The Christian politician

If politics is the art of compromise, and if the Christian is principled, then it would seem that at last we have come up with something that contradicts what being a Christian is. In order to get done what needs to get done--in order to get elected in the first place--you have to lie a little, deceive a little, cheat a little.

Or do you?

The function, as I said, of civil society is to see to it that no one's rights are violated and that everyone free to do whatever he wants, consistent with no one's rights being violated. There is nothing unChristian or immoral in this.

Yes, but how do you go about getting elected, in the real world? Don't you have to tell people what they want to hear? You would have to do this unless you subscribe to the opposite fallacy to the "grace of office," (where supposedly the one in authority automatically has the wisdom to do the right thing), and say that the majority of the people in a democracy automatically know what the common good (the non-violation of anyone's rights) in practice is, and automatically want the concrete act that won't result in the violation of any rights. I think the fact that the majority are in favor of abortion at the moment is sufficient refutation of this.

But it is not necessary to beat people over the head with what they don't want to hear. The people do not have a right to know everything about a candidate; and while he must answer truthfully if asked something point-blank, it is permitted to be evasive when dealing with questions whose candid answers would lead to undesirable results.

It sounds as if my Jesuit training is now coming into its own. But let us be clear on this. The supposition is that something the people "want to hear" is something the Christian cannot legislate in favor of, because someone's right will be violated--like abortion, say. No Christian who knows that the fetus has rights can vote in favor of abortion. But if you happen to be in a district which is heavily "pro-choice," as they say, (a) the people in your district want something they have no right to have, and consequently (b) they "want to hear" from you that you will give it to them--something they have no right to hear. The same would apply to a person running for office in a neo-Nazi or White Supremacist district.

Representing the people in such districts cannot mean doing what they want done, because what they want done violates what they are in a society for, whether they realize it or not. Obviously, what has to be done in the long run is educate them; but this does not solve the immediate problem. Not running for office (and therefore leaving the field to those who will support what the people want done) encourages the violations of rights. But running as a crusader against the entrenched notions of the people can in practice be the same as not running at all.

Thus, if the people in their humanity are to be represented, then the person who knows that their will violates others' rights has a reason for not being candid. Otherwise, the people's unthought-out desires will be represented, and citizens will have their rights taken away from them.

This is the reality of what it means to run for office in a society which consists of people who are not necessarily gifted with supernatural wisdom--where you know more than they do. This is heresy to the American mentality. Who are you, you elitist, to say that you know better than the people as a whole? Well, at one time, "the people as a whole" thought that slavery was all right. Does that mean that those who realized it was wrong should have cringed at their "elitism"? The people as a whole at one time thought the earth was flat; the people as a whole thought in Galileo's time that the sun went round the earth.

Note, however, that what we are talking about here is not "knowing what is good for the people," but knowing right from wrong. The fallacy above is no fallacy when it comes to whether the government or the people (i.e. the individuals themselves) know "what is good for them." There is no objective "good" for anyone except what the person himself freely defines as his "good"; and therefore no one knows what is good for me except me. I have said this time and again.

Hence, the Christian in politics is aware of the fact that government's function is not to do what is "good for" the people, but to leave them alone, except when they want to do something that violates someone else's right.

Thus, even if it were possible to bring about greater prosperity by tinkering with the economy by fiscal and monetary policy (going into debt, raising interest rates, and so on a la John Maynard Keynes), I would have serious doubts as to whether the government should get involved in this, except to correct some situation where some citizens' rights would be violated were it not done. In the real world, this economic tinkering is probably effective in altering the country's economy--but in what direction is problematic, as we can see from the experience of the past forty years.

Maybe I can put what I want to say this way: The Christian politician, both in getting elected and in legislating when elected, has to be an expert in what the ethicians call the "Principle of the Double Effect": how to do something which involves something wrong without actually choosing the wrongness. Evils, in other words, must be permitted (never chosen) in order to avoid worse situations.

And, oddly enough, it is easier for the Christian to do this, perhaps, than the non-Christian, because the Christian is not committed to the proposition that "the good must be done." God is not interested in having evils eradicated and good replace them; he is simply interested in helping the world be what it is.

If, for instance, it is not practically possible to prevent the slaughter of our unborn children immediately, the Christian politician will not commit himself to senseless gestures "on the side of the angels," but will consider legislation that can improve the situation and will lead in the desired direction. And if he fails--well, so did his Master.

The point I am making is that it is quite possible to be pragmatic and be a Christian. Thus, there can be such a thing as a Christian politician. More than this I can't see at the moment from my ivory tower.