COMMENTARY: Why I Disagree with Doug Kmiec's Endorsement of Senator Barack Obama

God has called us to exercise our human freedom for the good. Why I do not support Doug Kmiec's endorsement.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Today, I was greeted with the news that Doug Kmiec, a top notch pro-life Constitutional lawyer and a man whom I deeply admire for having stood for the rights of an entire class of persons, children in the womb, when so many have failed to hear their cry, has made a Presidential endorsement.

Professor Kmiec holds the distinguished Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University. He is a legal scholar of the highest order. He is also a dedicated and sincere Catholic Christian.

He has an accomplished record of public service. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is the former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, and was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.

So, who did Professor Kmiec endorse?

Senator Barack Obama. His decision is sending shock waves throughout the Pro-Life community. (Read Doug Kmiec Article on Catholic Online)

I wanted to get out ahead of this story before all the discussion, both charitable and uncharitable, began. I also wanted to use it as a framework for a broader discussion. So, I grabbed your attention with this title, didn't I?

I will probably get a lot more than just attention. I am sure I will receive angry E-Mails. Political discussion is all getting so, well, "un-civil" and we have not even made it through both major party conventions. I am tired of the stridency, the talking heads and the messiness of it all! I am also tired of the unelected talk radio hosts who have appointed themselves as the new oracles and I can barely listen to their wasted words.

Let me make myself and the title of this article a bit clearer, "God is not a Republican or a Democrat". Nor is He a member of the Constitution Party, the Libertarian party... or any of a growing number of political "alternatives" that reflect a growing dissatisfaction with both major political parties.

Nor can God be placed within the numerous categories bandied about these days in the kind of "Balkanized" landscape of political discourse. You know the labels like "liberal", "conservative", neo-conservative", "neo-liberal", "paleo-conservative", or any permutation of them.

Political parties are our creation, not God's.

In fact, it seems like the political labels we currently use in our public conversation go through a change almost every twenty years. Yesterdays "liberal" is today's "neo-conservative". Or, are they actually? Most of yesterdays' "liberals" would have opposed the initial decision to enter into Iraq with no justification.The "neo-conservatives rattled their verbal swords and led the charge. So, are yesterdays "liberals" more like the "paleo-conservatives"?

Well, you see the problem with all these labels.

God has called each one of us into this real world, a world which he fashioned, and given to us the capacity to exercise our human freedom for the good. We make our choices and in those choices we change ourselves, as well as the world around us, for better or for worse. One of our choices is how we choose to govern ourselves and whether we will do so for the common good.

We who live in this wonderful Nation call the United States of America will soon be faced with one of the most important choices in my lifetime, electing the next President of the United States. This is an election of particular importance for Christians because of the issues that most of us hold as vital to a truly just and humane society.

Over the years I have come to group those issues in categories around what I call "four pillars of social participation"; the dignity of every human life (from conception through to natural death), the primacy of true marriage and family (as the first vital cell of all civil society as well as the first church, first government, first school, first economy and first mediating institution); authentic and responsible human and religious freedom; and our obligations in solidarity with all the poor and the needy.

I have worked for decades to encourage Christians, indeed all people of faith and good will, to build a more just and human society around these four pillars. I have participated in, and helped to build, movements and associations oriented toward this vital work because I have long believed and proclaimed that my faith compels me to live a unity of life.

I reject the so-called "private/public" dichotomy of some Catholics and other Christians in public life as heresy. My faith is profoundly personal but it is radically and fundamentally public. It is not a coat that I put on when I enter a Church building but rather a center from which I live and a lens through which I view all of human and social existence. There simply are objective moral truths that must guide truly human behavior and authentically free and just social community life.

For example, the position I hold on the right to life and the dignity of every human life at every age and stage is NOT, in the first instance, a "religious" position; it is a human rights position and I know that it must become the polestar of all good public policy. Without the right to life and the freedom to be born, as well as the further right to live a full life and die a natural death, unimpeded by euthanasia, passive or active, there simply are no other rights or human freedoms.

If human freedom becomes reduced to a notion of doing whatever one "chooses", including the intentional killing of children in the womb, the elderly, the "dependent"... it has been ripped away from its true meaning and reduced to some fabricated "right" to exercise a raw power over others.

This counterfeit definition of freedom of "choice" as a right to do what is wrong will not promote true freedom. It will inevitably lead us all to a new and profane form of slavery.It has already effectively consigned an entire class of human persons, children in the first home of their mothers womb, to the status of property to be disposed of.

Like most folks, I have tried to use my prudential judgment in exercising a treasured right, the right to vote as an American citizen. I believe that there is a hierarchy of values which should be applied in the application of this kind of judgment. I have sought to order the issues in deciding for whom I would vote. Of course, I will do so once again this vital election year.

However, it is getting increasingly difficult to live through the political chicanery and reinvention, the glitz and image, and the increasingly hostile responses of even good people to the growing hostility of our political dialogue and climate.

For example, every morning I receive several missives (that is what they are) by E-Mail telling me why one party is "evil" and implying the other party is somehow "good". Frankly, I am growing sick of them all.

To any political "experts" reading this article, I am a "swing" voter. I write this article to give some insights into the issues that will determine my vote. Maybe the so called "experts" will pay some attention.

I officially left the party called Democratic years ago. The last Democrat that I enthusiastically supported was Governor Bob Casey. I could not be associated with a party that claimed to care for the poor and failed to hear the cry of the "poorest of the poor" children in the womb. Though I never "officially" switched my registration, I have been "lumped" with the other major party called "Republican."

I have seriously considered trying to launch a new party, one that is pro-life, pro-family, pro-freedom, pro-peace and pro-poor. I am still leaning heavily in that direction.Maybe some of the readers of this column have had similar thoughts.

I am whole life, pro-life. I absolutely oppose the taking of innocent human life in the first home of the entire human race, the womb. Science has confirmed what our conscience has long known; the child in the womb is out neighbor. It is always and everywhere intrinsically evil to take innocent human life. Senator Obama is wrong in his support of legalized abortion. It is also intrinsically evil to "manufacture" human embryonic life to then kill that life for spare parts.Senator McCain is wrong in his support for deadly research on human embryonic life.

I also oppose capital punishment, though on different moral grounds. I accept the refined teaching of the Catholic Catechism and the modern encyclical letters that insist it is no longer defensible in the West because it is no longer necessary to protect or preserve and promote the common good. Bloodless means are available to protect society and "punish" the criminal.

Also, as a former prosecutor, I know that there is simply no doubt that mistakes have been made in its application and we have executed the innocent. So, I believe that mercy should trump justice. Vengeance is never ours.

Marriage must be defended and protected from the current assault against the institution. Marriage is what it is and we all know it. There is a word used in Philosophical and theological discourse to speak about the nature of things. It is the word "ontology". It refers to the essence of something. There is an "ontology" to marriage.

A cabbage is not a rock. A dog is not a human person. Homosexual relationships and the sexual acts accompanying such relationships cannot ever constitute a marriage. They are not capable of being open to the fullness of the love that is at the foundation of the unitive nature of marriage and for which even our bodies are constituted, that is the total gift of self to the other in faithful, lifelong love. Nor can such sexual acts, or the relationships formed around them, ever be procreative, open to new life in children. Social groupings built on such relationships are also not families.

There is an intense effort underway to categorize those who still support this objective reality as uncaring, bigoted or antiquated. We are not. Marriage and the family founded upon it are the future of freedom. Redefining marriage and family will not help anyone, including those who are self defined homosexuals. It is also destructive of the social order. Marriage and the family built upon it is the solid foundation of civil society. It is the first vital cell of that society.

Of course all persons must be treated with human dignity and not be discriminated against and that includes homosexual persons. However, there are other ways to protect against discrimination than the current efforts to redefine the fundamental social institution of marriage, the defining cornerstone of our social order.

To destroy marriage through redefining the word in some verbal form of alchemy, especially under the guise of "tolerance", is dangerous and corrosive to the common good and horribly intolerant of those who feel as I do.

I opposed the pre-emptive war in Iraq. I rejected then- and still reject - any notion of a "pre-emptive" war as ever being acceptable under any analysis of the Just war teaching within the catholic tradition. Like all Americans, I believe that prudence and justice now require that we assist the people of Iraq in their hour of great need.

I do not see all that much difference between the two major parties on how we must act going forward in Iraq. Rather, there is a debate over whether we should ever have gone in. Perhaps this may speak to judgment, but I find the discussion to be wearying.

Now, a word to probably well intended Republicans; repeatedly telling people like me that one candidate opposed the war in Vietnam, as if that fact would make people like me feel more negatively disposed to him simply because of that, is not helping you with us.

I opposed that war also!

In fact, I marched in Washington against the Vietnam War. That's right! I am a former "hippie" of sorts. My desire back then to reject materialism and unjust war was sincere. I believe it helped me to continue to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit and come home to the faith of my early childhood as a young man.

I believe the Catholic Faith is the fullness of the Christian faith and, when truly lived, is to actually be the true "counter-culture", intended by its prophetic presence in the world to act as a leavening agent in the loaf of human culture.

Perhaps some of my 'conservative" or "neo-conservative" colleagues have either forgotten their opposition to that Vietnam war or they have morphed into some sort of "Alex B Keaton" kind of "conservative from birth" caricature. I have not. War is always horrible and must be strictly evaluated according to an authentic application of the principles of the "just war" analysis.

At the outset of this last war, under the leadership of our last great Pope, John Paul II, the Church opposed the incursion into Iraq. Our current Pope has taken the same position. The efforts to change the mind of the Servant of God John Paul II by neo-conservative Michael Novak were ineffective. he actually went to Rome on some kind of lobbying mission.

Anyone who says that the Church did not oppose the intiail foray into Iraq is simply wrong, or engaged in verbal gymnastics masquerading as prudential judgment.

I am deeply concerned that in the wealthiest Nation on earth we still have not solved the real health care crisis. I personally dread the idea of a "nationalized" solution because big Government has not proven itself to be very efficient nor is it very good at compassion and care. That is part of why I have so strongly supported the "faith based" and community initiative of the current administration as a part of fulfilling our national obligation to the poor.

Churches and religious institutions ARE good at compassion and care and need to be seen as partners in solidarity! The principle of subsidiarity which holds that government is best when it is closest to those being governed and the principle of solidarity that reminds us of our obligations to one another and that we are our "brothers (and sisters) keeper" have found a wonderful meeting place in this great new (really quite old) initiative. It is fresh, creative public policy.

We MUST now find the creative solutions to providing health care for all Americans. We can not selay any longer. The "market" will not solve this crisis without leadership. I have an ever increasing disdain for what is called in catholic Social teaching an "economism", an approach to economic issues which somehow posits "freedom" as best advanced through a kind of economic Darwinism.

Freedom is a good of the person.

Our market economy is a tremendous vehicle for freedom but it must always be placed at the service of the person, the family and the common good. We simply MUST hear the cry of the poor! We cannot ascribe to a notion of an "invisible hand" which may, if not guided, strangle the poor.

Expanding economic participation to all is a vital part of making sure that "free" is the operative description before the phrase market economy! That must be true in our international economic relationships as well.

You can see just from what I have written thus far, that I am neither Republican nor Democrat, neither "liberal" nor "conservative." I am, however, very politically engaged. I am also not ready to join any of the current "Third Party" efforts, though, as mentioned,I have "flirted" with the notion of starting one, based on the great principles of Catholic Social teaching. I feel that it will throw away my vote at this time.

I also cannot "opt" to "not vote" -as a growing number of people whom I respect are choosing to do.

I will vote. Here is one of the main reasons why.

The next occupant of the Whitehouse will choose at least one Supreme Court Justice. That choice will, at least in this Constitutional lawyers mind, determine whether the current "culture of death" hiding under the profane precedent of Roe v Wade will take another generation of our children before they are able to breathe our air and be welcomed into our family.

The next President will be called upon to provide the genuinely moral leadership so desperately needed to prevent the new cultural revolutionaries from eliminating marriage and family from its favored social status by equalizing homosexual and heterosexual relationships outside of marriage and using the power of the State to enforce this new order.

The next President will be called upon to extract our troops from Iraq, while also ensuring that the Iraqi people, who have suffered so greatly from the War and what led up to it, are given the help they need to rebuild from the devastation of the last five years.

The next President will have an opportunity to solve the health care crisis, expand economic opportunity, bring our troops home from Iraq with honor and dignity and continue to open up our market, and our National embrace to the poor in all of their manifestations.

This is an extraordinarily important election.

God is not a Republican, nor is God a Democrat....and, neither am I. However, I will continue to follow this campaign with great interest. I hope we all do. And, I will vote. There is too much at stake.

On many important public policy issues I agree with my friend Professor Doug Kmiec. I also admire him and believe that he is sincerely pro-life. However, I respectfully and strongly disagree with his decision to support Senator Barack Obama.

In the application of issues in accordance with the hierarchy of values, I choose to hear the cry of the ones whom Blessed Teresa of Calacutta called the "poorest of the poor", the children living in the wombs of their mothers. After all, they have no voice but ours.

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