The most astounding phenomenon in the ever-widening division of the Left and the Right is that each side claims to be justified. Certainly, God is not neutral, but does the Most High favor one side in all matters or particular issues on both sides? In old movies, the bad guys were clearly gangsters operating against law-abiding citizens, but the situation now is so ambiguous that even bishops disagree.
A basic moral principle is that no one chooses evil if they know that it is evil because that would be contrary to the nature of the human will. Rather, the will chooses a lesser good maliciously because the intellect judged erroneously. Hence, this is the kink in the armor through which the Devil convinces people to abandon the greatest good for some counterfeit utopia.
Democrats are certain that President Donald Trump is so evil that he is on a par with Adolph Hitler. His deplorable supporters, who are not as sophisticated as they are, may be evil too or just plain stupid. The Left points to racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia as a few of the sins of the Right, although none of these so-called “sins” can be found in any traditional manual of moral theology.
The Right, for their part, never ceases to be scandalized by how low the Left will go to take over the world. The Left, they say, blatantly plays god by determining that whatever they want is a legal right, even if it means that a mother can kill the baby in her womb or that people could freely change their sex. Then, for indoctrinating innocent children in public schools with such abominations, the Left deserves to be thrown into the sea with millstones tied to their necks. (Lk.17:2)
Republicans, however, say that Democrats try to pay for their idealistic programs by taxing businesses exorbitantly, yet they never have enough money to build their utopia, while ruining private enterprise and making everyone poorer. Meanwhile, heroic investors of capital risk losing all their wealth to build the economy for everybody.
Refugees are different. Fleeing war or a natural disaster, they must be sheltered and cared for across their border, but the Left includes even economic refugees fleeing poverty. Most Americans descend from immigrants that came to this country with hope of prosperity, and some, like the Irish during the potato famine, were escaping starvation, but the Right reminds us that this is no longer a wilderness. With hard work, generations have built or paid for infrastructure, educational system, and welfare benefits that ought to be shared prudently with others, but not with loafers, smugglers, or traffickers. Immigration, therefore, must be regulated.
Now, the Left loves democracy so much that they keep extending it to the grassroots. Inclusivity demands that even the young should be allowed to vote. Accordingly, San Francisco is proposing to welcome sixteen-year-olds to the polls. Likewise, the Left wants to give felons the vote too. The Right, however, having greater respect for the wisdom of their elders, would rather see the vote restricted to those who are older and more trustworthy than criminals. Why not make the age for voting thirty?
