[SOC] Election Day Ruminations, Public Broadcasting, Good People

It will be good to get this election over with, so I can stop listening to people bug me about why I should vote for Mitt Romney. I am not voting, yet I have to listen to the crap about why I just have to vote for one or the other liar. This election is a false choice.

Turning Catholic is changing my political philosophy, but it has done nothing to make either Obama or Romney more palatable to me. Some would argue that I should vote for Romney because he would repeal the HHS mandate, but I would like to see that fight take place. The Catholic Church needs some persecution  to purify it here in the USA. When I see Catholics supporting a guy like Obama and the policies that Mother Church opposes, we don't need an easy out with the election of a pandering Mormon. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I don't consider myself a libertarian anymore since I no longer embrace the individualism inherent in that philosophy. I'm more likely to vote for a guy like Rick Santorum though I find him very flawed as well especially on war issues. But Santorum is a change. He isn't Mitt Romney.

I don't think there is a political philosophy or system that will change things. A lot of my thinking revolves around the idea that a system or a solution is what is needed to change things, so you could put a trained monkey in there and things would turn out well. But this was the mistake they made when they drafted the Constitution. Change is not ideological. Change is personal.

I remember when Reagan came into office. Reagan was flawed. He didn't always do what he said that he would. But he was a decent man, and that decency is what made the difference. It wasn't Reagan's conservative philosophy that made the difference. It was Reagan's character that made the difference. He was a good man. Every president subsequent to him has been deficient in both morality and character.

Ron Paul comes closest to what Reagan was except for one big difference. Ron Paul is pessimistic. Ron Paul is more of a prophet than a President. But I feel a digression coming on.

I think all revolutions are fundamentally moral revolutions. What made Western Civilization great was Christianity especially the Roman Catholic Church. The Church is a flawed institution with flawed people, but the treasure it contains was enough. That message was what has made the difference. That influence no matter how incomplete was enough to make us what we are today.

If you want a better world, you need better people. No political philosophy or system can achieve this. America is great when it is good. But is America still good? I don't think it is. The fact that we now have two non-Christians vying for the same office should tell us something.

As a libertarian, I used to believe that all we needed to make things better was freedom. I don't see it that way anymore. The fact is that the libertarian world that Ron Paul wants to give us already existed at one time in the founding of this nation. Under the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, we had as minimal a government as you could ever want to see. Any of those Founding Fathers today including Hamilton would be considered minarchist libertarians today. Why did freedom fail? Because freedom without morality is not freedom.

This struck me as I considered the arguments over government funding for public broadcasting. Libertarians and many conservatives argue that PBS and NPR need to lose public funding. Besides, that hole is already filled by the likes of the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the Learning Channel. The reality is that those channels now spew garbage programming like Honey Boo Boo. I find the best and most educational programs from PBS and the BBC. Both of those are government funded. The free market alternatives were good only relative to those public outlets, but they have degraded as they appeal to the masses and seek wider audience share and advertising dollars. Like it or not, PBS and NPR elevate the culture.

The problem with all political philosophies is they take a slice from the whole and try to make it the whole. Libertarians try to make everything about freedom. Progressives try to make everything about equality. Conservatives try to make everything about order. Catholic teachings indicate that we need all three. We need freedom to do good. We need government to maintain order. We need social services to help people who will never be able to help themselves like the mentally handicapped.

People can't understand why I am so enthusiastic about the Catholic Church, but I find in those teachings answers to intellectual dilemmas I have been having for over ten years. Most of those answers are simply a balance between extreme viewpoints. For instance, the Catholic Church opposes both communism and capitalism. Instead, it champions distributism which is simply capitalism for the masses. It is the midpoint between the extremes. That same dynamic occurs again and again. I see most errors in people's thinking as taking an element of truth and stretching it beyond its boundaries. Catholicism demands a universal understanding of viewpoints and synthesizing those viewpoints into what is common, moderate, good, and true.

I find myself becoming more balanced in my thinking. I am becoming more charitable to opposing viewpoints finding that element of truth while correcting the error. For instance, I once opposed war except in defense of one's country, but I can see where war in defense of some helpless country or population could be justified such as World War II or Kosovo or going into a region like Darfur. But wars of conquest or revenge are not justified. This is informed by Christian Just War Theory. Essentially, war is pursued to prevent a worse evil. Of course, this demands prudence which demands capable moral leadership. This is why no system can ever replace the personal. We need good leaders.

I tend to think in the abstract and the universal which is why a repeated criticism of me is that I overgeneralize. Overgeneralization is a product of abstraction. People have to fit into a category in order for the world to make sense. But people are people. They are not machines following a program.

All of this was brought to me as I watched a co-worker of mine leave my workplace. It was universally acknowledged among my other co-workers that this individual should be the one in charge of things. It was the same situation at a previous job where I had a boss who stood head and shoulders above all others and was run off the premises for his excellence of performance and character. I always believed that most problems in an organization could be solved by better ideas. This isn't true. We don't need better ideas. We need better people. Both of those companies made it a practice to eliminate better people. This election shows that policy on a national level. When you eliminate the good, only the bad will remain, and you will reap the consequences.

The world needs good people. Good people are what make the world good. As St. Francis put it, "Sanctify yourself, and you will sanctify society." Be good. It is so simple, yet it is so true. Be the change you want to see in the world.

For myself, I harbor no illusions about being a good person. I'm not a good person. I am a scoundrel. I have always wanted to change the things around me, but I realize that I should have been changing myself. It is hard to change yourself, but there is really no other way.

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