the supreme court judges that determine how the Constitution is interpreted. We choose the people who are supposed to protect our rights as individuals while making decisions for the benefit of the country. The right to vote is a two edged sword. We have the power but we also have the responsibility.

Somewhere along the way our society has moved away from the basics of morality in law. You see, God created Morality, the Devil introduced Sin. Oh, did I say the S word? Yes, sin. It is really sin, the choice to commit an act contrary to the will of God. Choosing a candidate who openly proclaims to support murder, terrorism and sexual depravity would be sin, right?

I f only it was that simple. You see we’ve talked ourselves into believing if we change the laws we can shift morality and bend it the way we do with the law. Morality does not change! Sin is Sin! The law of God was laid forth in the Old Testament thousands of years ago. Other systems of law and human rights exist but all of them seem to draw from the basics of Moral Law, the Ten commandments. We can interpret, we can shift and sift the language all we want but there is no way we can change the truth. We can change the definitions of life and humanity to suit our need for justification, but even my four year old daughter could tell me that her little sister lived in my tummy before she came out. God bless her for it. Out of the mouths of babes….

I digress. In the case of this election, these times, we have the choice, not just to vote for a president and our senators and congressmen and women. We need to remember who and what these folks represent. We have so many blessings in this country. We get to decide how our cities and states handle our money. We get to decide in whose hands we entrust our public safety and who our judges are. Don’t let little things like this go away by being indifferent to the voting process. Pay ATTENTION! Know who you are voting for and know where they stand on issues of moral importance. Not just the candidates, but the party platform. I think if every Christian and Catholic stood up for what we believe instead of buying into the feel good, homogeneous, humanistic, society we seem to be reaching for, we’d have a better nation for it.

Remember, “Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.”

PRAY, THINK, VOTE!

Just a reminder - if you want to pray a novena for the election, today’s the day to start.

Find podcasts and texts of each day of the novena at the Faithful Citizenship site.

Overheard in the car:

Lucy (9): “I want Mr. Norris to be president.”

“Who?”

“Chuck Norris. The pro-life candidate.”

“Do you mean Chuck Baldwin? Chuck Norris isn’t running for president.”

“Oh, I guess so.”

I’d probably vote for Chuck Norris if he was running.

After writing a post about how horrible were the five minutes of the debate that I watched, I noticed that the blog had found a related post I wrote a while back. It just reminded me again why McCain isn’t to be trusted on much of anything.

“Our first choice, Rudy Giuliani, did not win.  He ran a campaign with a risky strategy and it didn’t work. But our number two choice did win…John McCain. McCain came in second in a survey of our membership.

While he is personally “pro life” he has time and again reached out and worked with people across the spectrum.  We know we can work with him to create common ground that will allow moderates and conservatives to come together to rebuild the GOP.

RFC joins with Rudy Giuliani in asking our supporters to consider McCain as they go to vote over the next few weeks.

John is a true American hero with strong and consistent values.  He will provide the leadership that will rebuild America’s confidence in itself and among our allies worldwide. ”

- Republicans for “Choice “

This is what the Republicans for Choice website currently has to say about the election. (Formatting is theirs)

Was there any good news at the Platform Hearings in Minnesota for Moderate/Conservative Pro-Choice Republicans?

Yah Sure You Betcha! But you didn’t read about it or see it on TV.

But the platform is still anti-choice and very anti-woman in many parts. So, how can we say there is any positive to be found?

First, the McCain campaign did not have control over what ultimately would be finalized in the Platform.  If they had their way they would have cut it down to just a few pages and stripped out most of the stuff with which we disagree.  That was their original intent but there were not the votes on the Platform committee to get that done.

Many of the Delegates on that Committee were not McCain Delegates — they were Huckabee and Romney et al Delegates.

Second, the McCain Platform staff writers, at our prodding, put in language into the Abortion Plank itself that talked about the need to work with those in the Party who disagree on this issue to find common ground.

This is the first time ever that any Presidential contender tried to tinker with that plank to add in language that recognized us.

This was not our first choice of what to put in — but it was RFC’s suggestion.  The more extreme elements of our Party who were on the Platform Committee in abundance stripped that language out.

We may have been defeated in the subcommittee but Platform Chairs Congressman Kevin McCarthy (CA) and Senator Richard Burr (NC) came through for us in the full Convention.

They added and reworked language that we, at RFC, had submitted, into the Preamble! Not the appendix as had been done before — sticking some pathetic and weak attempt to appease us into the back end which no one sees.

No instead they took our suggested language and made it stronger and put it right up front.  It is the first thing you see when you open the Platform document!!

This language welcomes us all as conservatives, moderates, libertarians,independents and even liberals who disagree with certain planks to join in and debate and discuss.  And it makes the point that disagreements make us stronger and that no one is forced to conform to this Platform!

Yes!!  Good thing about that non-conform language since several of the Planks (on health, immigration and abortion) do not conform to McCain’s own position!!

It also states that we are a party of mavericks that together can come up with the best ideas and solutions to the Nation’s problems.

Now let’s see what we can do to help shape a McCain administration to make good on those words!!

Did you know that there’s a presidential election coming up here in the United States? This election has brought people into the discussions who might not normally be very interested in politics, because everyone seems to have very strong feelings about the election is this year. Since it is often the case that the candidate who wins the Catholic vote wins the election, Catholics are being particularly sought after in this election. Both of the major parties know this and are doing whatever they can to convince the majority of Catholics to vote for their respective candidates. Both make convincing arguments for different parts of their platforms that might appeal to Catholics who want to vote based on their Catholic beliefs. Catholic bishops are trying to help people get informed (even turning to avenues that seem to reach out to younger voters, such as offering iPods, loading videos onto YouTube, and using Facebook), and the website CatholicVote.com is meant to help encourage and inform Catholic voters.

So, what does all of this mean for those of us who want to vote as Catholic citizens?

I recently bought the book Render Unto Caesar by Archbishop Charles Chaput, because I’ve been struggling with deciding who to vote for and I had been looking forward to reading what Archbishop Chaput had to say about being Catholic and American in political life today. I’ll admit that voting for Obama has never been much of an option for me because I disagree with him on too many issues, most importantly life issues. But does not voting for Obama mean that I should automatically vote for McCain, since I agree with him on more issues? McCain, as far as I know, still supports embryonic stem cell research. And I’m not sure that I want to vote for someone who continues to support such an intrinsic evil. At the same time, though, I happen to live in a swing state where it seems that every day the majority support switches between Obama and McCain. Knowing this, and knowing that I would much prefer Obama not win the election, I can’t help but wonder if it would be better for me just to vote for McCain (instead of a third party) so that Obama doesn’t win the state. (Having Sarah Palin as McCain’s vice presidential pick has definitely made voting for McCain more appealing than it was previously, but McCain is still the one running for president.)

In Render Unto Caesar, Chaput spends some time discussing the more general issue of being Catholic in America, and what our responsibilities are as Catholics. He makes the point that it is absurd to try to separate our Catholic beliefs with how we vote politically. It’s impossible to say and believe in one thing while doing something else without making a mockery of what it is we say we believe. It shouldn’t just be a belief, it should be a way of life. Everything we do, including how we vote, must reflect what we believe. As Catholics, we should believe that all life is sacred and precious, and as Chaput says, “deliberately killing innocent human life, or standing by and allowing it, dwarfs all other social issues.”

I certainly believe other issues are important. We’re facing tough times right now, and this election stands to be one of the more important elections in recent history. I think McCain has a lot of good to offer the country, and I’m fairly certain that if I vote for a third party candidate who agrees with the Church on all the life issues, he wouldn’t win. But, to quote Chaput again, “we’re not called to get results. We’re called to be faithful.” Render Unto Caesar doesn’t say who we should vote for. There is no chapter entitled “Don’t Vote for Obama” or “Vote for This Candidate, and Here’s Why.” The Church can’t tell us who specifically to vote for, and neither can anyone else. There is not a rule that states that if a candidate holds a certain position, we absolutely should or should not vote for that candidate. There are many Catholics who seem to be quite faithful, and still are able to justify voting for Obama. There are also those Catholics who can’t even justify voting for McCain, despite his more pro-life stance, because he still supports things that don’t fit very well with Catholic teaching, and so they’re turning to candidates outside of the two major parties. It is times like this that make it so important for Catholics to have fully-formed (and, hopefully, correctly informed) consciences, so we can make the decisions we need to, on our own.

I’m by no means an expert about politics. Nor am I an expert in Catholic teaching, beyond what I learned growing up, in college theology classes, and learning from those around me who are much more knowledgeable than I am. I read through Chaput’s book rather quickly this first time because I just wanted to get the basics of what he said. A part of me was hoping that at the end he would say that, this election, Catholics should vote for (fill in the blank here). Of course, he didn’t. But his message is unmistakable even in a quick read-through: as Catholics, we can’t compromise our beliefs just to fit in with a majority or to soften Christ’s message to make it more palatable. We have to hold firm to what he commanded, even if it seems hopeless. (And let’s face it, in today’s society, it often seems nearly hopeless more than it doesn’t.) If we all follow Christ, we can each make a difference even if it’s just a small one. If none of us follow Christ’s will, who will be left to change the world?

(By the way, I do highly recommend Render Unto Caesar. It’s not a very big book, and it’s incredibly easy to get into. Archbishop Chaput includes a lot of history, both Catholic and American, which was really helpful to put things into context and showing how other Catholics throughout history have dealt with having to make tough political choices like we do today. I’m planning on reading it again so I can pick up what I missed during my first quick read. There’s so much to take in that I’m sure a more thorough read will have a lot to offer.)

What are your thoughts on the election? Is it better to vote for the “lesser of two evils” while acknowledging that we are not voting to promote those morally objectionable positions that the lesser evil might hold, or should we avoid the evils altogether and find someone else to vote for, even if doing so is seen as a wasted vote by the majority of the country?

What happens when my general manager doesn’t have enough to do.