Catholic Politickin'

CWR: Why the issue of abortion is still the preeminent priority by Monica Migliorino Miller
It is the belief of this pro-life leader that those who consider abortion as merely one issue among others see abortion as just that—an issue. They don’t see 60 million dead people.

The judgment that life is a fundamental human good upon which others are founded is not identical to the claim that abortion is the most serious political problem, the first which must be addressed, nor is the latter simply a conclusion of a reasoning process from the first.

As for the "prudential" judgment about what is the worst problem? What is the fundamental problem or the fundamental injustice? I would argue that it is not abortion, which is a consequence of the problem, but the state. This judgment of particular circumstances is not the provenance of bishops or clerics but of the people who are members of a community or subject to the power of the state. The appropriate and morally correct response too may be outlined by Roman Catholic moral theology (but it hasn't really) but the judgment of whether circumstances warrant it, well, that too is left to the judgment of the people and not to clerics.

If the state is the source of all ills, we can then ask whether voting can remedy it, or whether we can only vote in order to address a limited set of issues.

The latest by James Kalb isn't of much help, unfortunately. Church and State today: What should Catholics do with politics?

An Introduction to Col. Boyd's OODA Loop

Chet Richards, The Lowdown on OODA

Related:
Developing the Warrior Mind: Boyd’s OODA loop and Cooper’s Color Code lay the foundation

Liberals missing the point?

I caught a part of an episode of PBS's Need to Know while waiting for the Jimmy Kimmel Lost special to come on. (A special Q&A with the actors who were present tonight should be available at Hulu.) Some researcher in neural development was talking about adolescent brain development, and how this should be studied more so that more "fair punishments" can be determined for adolescents. While it is the case that adolescents do not look at the long-term consequences of their actions, etc. as well as adults, this is due to the lack of formation. The first mistake is to think that this is a result of brain's structure (rather than being a cause of the brain's maturation as an organ). The second mistake is to look solely at the maturity of practical reasoning (and by extension, the agent's intention) as the standard for determining what is a just punishment. Adolescents may still be learning how to exercise practical reasoning, but the importance of the first precept of the moral life, which is proper to the virtue of obedience, has not been lost. Even if they are still learning how to determine means and ends and cannot do this well yet, they can still obey the law. They are properly punished for disobedience. It is the mistake of liberals who subscribe to an exaggerated notion of autonomy to think that the only law that is valid for the individual (and the basis by which their actions are judged) is determined by the individual himself. Because of this notion of autonomy, obedience as a virtue is denigrated or even criticized for being a handicap to moral development.