I am glad to read this breath of fresh air on a difficult political issue. I hesitate to vote for the democrats because they are often stridently pro-abortion. I simply do not believe that this issue, complex as it may be, is one of purely personal choice, which is how the pro-choice side is without exception, always framed. Perhaps some Lincolnian will bravely forge a path for us that is similar to Abraham's position on slavery (which to me is a morally accurate analogue to abortion). Unlike Lee, the blogger cited above, though, I do not at all hold to a constructionist account of moral worth (i.e., the more developed the embryo, the more of a person it is). Richard Sith, in an October 30th entry on the First Things blog, has a nice retort to such a position.

I abstained from voting in the recent elections here in Boone because I am sorely unfamiliar with the candidates in this district, and felt like pulling the lever for a "mystery guy or gal" would likely do more harm than good. Much as I liked the local Republican incumbent senator's perspectives on fiscal policy and marriage law, I feel that her endorsement of the current war in Iraq is lamentable. The war in the middle east seems to me unjust both in terms of jus ad bellum (it has little chance of sucess and does not seem to have adequately just cause) and jus in bello (it has been indiscriminate in its damage to civilians and has decidedly not treated prisoners of war as noncombatants.

I fear that elections for the rest of my life will be such moral quandries such as this one.

I take comfort in Luther's insistence, in his commentary on one of the royal psalms, that the most powerful forces shaping our political world are prayer and the holy angels. Let us all pray together during this advent: "Savior of the nations, come!"