PTR,

The answer to your question right now is "We don't know".  And the reason is that we have things backward.

We shouldn't be asking ourselves questions (such as "Whom should we vote for?").  We should be asking questions not of ourselves but of all candidates who seek our support and the questions we ask them need to be questions that will elicit a true picture of how they would deal with the most important issues in life that government might affect - for good or evil.

Right now, the primary question is how they would govern or administer the position to which they ask us to honor them, in such a way that human dignity would always be respected and protected within their span of influence.

The most aggregious violation of human dignity is the abortion of innocent, unborn human beings.  It is most aggregious both by virtue of its severity to those lives and by the massive number of such lives affected: more than 3,000 innocent human lives each and every day in the USA, in excess every day of the total lives taken by terrorists        9-11-2001

The Golden Rule - to which most American would subscribe - says "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you".  Surely no one would choose to have his own life taken away brutally (aborted).  So why are so many American citizens silent when their ballots could stop the carnage of their neighbors: 3,000 plus of them each and every day.

Where does each candidate for office - federal, state and local - stand on this issue.  We have a right to know; we need to know; and it is our responsibility to find out (as regards each of them, to our satisfaction) and take appropriate action (our vote) to right this wrong.  Where did such personal responsibility of each citizen arise and how binding is it?

God's Great Commandment includes a requirement on each and every one of us to "Love your neighbor as yourself".  That Commandment is not an option without consequence for its ignoring.  It is the most vital and basic Commandment - with eternal implications for good or ill.

Peace    Jakes

MREINER16

I'm pleased to read your comments.  Perhaps I'm presumptive (I hope not) in thinking you might appreciate some ideas I've been floating about.  They're not exactly yours but I suspect we might have room for dialog and action.  So, I'm going to reproduce here a post I made to Fr. Pavone's article of Feb 29 in CE's The Edge. 

That post follows:....

Valid, perceptive supporters of God’s gift of life recognize many fundamentals that others miss. An enumeration of some of these fundamentals follows.

1. In our political system of checks and balance, no single elected official imposes, nor can quell a national culture of death. That culture is sustained through deliberate collaboration of multiple agents, at multiple levels, both within and outside of government. Politics, however, is the lynchpin by which that culture was imposed initially through government, and is continually maintained thereby.

2. Accordingly, certain realities present themselves very clearly. The following seem such.

3. Restricting one’s life-supporting aspirations to just electing a president isn’t enlightened thinking.

4. Waiting till election day to "send a message" isn’t, either.

5. Candidates for all political offices at all levels need be made aware, early, of constituent resolve.

6. Such resolve need be consistent with moral convictions that guide individuals’ lives.

7. Whether well observed or not, the Ten Commandments fill that purpose in the lives of most.

8. God’s Great Commandment "Love God .. Love your neighbor as yourself" underlies the Ten.

9. Innocent, defenseless human beings in the womb are our neighbors.

10. Mothers of these unborn are our neighbors, too. Yet they occupy a uniquely precarious status.

11. As the agent legally free to order her baby killed, she’s vulnerable to 3rd-party pressures to do so!

12. Back to #8, above. At a minimum, "to Love" is to care about and help a neighbor in need.

13. (Well numbered?). God isn’t likely to forget those who won’t love neighbors with a simple vote!

14. Perenially, 50% of all eligible to vote fail to do so, allowing 3,000 human beings killed each day!

15. Others ignore the abortion-facilitating actions of candidates, voting for them for other reasons!

16. Assuming God’s records are pretty good, those related to His Great Commandment surely are.

17. Eternity’s a long time for anyone to pay for election day indifference (lack of caring) to neighbors.

18 . Pro-life groups need put these ideas as 1st priority, aided by clergys’ teaching obligations to Love.

By a subsequent post I said the following:

In my post of 2/29/8 I should have inserted the following as Item 8a:

8a    Persistently and actively collaborating with associates, "smoke out" publicly, all candidates' truly held positions on Love of neighbors in the womb and the mothers who bear them.

Peace,         Jakes

MREINER16,

I thank you.  Funny, something told me when I read your previous post that you are one to talk to.

I like your invitation to others to weigh in and I will hold in abeyance, therefore, some particular comments on your questions.  Let me just say that November isn't too far away for great progress to be made. 

Consider: that the overwhelming massiveness of the non-voting contingent (who surely aren't abortion ideologues, else they'd be out first to vote) presents a rich potential for broken inertia as a result of the dawning on them of TRUTH, elements of which reside in the 19 points I listed.  Conversion of only a marginal portion of the 50% is all that's needed.  Surely, that's not unachievable.

Peace,    Jakes

HotCoffee- Agree that if all 77 million voted pro-life the politicians would take notice. The fundamental questions still remain- why do the 77 million Catholic not follow the precepts of the Church and how do get at least a majority to agree?

Would readers agree that, today, the alligator in the swamp of the culture of death is abortion and that it needs immediate attention if all the other ills of the swamp are, eventually, to be cleaned out?

That order for immediate attention (abortion first) is a very practical one, for tomorow there will have been 3,000 additional  innocent human beings torn apart unto death than the total through today and 21,000 more by a week from today.

Further, that "tearing apart" became legally permissable, and continues, through government sanction via the political process.

Those innocent human beings who, daily, are "torn apart" are our neighbors whom we have been COMMANDED to love.  Any indifference by any of us toward that COMMANDED love of neighbor would be a grave disobedience of God's Great Commandment, to love. 

The essential "ace-in-the-hole" for rescue of these neighbors is each citizen's resolve to cast a vote for their protection on election day.  Candidly expressing such resolve in advance of casting such votes is both prudent and just. 

This isn't a partisan political matter.  Rather, it's the easiest yet the most powerful, single action wan American can take toward caring and helping, as we, each of us, have been COMMANDED to do: Love our neighbor as ourself.  Besides it's in our, personal eternal interest

Peace,           Jakes

As to Abortion being the root of all issues ...

I think abortion is the largest and most consciously viscious reality against life but ... yet, I think the true root is contraception.  Contraception is more viscious against life, not only because contraception allows for the eventual acceptance of abortion, but because contraception turns sex into complete recreation with no love or commitment required or life expected as a possible outcome.  Contraception slaps God accross the face so often it cannot be counted.  It dwarfs the 3000/day number of abortions by leaps and bounds, it is easily 50 million at a minimum.  Contraception rejects any inkling of life.  And contraception rejects life in the most personal, complete and physical expression of love that human beings can muster here on earth.  Abortion is importantly the last step in a "natural" progression once contraception is accepted but contraception allows for it.  Our fallen human nature's logic fails if we accept contraception. 

Does that mean that I think Abortion is not an important issue?  In no way.  IT is of utmost importance.  But, the acceptace of contraception makes abortion an issue that will always be on the table.  I know the reversal of the acceptance of contraception is a more distance goal.  But, I think we should be pushing scientists and companies and our government to look at the bad impact of contraception on health, children, families as well as its support (root cause) of abortion and the culture of death.

GK - God is good!

GK,

I thank you.  You are so right.  And I think I perceive that you would agree that The Great Commandment of LOVE underlies it all.

You might be interested in this take.  Fictitiously, I pose a generous grandfather and his (very young in this tale) unappreciative grandson who treats the myriad gifts he receives from Gramps so carelessly that, promptly and routinely, they become disposable wrecks or - if monitary - are wasted avariciously on junk.  "Because" - he tells all - "Gramps will give me plenty more"!  I think (and others have agreed) that even his young peers become disgusted with his unappreciativeness!

God has given the human race bounteously, a marvelous substance allowing the flourishing of humanity, which, if God were, completely at any time, to withdraw this gift, the whole human race - with unimaginably painful distress by the last lived - would disappear within one "generation".  Yet we frolickingly catch this precious substance in condoms and throw it into the garbage, following which the consequences GK voices occur by the millions!

What would that selfish boy's little friends - if without first having been brainwashed by our culture of death - think of us? 

Peace,          Jakes