As Americans round the last lap to Election Day, the raucous political noise is as hard to ignore as the radical political divide. Gone are the days of when citizens would consider candidates and their positions (often on a more local level) and vote according to policy, even if that meant voting on both sides of the ballot—a thing almost inconceivable now.
Today, you’re either Red or Blue—either Republican or Democrat—and never the twain shall meet, with both sides shouting down the other as “out of their minds,” as Kamala Harris said during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, earning her the same insult from the Right.
Obviously, both sides can’t be right—but that doesn’t mean that one side must be all right and the other all wrong. As Catholics, it is important to let truth lead, especially in an age of sophisticated propaganda and sophistical platitudes. No matter which party or candidate receives your vote, you should vote through your faith and reason.
Catholics tend to vote Republican, given the Catholic emphasis on traditional values and virtues. I recently saw an article on The Hill, however, that presented “a Catholic’s case for Kamala Harris.” This struck me as bold, given that candidate’s obvious animus toward Catholics as a potential extremist group and her militant stance on murder through abortion, which the author acknowledged as a stumbling block. But for many Catholics, the Harris ticket is attractive because it’s not Trump’s. In fact, EWTN in September conducted a poll that indicated that more Catholics are planning on voting for Harris than Trump in November.
The Catholic author of the Hill column made some points that were not wrongheaded—for instance, citing Harris’s economic promises to help struggling middle-class Americans. In the end, the author was challenging the Catholic pro-life knee-jerk voting trigger finger and encouraging a consideration of the whole picture and the common good—even if that means voting for discomfiting politicians, given the sharp division between Red and Blue these days.
Although I personally don’t believe that a convincing case can be made for a Catholic voting for Vice President Harris, I do believe that Catholics would do well to open their minds to the truth on whichever side of the aisle it may be. And it’s important to note, in the interest of truth, that the conservative Right gets some things wrong, and the liberal Left gets some things right. Though it is more obvious where the Right is on the right side, it may prove helpful to point out where the Left has a point and where the Right is off base.
To begin with a deep-seated GOP error, Republicans are too trusting of the benefits and fairness of free-market capitalism to sort society out. The weaknesses of humanity will always get in the way of this vision, as the market is a kind of aggregate of warring, well-meaning, and wayward desires. The market won’t be a source of altruistic goodness unless people start desiring the good altruistically. The Right, leaning in desire toward a free market without government regulation and insisting on the trustworthiness of that market, can miss or obscure these philosophical, socio-economic realities.
Over on the Left, the Democrats are right to be concerned about the damage our technologies are doing to the environment. It’s undeniable and un-Christian. Of course, there is an exaggerated attitude about global warming, climate change, carbon emissions, and greenhouse gases that treats the problem almost like a religion. But it is true that the world is being harmed by our mishandling of creation.
The Democrats seem to mistake man as a kind of contaminant in a world that should be an undisturbed jungle. But Catholics must look on the world as a garden to be tended and kept. The proper view is that man must use the earth for good and not misuse it for increasing his wealth and power. Even so, the Democrat ideas about electric vehicles and free internet run against their stated ideals for the planet.
The Democrats are also right about championing the downtrodden of society. Their emphasis on minorities like homosexuals and transgenders is grossly problematic and pushes a relativistic ideology that is not truthful, but it is good to be concerned for those who suffer in society. It’s a specifically Christian duty. The poor, migrants, victims of abuse and violence, and the dysphoric all should be cared for, and the Left has made that a focus—though its remedies seldom seem remedial, striving to achieve a theoretic communal good as opposed to an individual’s actual good. The Democrats are on to something here, but they’re far from perfect.
Both parties, finally, are wrong in how money is such a major political influence. Wherever the money goes is where the government goes, whether that’s to war, to unprincipled legislation, or to self-promoting policies. The Washington game is all about money, and both Republicans and Democrats play by its rules. The result is corruption. As long as the cash flows, neither party will listen closely to the will of the people. That is a huge problem that both are fully bought in on, which leads to a final point about both the Right and the Left.
In the end, as Catholics well know, we do not put our trust in princes. Both parties are in error to the extent that they both place individual freedom over a robust and true concept of the good. There is no commonly held vision of the good, no philosophic basis that guides the government, no higher religious or existential end that they are trying to reach together. There is too much drive for individual security, liberty, and opportunity, without being influenced and formed by an ultimate vision of human happiness. In this is compounded another error, which is the Right’s and the Left’s refusal to work together toward a shared goal. The only thing that matters is winning elections, because that’s where the power and the money are. Let the war begin.
The Republicans are stuck in their character, or caricature, of being an unhappy, dysfunctional social group with a tight hold on the ideals and structures of the past. The Democrats are stuck in their character, or caricature, of a self-importantly happy crowd with an aggressive agenda for the future, running a well-oiled machine. Even so, the landscape is shifting. The Republican Party, as personified by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, is picking up some of the more rational positions that Democrats traditionally touted (and some of the irrational ones as well, unfortunately, like abortion rights), blurring what once seemed like bold and clear lines.
A short, broad-brush article like this cannot purport to explicate such complexities with thoroughness, but hopefully an illustration has been made that colors the way Catholics see Red and Blue. The GOP is not pure as the driven snow, and the Democrats are not devils. Both actually have positions that Catholics can (and should) respect. That may seem like anathema or absurd in the current environment, but Catholics should have truth as their standard, and not simply party lines.