In my mail box this morning came a link to a new website: Catholics4Trump. At first I thought it was one of those online petitions that I dislike signing. But no. It is an initiative by Remnant columnist Chris Jackson to encourage Catholics to set aside personal distaste for Donald Trump and go vote for the man.
The site appears to have sprung up two days ago. It is provisional; its reason for existing will end on Election Day. As of now it contains two brief essays, both posted on July 17th: “No Place to Escape To,” and “A Time for Choosing.” It invites like-minded readers to contribute essays and articles that advance its aims.
My own thoughts can wait until later. But first, Chris Jackson:
This is the most critical presidential election in the history of the United States. Hillary Clinton, a corrupt, radical pro-abortion, anti-Christian career politician threatens to change the face of America forever. If elected, she will name three to four Supreme Court justices, cementing Roe v. Wade into the Constitution and losing the court for generations if not forever. Hillary Clinton opposes home schooling and believes it is the government’s right to educate children and not the parent’s. She will restrict religious speech and persecute Christians who refuse to support her radical social agenda. She will promote illegal immigration and allow millions of unvettted illegal immigrants into our country. The illegal population will vote Democrat far into the future so that no conservative can have a viable chance to be elected president. All Catholics have a moral obligation to vote for the only viable alternative to Hillary Clinton in this election: Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the first Republican candidate for president to publicly offer a list of Supreme Court justices he will pick from. All of the names have been vetted by undeniable pro-life organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. . . . Donald Trump has also promised to ensure protections for religious free speech and against punitive governmental action for citizens acting out of sincere religious conviction. . . . There is absolutely no moral justification for any Catholic to vote for Hillary Clinton or to assist Clinton in wining the presidency through not voting or voting for a non-viable third party candidate. The stakes are too high. The price of defeat this November means and anti-Christian executive and judicial branch with no opposition party in congress to offer any effective resistance into the foreseeable future. In other words, not voting for Trump in this election is choosing to commit suicide for our nation and our families.
This site is dedicated to exposing the lies that the left and establishment Republicans have spread about Trump to further their own self-interest that have turned many pro-life and conservative Catholics away from voting for him. The man they refuse to vote for is a phantom. A scarecrow made up of selective soundbites and selective outrage . . . .
Jackson’s initiative is addressed specifically to Catholics because so many of us are invested in the theater of ourselves as high moral theologians. Catholics twist themselves into hangman’s knots with deliberations on the lesser of two evils. Which is the lesser, Trump or Clinton? Catholics are enjoined from choosing any evil. If Trump is as horrid as Clinton, the principle of double effect does not apply. Should not commitment to right behavior keep us home and away from the shabby compromises of the voting booth? Do we not put ourselves in moral jeopardy voting for Trump?
Oh, please! There comes a time to grant a bit of credit to Mae West: “Between two evils, I always choose the one I haven’t tried before.”
The Catholic blogosphere is sodden with Prufrockery: Do I dare to eat a peach? Do I dare descend the stair? Dare disturb the universe of my own fine preferences? It is a masturbatory game destined to finish with the election of a vile, traitorous woman greedy for power and money. A woman with a squalid history of shady dealings, evidence gone missing, and lies with calamitous consequences.
Jackson is making the point that refusing to choose is, in fact, a choice. It is a self-admiring one that permits the chooser to gaze on his own clean hands instead of on the outcome of his decision-by-default. Abstention from this election is the vain choice of moral cowards.
While I do not share Jackson’s full-throated enthusiasm for Trump, I do support Trump’s candidacy. Our choices are regrettable but we earned them ourselves by sending Ted Cruz back to Texas. And whatever Trump’s flaws—you know them all—he is not an unindicted felon, not a treasonous influence peddler. However unwelcome his candidacy, he is not evil. And, as Jackson notes, the power to choose Supreme Court nominees cannot be left to an indecent acolyte of Saul Alinsky.
Friends tell me they do not trust Trump. Neither do I. But I do trust Hillary. I trust her to propel us farther down the rabbit hole we are already in—so far down there will be no getting out. We will bequeath the void to our children’s children and to generations after.
Hillary and her husband are a cancer on the body politic. Permitting it to metastasize is not a moral option.
