Special Guest: What If? Thomas Aquinas, Political Pundit

BRITISH COLUMBIA (Catholic Online) - C.S. Morrissey is Assistant Professor of Medieval Latin Philosophy at Redeemer Pacific College. He offers the following article in the format of the Summa of the great St. Thomas Aquinas in order to contend with the issues of the current U.S. Presidential and Vice Presidential Campaign:

Excerpted from ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, SUMMA RESPUBLICA, First Part

Question 1: Whether voting for McCain-Palin is contrary to reason?

Article 1: Whether Sarah Palin and other Republicans stretched the truth at the GOP convention?

OBJECTION 1: It would seem both that Palin's reproaches to Obama and that the GOP praise of Palin stretched the truth, because as mayor and governor, Palin hired lobbyists and supported earmarks, according to AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn.

OBJECTION 2: Palin said Obama has authored no reform, but Obama in fact worked on significant legislation in the Senate.

OBJECTION 3: Palin said Obama will increase the tax burden on Americans, but Obama will only tax the rich, and will cut taxes for the middle class more than McCain would.

OBJECTION 4: McCain said Palin is governor of the largest state, responsible for 20% of the nation's energy supply; but Alaska is small when we consider it ranks 47th by population, and Palin's energy expertise extends only to taxing oil.

OBJECTION 5: McCain touts the centrality of Alaskan energy to national security concerns and he notes the governor is commander of the Alaskan National Guard, but Palin has in fact had no experience as a military commander or experience on national security issues.

OBJECTION 6: Huckabee lied, because Biden got a greater total number of votes in his political contests than Palin did in hers.

OBJECTION 7: Romney says that Washington needs conservatives, not liberals, to root out corruption and bring change; but Kuhnhenn notes that "until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate." Therefore Sarah Palin and other Republicans are the forces of corruption and have stretched the truth at the GOP convention.

ON THE CONTRARY, the Los Angeles Times reports that Democrats have been "conducting nonstop, massive behind-the-scenes efforts to smear Palin's reputation and plant negative stories in the media, with some success", but that Hillary Clinton is refusing to participate in these efforts; reporters tried to get Hillary to attack Palin, "But Clinton would not bite. Or swing. Not once. 'This election is about issues, and that's what's going to matter to people at the end of the day,' was all that Clinton would say."

I ANSWER THAT, the attacks on Sarah Palin have been promulgating blatant lies and unconscionable smears (e.g., that Sarah Palin is the grandmother, not mother, of Trig Palin), whereas the assertions Palin and other Republicans at the GOP convention have made are within the bounds of civilized political discourse.

The media's attempt to smear Palin, who possesses and witnesses to pro-life convictions, is occurring because, if the American public opts for McCain-Palin's proven ability to bring change, then that means the Obama radical left-wing, pro-abortion agenda is also threatened.

While reason cannot demonstrate with certitude about the designs of Providence with regard to a McCain-Palin presidency, since this is inaccessible to human reason, theology can be guided by magisterial teaching to show where candidates' policy positions contradict Catholic Social Teaching. Therefore Redeemer Pacific College theologian Robert Stackpole concludes that in his judgment "those who understand and accept the Church's Social Teachings, with its recognition of human life as an absolute value and priority, simply cannot support Obama's candidacy in the upcoming presidential election without seriously violating their conscience."

Human reason can also show that a vote for McCain-Palin would not be irrational as if such a vote were to contradict facts self-evident from sensory experience. Unreasonable people, becoming angry when hearing another side in a debate, insist on interpreting contingent political realities in only one way. But this is a manifestly unreasonable stance, as the Philosopher notes in his Nicomachean Ethics.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 1: The Alaskan activities spoken of were apparently inherited by Palin and initiated not by her but by corrupt local Republicans. It was on her own initiative that she brought, not an increase in corruption, but rather reform, not instantaneously, yet over the course of her career.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: Palin's criticism was that Obama has not been the author of such reform, i.e., the original source of such legislative action. Unlike Obama, Palin has been an original agent of such reform and change.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 3: Obama's "tax the rich" scheme will still end up harming the middle class more than McCain's plan would, which was Palin's point. Before Palin came on stage, Fred Thompson had refuted the erroneous economic premises of Obama's socialist plan: "They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the 'other' side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform."

REPLY TO OBJECTION 4: Alaska's large geography is the more important point, because its large geography houses vast energy resources that would allow America to be energy independent. The Obama camp disingenuously reduces Palin's executive experience on Alaskan energy to the ability to tax; but deciding whom to tax is rather the reductionist socialist approach to economic problems, and it is manifest that Palin is not a socialist politician.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 5: Obama's greatest experience lies in running his own presidential campaign. But the prudence required for a campaign is different from the prudence required for sound judgment regarding energy independence and national security. Palin's local Alaskan experience has been formative of such capacity for judgment, whereas Obama has absolutely no such experience.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 6: Huckabee is not lying if one considers the spirit of his remarks, i.e., that he most likely did not intend his use of hyperbole to be taken literally, but rather as a vivid affirmation of Palin as an electoral winner and Biden as a loser.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 7: Romney did not become the GOP nominee; McCain did. McCain made an unprecedented criticism of Republicans in his acceptance speech: "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger." And he then dedicated himself to real reform, of which Palin is an outward sign instituted by McCain to bring change.

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