bearing blog: Putting the careful thought up front.

One of the nice things about catching up with distant friends by going to stay with them for a couple of days is that you can spread your conversations out. While I was in Iowa with Kim-in-IA we were able to chat about pregnancy, homeschooling, politics, home renovation, books... lots of stuff. At a good leisurely pace, too.

So, politics and identity re: politics. One of the things that bugs her a little bit about the local Catholic homeschooling group is that she gets email messages through it that promote generally conservative politics. "I understand sending out political messages about life issues, or schooling stuff," she said, "but it bugs me that they would just sort of assume that just because I'm a Catholic and I'm in this homeschooling group, that I am a party-line Republican."

Yeah, that kind of stuff bugs me too. And so we talked a bit about that. I mentioned my post a while back about "conservative creep," and about not always being real happy about winding up voting Republican all the time just because I've made up my mind to vote pro-life.

The answer, of course, is to get more politically active in general --- go to the caucuses, support the best candidates in the primaries (the ones who are pro-life and who agree with me in other things besides that)... it could mean going to Democrat and third-party primaries and casting lonely votes for the struggling pro-life Democrats, God bless 'em, or it could mean getting more involved in the Republican party and trying to adjust the other planks in the platform. Doing that requires identifying with one or the other.

Sometimes I think that pro-life voters who will always vote pro-life might have more inherent power to change the Democratic party (making it more pro-life) than to change the Republican party; after all, we can promise our final vote to the Democrats if they will only nominate a pro-life candidate, whereas the Republicans know damn well that until the Dems get more diverse with respect to life issues, they can put pro-lifers in their pocket and not listen to any other concerns we might have.

But I digress. Anyway, Kim made a comment that struck me --- she said she appreciated hearing about my decision (not made without some struggle) to become what is often called a single-issue voter. So often the so-called single-issue voters are derided for not putting much thought into the decision. But in describing the process by which I became convinced to vote pro-life, I'd pointed out without noticing that there is usually a great deal of thought put into those decisions up front --- and that careful and reasoned thought shouldn't be discounted.

I really appreciated that insight, because to be honest I hadn't been giving myself much credit for that up-front deliberation. I'd sort of internalized that "single-issue-voters-don't-have-to-think-hard" message and have been kind of quietly bummed and embarrassed about being a primarily pro-life voter, as an identity, even if I've been fairly confident about each vote I've cast.

(Why are we all so wrapped up in what our vote says about what kind of person we are? Can't it just be a tool to get done what we think should be done, and leave the personality out of it?)

But Kim is right: Like most so-called "single-issue voters" I know, I did put a lot of thought into that, and tried to figure out whether it was important to vote pro-life in, e.g., the "Soil and Water Commissioner" race, or what to do in various hypothetical combinations of three or more candidates with various likelihoods of winning and various levels of political attractiveness, things like that. Looked for rules of thumb. Weighed hopeful idealism vs. pessimistic pragmatism. Had to consider how it all played out not just in final elections, but in primaries, and also how it plays out locally in a city and state where frequently Democrats (that is, "DFL-ers!") run opposed only by Greens and independents. Struggled with the imagined consequences of becoming One Of Those Kind Of Voters. Struggled with my conscience.

That struggle, that thought, isn't nothing. It doesn't become nothing just because it is over and it ended in a firm conclusion. I have settled on "the way I will vote" probably permanently. One must always leave room for the possibilities of new evils coming along, graver than anything seen in this generation; but that's a hypothetical, and I live in the real present. I did put a lot of thought into my vote, how to spend all my votes.

Anyway, I appreciated the kind word, which gives me just that much more confidence in my political decisions. And that makes me feel readier to speak openly about them, and to defend them to others.