Words for Our Time from Henry David Thoreau

With the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions over the next several weeks, the long-running 2012 Election season is entering the home stretch.  This year we are faced with clear--some would say--stark choices in our candidates.  I have made little secret of my preferences.  I believe that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are the best choices for this election.  Are they perfect?  No, of course not--they are men, and men are by definition imperfect.  We do not seek a messiah in this election, aside from He who came 2000 years ago--and I seek Him every day.  We seek good and decent men who will try to serve the American people with justice, honesty, and humility.

But ultimately, what happens to our county does not depend on what happens this November 6.  At best all that will happen is there will be new occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who will not actively encourage the taking of innocent human life and attempt the wholesale enslavement of our populace to an omnipotent government.  Abortion will still be legal, as will pornography and contraception;  we will continue to celebrate sexual ethic that would make Caligula blush; we will still have broken homes, single parent families, and denigrate marriage.  For those to change, we need more than a mere shuffling of the political deck.  We need what Henry David Thoreau pointed to 150 years ago:

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality-- that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate-- who is invariably the Devil-- and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the Devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity-- who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority. The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls-- the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.--July 4, 1854, address Anti-Slavery Celebration, Framingham, Massachusetts.

More pointedly, I would say it depends on what kind of man drops to his knees with a Rosary in his hands every morning...