Meanwhile

Zippy has granted that I found what he calls "the weakest spot in my argument" -- viz, that, though the harm people do to themselves in voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent "may be commonplace and grave, it isn't necessary."

Invited by a commenter to "give it a rest," Zippy replies:

I will not give it a rest while Church parking lots are filled with bumper stickers singing the praises of candidates who support murdering the innocent. I will not give it a rest while the blogosphere and the Catholic media are filled with paeons to how pro-life McCain is, despite his status as an ESCR mass murderer. I will not give it a rest while pro-life organizations are busily and diligently removing ESCR from their comparisons of issues of import to pro-lifers. I will not give it a rest while Catholic lay organizations are frantically and desperately switching gears, from one election cycle to the next, from a polemic of 'non-negotiables' to a polemic of 'proportionate reason'.

He's got a point.

Labels: Contra Zippy, faithful citizenship, Pro Sufferage

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Tell 'em what you told 'em

To sum up last week's posts, then: I think Zippy overestimates the harm in and underestimates the benefit of voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent.

If I'm right, though, I think we can all agree it's a pretty lousy thing to be right about. Voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent isn't as bad as all that? Whoopee.

We cannot be satisfied with this. We cannot.

Labels: Contra Zippy, faithful citizenship, Pro Sufferage

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Tell 'em, pt. 2

Your individual vote for president -- the marked ballot itself, I mean, the thing you turn in that gets counted -- has no practical significance. The result of the election will be the same whether your ballot gets lost or not.

Thus, the claim that limiting evil is a proportionate reason to vote for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent isn't well-founded. The same amount of evil gets done regardless of how, or if, you vote.

From which it follows that people who claim limiting evil is a proportionate reason to vote for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent are incorrect.

The mistake they're making, I think, lies in their understanding of what the act of voting is.

To vote is not to choose an officeholder.

To vote is to answer the question, "Whom do you want to serve in this office?," with the understanding that the person whom most people say they want to serve gets to serve.

Thus, a proportionate reason to vote for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent is a proportionate reason to say, "I want this person to serve in this office." And, I submit (with, I submit, growing amount of support from American bishops), "This person serving in this office will limit the evil done," is a proportionate reason to say that.

Note too that the reason is, if you will, both proportionate and proportioned. It is proportionate to the greater evil, and it is proportioned to the act of voting. It doesn't ask too much of one's vote, as does "limiting evil" when one vote won't, in fact, limit evil. Nor does it ask too little of one's vote; voting is ultimately directed toward the common good, and an officeholder who does less evil is better for the common good.

So the people who say they're voting to limit evil really do have a proportionate reason, they're just a step removed from what it is.

On this analysis, Zippy's observations of the negligible "influence one's vote has over the outcome in national elections," while true, are irrelevant. (Of course, it's not his fault that the people whose arguments he was countering were making a mistake.) The immediate object of a vote is not to influence the outcome in national elections, so the fact that a vote doesn't influence the outcome doesn't tell you very much about the vote itself.

Labels: Contra Zippy, faithful citizenship, Pro Sufferage

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Tell 'em, pt. 1

The crux of Zippy's argument is his claim that the "harm done to the person and those around him in voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent... far, far outweighs any influence one's vote has over the outcome in national elections." If the good effect of influencing the outcome in national elections is disproportionately small compared to the bad effect of the harm done to the voter (to say nothing of the evil being cooperated with), then it is contrary to prudence to vote that way.

But is his claim true?

It seems to me that it is not, that he is wrong about both the harm done and the good sought.

On the harm done, there are two possible kinds of harm: harm that necessarily follows from voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent; and harm that unnecessarily follows.

Unnecessary harm includes things like telling yourself or others that a candidate who supports murdering the innocent really is pro-life, or that the kinds or numbers of murders he supports really don't matter. It's getting used to saying, "There is no cannibalism in my party, absolutely none," and forgetting that when you say "none" you mean there is a certain amount.

Unnecessary harm is bad stuff indeed, and when present can certainly throw all moral calculus out of whack. But it isn't necessarily present.

I understand Zippy's position to be that much of what I consider unnecessary harm actually does follow necessarily from voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent. But I cannot see how that position is not one of begging the question. It's a tautology that repeatedly voting for candidates who support murdering the innocent habituates the voter to voting for candidates who support murdering the innocent. But that habituation is bad if and only if the voter ought not vote for those candidates, which is precisely the question being debated. If in each individual case it's morally acceptable to vote that way, then it's a morally acceptable habit that is being developed; if not, not.

Zippy has also proposed scandal as a possible harm: maybe I am virtuous enough to vote for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent without doing moral harm to myself, but I run the risk of causing others to vote for that candidate who will do themselves moral harm.

But I certainly can't scandalize anyone by casting a secret ballot; the scandal could only occur through my observable actions. A strict answer to the scandal objection is to simply not talk about my voting intentions; a sufficient answer is to only talk with prudence (which, obviously, is true regardless of the topic).

There remains a certain residual necessary harm to the voter's psyche in making a lousy choice when faced with a worse choice. But not only is this sort of harm part of the Christian's daily cross, by construction -- since we assume the voter made what he judged to be the best available choice -- the harm would be even greater had the voter made a different choice.

In sum, then, while it's entirely possible (and arguable common) to incur spiritual harm by voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent, it is not necessary, and in fact voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent may inflict less harm on the voter than any alternative.

Labels: Contra Zippy, faithful citizenship, Pro Sufferage

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Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em

Zippy helpfully provides a condensed version of his months-in-the-making argument that

there is no proportionate reason to vote for a national candidate who supports murdering the innocent in circumstances like ours.

As it happens, his conclusion contradicts the teachings of a growing number of American bishops. If he's right, then the bishops are wrong.

Now, it wouldn't altogether disprove the Faith if the bishops were wrong (though there'd be no living with Zippy if they admitted it). Still, as Zippy often points out, you really don't want to vest much authority in the dictates of a pseudonymous blogger named for a comic strip clown.

JACK, for one, thinks Zippy's arguments are "worthy of real evaluation."

I agree that Zippy has raised some very interesting issues, for the most part unexplored by the hierarchy and theologians, but in the end I think that, in misanalyzing the act of voting, his argument is ultimately unsound.

(Updated per the discussion with JACK in the comments.)

Labels: Contra Zippy, faithful citizenship, Pro Sufferage

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