Religion & Law

McCain, Hagee, and Politics Generally

By Michael Scaperlanda

Michael P. has posted a serious question from a devout Catholic 3L who is troubled by McCain's failure to distance himself from the anti-Catholic Hagee.  Michael asks me among others to respond to the student.  Here is my response - I'll be glad to discuss this question privately with the student, but I do not (or only very rarely) discuss partisan politics or elections publicly. 

To my mind our culture has a disordered obsession with electoral politics, and I personally know several people who treat politics as a god of sorts.  The Catholic Legal Theory project transcends today's partisan divide, proposing a more authentically human anthropology as a grounding for our society, a grounding that requires rethinking of certain assumptions by those on the left as well as those on the right.  I prefer to work in this arena, taking the longer term view of the project in a way that frees me from the temporal/political labels of today's politics.  I can't, of course, prevent others from assigning the left/right, liberal/conservative labels to me, but I don't want to do it to myself.  As an immigration law professor, I often find myself in the company of very liberal folks who by and large don't know and don't talk to people on the right.  As a constitutional professor who cares deeply about the sanctity of life for all human persons including the unborn, I often find myself in the company of very conservative folks who by and large don't know and don't talk to people on the left.  Maybe I'm just pissing in the wind (sorry for the language Rob!), but I like to think that I can participate in building some long-term bridges by not being publicly partisan in my short-term politics.

I am not judging anyone else who engages publicly in partisan politics.  It needs to be done, I think those of us on MOJ have a lot to contribute to the discussion, and I understand that readers flock to MOJ when we are discussing partisan politics.  All I'm saying is that it isn't my cup of tea for what I judge to be good reasons.  This also doesn't mean that I don't have opinions about these matters.  I have already decided which party's candidate I will back for president, and it is doubtful that my position will change over the next 9 months. 

Full post as published by Mirror of Justice on March 03, 2008 (boomark / email).