SOUND OFF: ADDENDUM
May 26

Filed by Pauly Fongemie

Apparently there are enough of you that do not fully comprehend the practical ramifications of the electoral college system by which we elect the President and Vice-President of the US.
The presidential race is not a direct vote for a candidate, that is, your vote in your state is not tallied with those from other states so that a cumulative number of votes are accrued to a specific candidate. Your vote stays within the state and is applicable only to the electors of the party for which candidate you voted for. If one candidate swamps the other, then those who voted for the losing candidate have lost their vote completely because their votes can not be added to the sum of all votes cast across the country. In other words, unless the race is close within a state, it is essentially the same as if you did not vote at all. Your vote can only have significance beyond your preference if the race is a close call, when, indeed, every vote will count. This reality is only in regard to the presidential election, and not statewide offices or congressional races, where the election is a popular or direct one. As I wrote, Maine is overwhelmingly Obama country; yet the typical Maine voter is conflicted or perhaps I should say afflicted with a great contrarian spirit that belies the claim by voters here that they want things to get done. An example par excellence:
Mainers went for Obama in 2008, but two years later, with the promise of health care looming and all that it portends, Mainers elected a Republican slate by and large statewide, while sending only Democrats to Washington, so that these could rubber-stamp the Obama mandate. The problem is that they wanted something different locally and voted accordingly. Yet the Obama mandates, which are unfunded as they affect the states, puts states like Maine in a financial bind that has the potential to do it in fiscally. This makes no sense at all.  It seems that the average [and the majority of voters] did not think matters through rationally, in accord with reality as it is, not how they may want it to be in their minds.

We do this all the time, even when we ostensibly vote Republicans into the Senate: always Democrats for the House and the Republicans in the Senate, so liberal on most critical issues they may as well be Democrats; at the same time, electing a divided government at the very least statewide and locally. Yet what Washington does has a direct bearing on the state of Maine more often than most people may realize. Things just get worse over time, even when they improve locally for a short time, just until the next statewide election when we undo the little good we did in the first place, and then we begin the rigmorale all over again, generation after generation. Some say it is smart to hedge your bets by splitting your vote; only if you don't wisely consider all the implications, given the worst of human nature on steroids, which is what government has come to mean.

I believe that this contrarian mindset stems from a lack of God's grace over all. Until quite recently we had a series of bishops who were so enamored with the "Spirit of Vatican II" that they overlooked or dismissed the Spirit of Vatican I and all the other dogmatic counsels and brought disarray to the Catholic people of Maine who see nothing wrong in claiming the mantle of Catholic while voting for the likes of Obama and renegade Catholics. Whether everyone else recognizes it or not, all grace to society comes through the Catholic Church as ordained by the very will of God. This is ontological and cannot, will not  ever be altered, it is immutable by Divine design. Thus, when the Church incurs the wrath of God through infidelity to Tradition, all of society suffers. The same loss of light that was and is the chastisement for wayward and or lax Catholics is also visited upon those who are not Catholic and may be otherwise innocent, much in the same way that God permits innocent children of alcoholic parents to suffer unduly, just as the punishment for Adam and Eve's sin, Original Sin, is inherited, with full penalty by all their descendents, to this very day, you and me and everyone else, too.

This is Addendum, Part 1.

Part 2 concerns marriage of same-sex couples. Some seem to think that my argument against adoption of children by same-sex couples was circular reasoning because one of my reasons was that they have little likelihood of marriage in the future. Those so making this case seemed to think that if they could marry, my reason would be negated. Not so. They forgot about the second part of the same statement, "possessing the attributes for marriage". Marriage is defined by God Who instituted it. It is "male and female". Period. This, too, is ontological, immutable. Assigning a legal fiction of "marriage" to those who assert a right to another arrangement is not only blasphemous for it flouts the very command of God, it insults human reason which is dependent on the light of Christ, Who is sovereign over all, no matter who refuses to accept this. This brings further wrath upon us and we lose what little right reason we may still possess as a society.

Actually, for faithful Catholics, what God commands is reason enough and requires no convincing. For those who reject the sovereignty of the only God Who is, reasoning will have little influence, even where reasoning is unassailable; anyone so far gone as to reject the natural law or to try to rewrite it in their own image, is already too debauched to be much persuaded in the first place, for they have eyes that no longer see but what they want to see and ears that no longer hear but the sound of their own nightmarish dreams. The heck with what is natural, it is the grotesquely abnormal and unnatural they seek above all things. For them it is right because they think it is right, not wrong because it actually is wrong, like spoiled children. This is the real circular reasoning.

Without the natural law as the underpinning for all human law, there is only the arbitrary will by those in power with nothing to stop them in their chosen trajectory of social and cultural suicide.  It is anything but humane and compassionate, for it is only the Truth that sets men free. It is this elementary, and if we do not give voice to this indispensable aspect of our inmost being, and uphold it with all our might, without compromise, we are deservedly doomed.



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