Newt Gingrich seems like a good conservative. His record on opposing abortion is very good although I noted a couple of red flags early in his political career. He is far and away better than Mitt Romney and almost infinitely better than Mr. Obama. Whether he is tough enough is still a question for me, no disrespect intended for Mr. Gingrich.

While most people fear the polarity and distance of Republicans and Democrats, I fear that they are still too close together. The center is so far left today that modern republicanism is almost at a place where democrats were long ago. This worries me. I saw a bumper sticker on an old hippies’ van which read: “It still isn’t weird enough for me.” Well my feeling is: “The Republican Party still isn’t republican enough for me.” Of course I will vote Republican on the abortion issue alone and I will do so without batting an eye. But I wish I could be sure that some candidates were opposed to abortion on demand based on principle and not simply to get the Christian vote.

I am still disappointed with the USCCB “voting guide.” It is confusing and it seems to confuse obfiscation with prudence. There seems to be something very naive about it too, naive in the bad sense of the word. It has been said that we have had the mercy of God taught to us so often that we take God for granted and think mercy is now our inalienable right. Well I am afraid that we have had Christian values with us for so long that we are blind to an entire subculture which has grown up to bilk and “work the system.” Jesus says we should give to those who ask. But what about the entire subculture that has been built up around that; Alcoholics and drug addicts who “use the admonition of Jesus” to beg in order to commit slow suicide through substance abuse? Jesus says we are to help those in need. But what about the entire subculture that has developed in order to take advantage of this Christian admonistion? As a former government worker I have listened to people tell me that they know how to fake illnesses, how to file false claims that will not be denied. One woman even told me that her mother taught her how to commit disability fraud without getting caught and that she is teaching all her children to do it? Yikes! One doesn’t find an awareness of this in the USCCB citizen’s guide. She told me to my face that she has taught her children to misbehave in class so that she can claim that they suffer from ADD and file for Disability. There seems to be no awareness of this very real dimension of life in America.

Jesus speaks of welcoming strangers and this has been turned into a call for discarding the entire American immigration system. But no one talks about those who take advantage of the system? No one seems to speak to the issue of drug traffickers who use Christian compassion for immigrants to move vast amounts of mind poisons into schoolyards and playgrounds?

What is the new saying? Give a man a fish . . . and he will invent a right to Tarter sauce and French fries. And then he will demand them of the government. If you create a financial benefit for having tension headaches, don’t be surprised how many people discover that they are plagued with this affliction. It is Christian to help the poor, the weak, the sick, the widow and orphan, the prisoner. But is it Christian to help those who fake poverty, who feign weakness and illness, who lie about being widows and orphans to defraud people and who use the compassion of Christians to work con artist schemes while still behind bars???? Do we help an alcoholic by giving him money to feed his addiction? There are con artists who know that Christians feel guilt when faced with a beggar. And so these con artists don the costumes of beggars. Homeless shelters in my city tell us not to give to beggars but to the homeless shelters because they will provide food and shelter but not drugs and alcohol. There is not just a problem of rich and poor. That’s an oversimplification of a much more complex situation. Shouldn’t the USCCB guide reflect the true situation in this country??? Just asking!