Is there such a thing as an American Catholic voter? Do Catholics allow their faith to shape ALL that they do, including their politics? This question is ultimately multi-faceted. First, there arises the question of the nature of American politics in general. Second, there arises the question of the nature of American Catholicism in general.
As to the first question, I think that much of one’s political persuasion comes from one’s family background. One is conservative if one’s parents are conservative, and vis versa if one’s parent’s were liberal. Or, if one is rebellious than one would be the opposite. In any case, many people adopt their political perspective from a super-ego construct that stems heavily from up-bringing. Less of an influence comes from doing actual homework, research, and trying to answer the tough questions. There are exceptions to this. Those exceptions have nothing to do with how intelligent one is. A person can be quite intelligent and yet still be ruled by their super-ego, especially when it comes to something so opinion-based like one’s political point of view. The exceptions about which I speak are those who KNOW their super-ego construct…those who are self-aware. Then they are little more capable of distinguishing themselves from outside reality. They are little more driven to truly become informed of facts and to weigh opinions (those who are the swing-voters are not necessarily these people. I suspect that many of these merely come from a background where the parents have no solidified persuasion but I would not know the statistics on this). In conclusion to this first paragraph, I suppose that most of the work of self-formation towards true political opinion invovles managing one’s super-ego so that one’s political decisions are not merely emotion-driven and so that one’s discussion in politics are less shrill and loud (ala Hannity and Colmes). More tomorrow…
Tags: American, Catholic, politics, Public Square, super-ego, voting
