Elections, Part 6: The Zippy Argument

Continued from Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

UPDATED: Part 6 comments link (page 4) (TypePad, this is getting old)

SDG here (not Jimmy).

In my last couple of installments, I’ve argued for the moral legitimacy of voting for the candidate you regard as the least problematic viable candidate. Given two viable candidates X and Y, to believe that the common good would be better served by a Y administration than an X administration more or less entails hoping that Y wins rather than X, which in turn more or less entails hoping that other voters like oneself who share the preference for Y over X (“Y-friendlies”) actually vote for Y in greater numbers than those on the other side who prefer X vote for X. And what we hope to see others like ourselves do, we ought to do ourselves.

I have also argued that an individual vote for candidate Y can always be seen as contributing something worthwhile, not only if one lives in a toss-up state, but even if one lives in a solidly Y-friendly or even X-friendly state. An election is not entirely a threshold event; the popular vote and the margin of victory does matter insofar as it may contribute to a sense of mandate or realignment around a candidate’s agenda. This is not to deny that there might also be good to be pursued voting for a third-party candidate; my case is that both voting quixotic and voting pragmatic (by, um, different voters of course) may be seen as morally licit ways of attempting to do good.

This point of view has been vigorously resisted by some, including Mark Shea and Zippy Catholic. Mark and Zippy are both — in the sense previously defined — “McCain-friendly,” not meaning that they like McCain at all, but that they prefer him to Obama. Mark has said that he would vote for McCain if he thought there were proportionate reason to do so, and Zippy has said that if one could push a button and make McCain president by fiat, as opposed to casting a negligible vote for him, it would be legitimate to do so.

However, Mark and Zippy argue that the actual negligible impact of any one vote does not constitute a proportionate reason to cast a vote for a candidate who supports direct killing of the innocent, as McCain supports embryonic stem-cell research.

Note, incidentally, that even if McCain were to have a Damascus-road experience on ESCR, Mark and Zippy might still be obliged to oppose him, on the grounds that McCain’s opposition to abortion allows for exceptions for rape and incest, which is still killing the innocent. And even if he changed his mind on that, they might still have to oppose him if he allowed for abortion only to save the life of the mother, but failed to differentiate between direct and indirect abortion, since Catholic moral theology generally considers direct abortion to be killing the innocent.

For those refuse to vote for any candidate who fails to condemn all killing of the innocent, there is no major-party candidate since Roe v. Wade, including Ronald Reagan, they could have supported. I’m not sure they could even vote for Chuck Baldwin (I don’t know whether Baldwin distinguishes direct abortion from indirect).

The issue is further complicated by the fact that Mark and Zippy are not merely voting quixotic, but campaigning quixotic — actively discouraging voters from choosing either major-party ticket, encouraging them to vote quixotic instead. Here their potential contribution to the outcome becomes much harder to calculate. Mark’s blog is widely read; his ideas reach tens of thousands of readers, and ripple out to innumerable others. There is no way to know how many votes next week could be affected by quixotic advocacy from Mark and others like him. In principle, it is not impossible that such advocacy could play a significant role in undercutting support for McCain and clearing the way for an Obama victory.

That said, if Mark and Zippy believe that voting for either of the major-party candidates is morally unjustified by any proportionate reason, it may be reasonable for them to seek to discourage their fellow Catholics from engaging in unjustified behavior, however inconvenient the consequences may be. The fundamental question is: Are their concerns warranted? Is their reasoning sound? Does voting for a candidate who supports any form of killing the innocent involve remote material cooperation in evil in a way or to a degree disproportionate to the good of trying to defeat an even worse candidate?

Lurking behind this question is a principle of moral theology called the law of double effect. Double effect governs the morality of acts that have, or can be reasonably foreseen to have, both good and bad effects or consequences. For example, amputating a cancerous limb leaves the amputee crippled (bad effect), but saves his life (good effect). Less dramatically, taking a job fifty minutes from home may cost you gas money, vehicular wear and tear, and emotional stress (bad effect), but it but allows you to support your household (good effect).

Acts which have mixed effects — which, when you get right down to it, includes pretty much everything we do — are considered morally licit if they meet certain criteria. These criteria can be variously formulated; here is one variation:

1. The act itself is permissible (at least neutral, or good). Intrinsically evil acts, such as the direct taking of innocent life or adultery, can never be justified.

2. The acting agent intends or desires the act for the sake of the good effect(s). He may foresee and accept the evil effects, but he does not desire them.

3. This entails that, for example, if there is a better way to achieve the good effects while minimizing or eliminating the evil effects, the agent must pursue that course rather than the more harmful one.

4. The evil effect must not be the cause of the good effect. (Thus, for example, you might save some lives at the cost of other lives, but you could not directly kill innocent people in order to pacify a madman and stop him from killing greater numbers of people.)

5. The evil effects must not outweigh the good effects; the good must be proportionate to the harm done.

An everyday example: You buy a product in a store, or from a store owned by a company, that also sells contraceptives or pornography. In a small way, your purchase contributes to keeping those products on the market from that distributor. This is a form of remote material cooperation in evil, though it is very remote, and the immediate and direct good of having the product that you need outweighs that tiny element of cooperation in evil. (You might have a go at buying from another distributor, but there is virtually no way to entirely avoid all such cooperation. Most products you buy probably advertise in venues owned by companies that support some sort of evil; some tiny part of your purchases will go to those advertising budgets, etc.)

To support, advocate or vote for a candidate whose agenda includes some form of intrinsic evil, including murdering the innocent in any form, is a form of remote material cooperation in evil. With respect to the practical impact of the vote itself on the election, the negligible impact of each individual vote obviously greatly mitigates the voter’s involvement in whatever evil the candidate might do, as well as the voter’s contribution to whatever good the candidate might do. The minimal impact of individual votes tells equally against the good and bad consequences of casting the vote; with respect to the outcome of the election, the evil effects of the individual vote do not seem disproportionate to the good effects, so there seems to be no difficulty here.

However, the consequences Mark and Zippy are concerned about go beyond the actual impact of the vote on the election to the moral and social effects on individuals and groups, not just of voting for, but also of advocating a candidate who supports any form of murdering the innocent. Here is Zippy’s summary of his argument from his blog:

1. Murdering the innocent is the singular act which is most radically opposed to the common good, so much so that when sanctioned by authority it undercuts the very foundation of legitimate authority (see Evangelium Vitae);

2. Voting is a civic ritual in which we express our submission to legitimate authority and co-responsibility for the common good (see the Catechism);

3. Because of the radical opposition between (1) and (2), there is always some harm done to the person and those around him in voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent;

4. This harm far, far outweighs any influence one’s vote has over the outcome in national elections, because in national elections one’s influence is very, very small;

5. As votes aggregate in influence over the outcome, the outcome-independent harm also aggregates in influence;

6. Therefore the outcome-independent harm in voting for a national candidate who supports murdering the innocent always far outweighs any concomitant influence over the outcome

Zippy’s argument turns on the crucial third premise: that the “radical opposition” between, on the one hand, the total illegitimacy of laws legitimizing the direct killing of the innocent, and, on the other, the moral nature of voting as an act of submission to legitimate authority and co-responsibility for the common good, is such that “there is always some harm done to the person and those around him in voting for a candidate who supports murdering the innocent.”

As I pointed out earlier, this logic would seem to compel us to conclude that harm is likewise done both to the agent as well as to others in the very different, but still relevant, scenario posed by Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, of a pro-life official casting a decisive vote for a law that restricts but does not outlaw abortions. (With apologies to those who read it in the previous combox, the next several paragraphs are adapted for the most part verbatim from my combox response.)

Here is the pope’s scenario:

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. … when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

First the dissimilarities: The pope’s scenario involves an elected official (not a voter) whose legislative vote for a particular law would be decisive (not one vote among millions in any given state) for a particular law (not a particular candidate).

Some of these dissimilarities diminish the overall applicability of the underlying principles to our current topic; others increase it. However, in one crucial respect they are the same: Both involve the same sort of “radical opposition” noted in the third point of Zippy’s argument regarding the evil of murdering the innocent and the duty of the individual, whether a private citizen or (much more) a public official, to promote the common good.

Whether the vote is likely to be decisive or not, although quite relevant to the end conclusion, goes to step (4) in Zippy’s argument, and is not relevant at the earlier stage. Following the structure of Zippy’s argument, it seems that the pope’s scenario would be subject to the following analysis:

1. Murdering the innocent is the singular act which is most radically opposed to the common good, so much so that when sanctioned by authority it undercuts the very foundation of legitimate authority (see Evangelium Vitae);

2. Public witness to our faith “is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms … Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature” (see Sacramentum Caritatis)

3. Because of the radical opposition between (1) and (2), there is always some harm done to the elected offical and those around him in voting for a law that partially legitimizes murdering the innocent.

Indeed, the opposition here is much more radical than in the original case, since (a) the vote is for a specific law on the brink of passage, not one of two candidates with countless positives and negatives to consider, agendas that might never get enacted, etc., and (b) the elected official’s responsibility obliges him much more strictly to “support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature.”

Now, this doesn’t mean that Zippy must conclude that the official’s support of the law is unjustified. Given the decisive influence of the official’s vote, the good to be achieved by this vote could be considered proportionate to the harm suggested by Zippy’s argument. By contrast, the argument would go, the negligible good to be achieved by a vote for McCain (one tiny click on an enormous counter that will barely register in the statewide vote, and even less in the popular vote) is not proportionate to this alleged harm, and thus does not constitute a proportionate reason to incur the harm.

Now, it is admittedly true that the official’s support of the imperfect law could, and almost certainly would, be the occasion of some harm to, say, at least some constituents and others, who would wrongly interpret it as support for, or failure to oppose, abortion itself. That’s why the pope stipulates that the official’s “absolute personal opposition to procured abortion” (and presumably to the legality of the same) be “well known,” to minimize such scandal. However, minimizing is not eliminating; some at least will be scandalized, since the official’s vote is a public act. (You see how complicated moral theology is? Almost everything involves some sort of remote material cooperation in evil.)

Similarly, Zippy’s concerns include the social consequences of pro-life advocacy for McCain, which he contends has the effect of burying the ESCR issue both in our public discourse and in our consciences. Zippy blasts National Right to Life for omitting ESCR on their abortion comparison piece of McCain and Obama (a charge bolstered by Lydia McGrew’s analysis), decries the Catholic media for “paeons [sic] to how pro-life McCain is,” and laments that “Church parking lots are filled with bumper stickers singing the praises of candidates who support murdering the innocent.”

Zippy’s critique of compromise in the pro-life movement does have some validity, and to that extent I am frankly appreciative of his efforts. By itself, though, this goes to particular cases, not to McCain advocacy as such. All candidates are elected by coalitions of coalitions who are often at cross purposes, who may not agree on anything but the preferability of their candidate. Those who support a particular candidate are not ipso facto implicated in the excesses or lapses of other supporters.

Zippy’s argument, however, seems to posit that voting for McCain somehow involves the voter in the kind of social consequences described above. But does it? Here we encounter one of the relevant dissimilarities between the pope’s scenario and our election scenario: For us, voting per se — as distinct from acts of public advocacy — is essentially a private and anonymous act.

Let’s begin with a minimum-impact scenario. Imagine a pro-life Catholic citizen whose absolute personal opposition to legalized abortion, ESCR and all the rest is well known to his friends and acquaintances. He never discusses the particulars of the election with anyone and never expresses a word of public support for or opposition to any candidate, but insists that opposition to the legalized direct killing of innocent human life must be the primary consideration. His pro-McCain friends have no reason to think that he isn’t voting for McCain, and his quixotic friends have no reason to think that he isn’t voting quixotic. On election day, he goes into the voting booth, pulls the lever for McCain, walks out, and never breathes a word to anyone.

Is anyone else harmed by this Catholic’s vote? Perhaps one might argue that some weaker brethren might be scandalized by his failure to vocally denounce (or advocate) voting for McCain (or voting quixotic). However, that would be a consequence, not of his vote, but of his silence; it would be the same no matter who he voted for.

I don’t think we can infer from the possibility of such “harm” a positive duty to engage in vocal public advocacy for the actual way you will vote in order to avoid giving scandal. Among other things, the potential harm occasioned by silence could be pitted against the potential harm occasioned by speech; there is no course of action that someone will not stumble at. To stick to principles and remain silent about your actual vote is at least a licit course of action. Therefore, our silent voter’s vote for McCain has not harmed anyone else.

But has it harmed the voter himself, as Zippy’s argument seems to suggest? If we say that it has, it would seem that we must likewise conclude that the official in the pope’s scenario, who rightly casts a decisive vote for legislation restricting but not ending abortion, also harms himself as well as others, even if there is a proportionate reason for the official to harm himself in this way (because his vote is decisive) whereas (Zippy argues) there is not in our case.

I submit, however, that neither moral theology, nor common sense, nor anything in Evangelium Vitae itself supports the notion that the official does himself justifiable harm by casting this vote, that this particular species of morally good act comes at a morally self-mutilating trade-off (on this more below). On the contrary, the official’s act is salutary and beneficial to his character. He knows perfectly well where he stands on abortion. He has no illusions about the acceptability of the present law or the terrible evil it still permits. He accepts this consequence without willing it, because he can’t prevent it and the good is worth doing.

In the same way, our silent voter knows very well what he is doing and why. He adamantly opposes ESCR, but he makes the practical prudential judgment that the best contribution that he and others like him can make to saving innocent lives in this election is by voting for the best chance at derailing Obama. No moral harm comes to him, or anyone else, as a result of his vote. There is thus no basis for arguing that there is no proportionate reason for his vote.

Now a modified scenario: Our silent voter is out to dinner with some pro-life friends who vocally support McCain, not in the qualified way that he does, but in a whole-hearted “He’s the pro-life guy” sort of way. When the subject of McCain’s pro-life credentials comes up, our voter objects to his friends’ unqualified McCain enthusiasm and reminds them of the evil of ESCR. He makes his case so effectively that some present, chastened, begin to wonder aloud whether they should actually be advocating McCain at all, and ask our voter whether he plans to vote at all, or to vote third party.

At this point, gratified by their change of heart, but not wanting to harm turnout for McCain, our voter breaks his silence and carefully explains why he is, in fact, voting for McCain based on the principle of double effect, remote cooperation in evil, the example of the pope’s scenario in Evangelium Vitae, and so forth.

Humbled and edified, the others begin anew their McCain advocacy in a different spirit, with a sharp awareness of McCain’s evil stance on ESCR but persuaded that votes for McCain are still votes to save babies. This leads to other conversations in which these friends confront other McCain advocates on the ESCR issue; and, when they debate Obama supporters or third-party supporters they do so in a fully pro-life spirit, without in any way minimizing the evil of ESCR.

Has our silent voter’s McCain advocacy done any harm in this scenario? On the contrary, it has done good. I can understand Zippy Catholic’s concerns about the burying of ESCR as an issue, but Catholic McCain advocacy need not be this or have this effect on individual pro-life souls. Neither individual voters nor those around them need be harmed by votes or advocacy for McCain.

This is not a hypothetical example. Zippy has decried the Catholic media and blogosphere. I don’t know what Catholic media he consumes, but my newspaper, the National Catholic Register, which is certainly “McCain-friendly” in the sense I have established, has repeatedly emphasized McCain’s pro-life problems, particularly on ESCR. For example, this election article mentions McCain’s ESCR support in the first sentence, as I did on this blog (other examples aren’t hard to find). Numerous comboxers here at JA.o have done the same.

What about NRLC? My brief today doesn’t entail carrying water for NRLC, but FWIW they haven’t entirely ignored McCain on ESCR. What about the comparison sheet Zippy mentions? It focuses on abortion, not all pro-life issues. Zippy protests that ESCR is merely a species of abortion. There are various possible responses to this, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll merely note that abortion is merely a species of murder, so shouldn’t the fact sheet deal with end-of-life issues too?

What about McCain bumper stickers in Church parking lots? Clearly Zippy, at least, is scandalized (in the colloquial sense, not the technical moral sense). But that’s because he chooses to interpret a campaign bumper sticker as “singing the praises” of the candidate named. They are not. As such, they are simply a form of propaganda encouraging others to vote for the candidate named. Unless Zippy has seen bumper stickers that say “McCain: 100% Pro-Life!”, I submit he has no call to see disproportionate cooperation in evil in McCain bumper stickers.

Unfortunately, it seems that Zippy’s conviction that McCain advocacy causes moral self-harm may dispose him to diagnose moral harm in others on inadequate grounds. In an earlier combox, Zippy accused me of “callousness with respect to McCain’s brand of murdering the innocent.” While generously stating his belief that I am a good man (a vote of confidence I’m happy to return), Zippy goes so far as to say that my writing is “a poster child” for this kind of damage.

When I protested that Zippy had “no call to be making such moral judgments against me,” he countered, “To the contrary, I am required to remonstrate moral error of such gravity – in your writing, which, not your person, is the object of my judgment – when I see it.”

At that point, I can only leave it to others to conclude for themselves what our respective writing may, or may not, be a poster child for, and how our respective views may be occasions of moral harm. (Note: Whatever conclusions you may reach in this connection, regarding either Zippy or me, PLEASE DO NOT share them in the combox. Thank you.)

In the end, Zippy’s argument goes wrong, apparently, because he posits a disproportionately “evil effect” in the moral self-harm caused by voting for a pro-ESCR candidate. From a moral theology perspective, this is backwards reasoning. Acts are not morally wrong because they cause moral self-harm; acts cause moral self-harm because they are morally wrong, either intrinsically or in view of disproportionately evil consequences. The disproportionately evil consequences that make the act evil have to be something other than the moral self-harm that will result if there are disproportionately evil consequences to be found. Zippy’s argument is an empty hall of mirrors; it is all cart, no horse.

Nor will pointing to accidental or unnecessary consequences, like NRLC’s comparative ESCR silence or other cases of insufficiently qualified McCain support, establish the wrongness of McCain voting or advocacy per se. In every war, including wars that meet the criteria for a just war, there are always unjust acts and campaigns. The Allied bombing of civilian targets in Germany was unjust and wrong. This does not mean that the Allies should not have been at war with the Axis, or that individual soldiers should have become conscientious objectors.

To whatever extent that pro-lifers engage, jointly or severally, in unqualified McCain advocacy, other pro-lifers ought to resist and oppose this, as I and many other pro-life voters have done. I see no grounds for concluding that this entails, or can only be legitimately pursued by or in connection with, voting third party. (Whether voting third party is the best way to pursue this I leave open as a judgment call to the individual voter.)

In sum, I don’t see that anything Zippy — or Mark — has said refutes the argument I have made in the last two posts for voting for the candidate you see as the least problematic viable candidate. Anyone who feels that the public good would be better served by voting third party is welcome to do so, but the claim that the public good is not served by McCain advocacy has not been substantiated.

Finally, one last point. At least one reader has commented that he would feel better about McCain advocacy if it were clear that more McCain advocates had thought through the issues and were aware of the problematic implications of voting for McCain. Again, that goes to individual cases, not to advocacy as such, but there is a further point to be made.

Some polemics on the quixotic side seem to be operating on an unstated assumption that, whereas McCain advocacy comes with various moral dangers and pitfalls, third-party advocacy is somehow the morally “safe” choice. As long as you choose a completely pro-life third-party candidate, one who does not advocate killing the innocent in any form, you don’t have to worry about cooperation with evil.

This is nonsense. All moral choices come with moral dangers and pitfalls, and cooperation with evil is always in the cards in nearly everything we do. In this election there are no moral choices that do not involve some form of remote material cooperation with the culture of death, with killing the innocent.

Those who advocate quixotic voting may do so partly to avoid complicity in the burying of ESCR as an issue and partly as an act of hope for change in future elections. However, such advocacy comes at the potential cost of contributing to erosion of McCain support, thereby contributing to the likelihood of an Obama victory — or an Obama realignment.

In addition, by attacking McCain advocacy as a valid pro-life option, the quixotic critics may actually help move others who might have supported McCain, but are not willing to go third party, to conclude that, since pro-life isn’t a reason to vote for McCain anyway, they might as well vote for Obama. By the same token, repudiating McCain advocacy as a valid pro-life option salves the consciences of those who were leaning toward voting for Obama anyway but were bothered by pro-life related concerns. 

I’m not saying that quixotic advocacy has the moral character of voting for Obama. Of course it doesn’t. However, it does have the effect of making an Obama win (or realignment) more likely than if, say, the quixotic advocates were simply silent about their views.

That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t advocate quixotic. It does mean that they should be aware of the potential consequences, and regard the good to be achieved as proportionate to the potential for harm. The potential for harm is substantial. So we could equally say that we could feel better about both McCain advocacy and quixotic advocacy if it were clear that more advocates on both sides had thought through the issues and were aware of the problematic implications of their chosen course of action.

In closing, I hope to post at least once more before the election, addressing various possible objections to the arguments I have proposed throughout this series.

Continued from Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5