Anti-abortion, Pro-Third Party

Duopoly ideology is so entrenched in the American political psyche that many people are literally incapable of conceiving politics outside of the frame established by the reigning two-party system. Earlier this year, the Secretary of State demonstrated that such incomprehension can be found at the highest levels of government. Scott Richard, author of a conservative Catholic blog, provides us with yet another example of the phenomenon. In the first of a series of posts on the intersection of faith and politics, he suggested that Catholics withhold their "votes from both major political parties until they began to conform their political platforms to the moral teaching of the Catholic Church," the most important of which, for Richard, is that on abortion. It appears that many of his readers objected to this on the grounds that not voting was a greater evil than voting for the lesser of two evils. In the third piece, Richard responds, urging readers to consider third party candidates for office:

In the first piece in this series, I talked about Fr. Rob Johansen's proposal for withholding our votes from the two major parties until they come around on Catholic moral and social teaching. Many people assumed that I meant not voting. That is one option, in a race in which there are only two candidates; but in races with third-party candidates, we can and should cast a vote if the third-party candidate is better than the other two. I think the reason that so many people assumed that I was counseling complete withdrawal from voting is because they are trapped in the two-party system. There's no reason why we have to be. As Catholics, our allegiance isn't to a political party, but to the truths of the Faith. And as Americans, our allegiance is to our country, not to a two-party duopoly that is not part of our Constitution.