Consequences of #NeverTrump

The most common argument against us in the #NeverTrump movement is that if we do not vote for Trump, then we are voting for Hillary. This is a ridiculous argument. It also follows that if I do not vote for Hillary, then I am voting for Trump. So, which is it? My refusal to vote a vote for which candidate? 

And why is it that when this counter-argument is presented to me, it is done in a sarcastic way? "Have fun electing Hillary then!" "You're going to be so proud when Hillary destroys this country." Why do they insist on lacking grace? Do they layer their arguments with haughtiness and snark to compensate for the lack of thought that went into this? Perhaps. But maybe it is because the gracelessness of the person they are supporting has rubbed off on them. I don't know and I'm not a psychologist. 

But there are two more important philosophical issues that I want to draw attention to. First, it conflates ones choices with its consequences, which are clearly different. For example, if I choose to not deny Christ upon pain of death, I am not directly choosing to die, for that is a mere side effect of my choice, one that I don't particularly wish. This is classically known as the Doctrine of Double-Effect, a well known principle in ethics. This leads to my second point, which is, the person who invokes this argument is reducing one's choices to Consequentialism, a highly dubious system of ethics, and from a Christian point of view, completely false. Sure, we should consider the consequences of our actions, but we should not reduce our choices to their consequences. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milo

Image
So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe...
Read more

What Does The Bible Say About Birth Control?

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.
Read more

Is Canon 28 Binding?

In my previous post , I discussed Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (you'll find the full text of the canon there). But I should have put an asterisk on the conversation because Canon 28 isn't properly part of the council. You'll remember from an earlier post , that what makes a council ecumenical is ratification from the Roman Pontiff. Canons are part of councils. And naturally, canons also have to be ratified. However, Canon 28 was not ratified by Pope Leo (Roman Pontiff at the time). So Canon 28 isn't part of the council and thus isn't binding.  If you are Orthodox, this may sound too convenient. I've already suggested why Roman Ratification is the correct theory in the previous link. However, I want to add two things. First, even Saints in the East agree with the Roman position, and second, a case can be made for Canon 28 not being problematic for Catholicism.  First, there are the sayings of Pope St. Gelasius (about 490 AD), and Pope St. Gelasius is...
Read more