That was not a position I ever imagined I would find myself in. Needless to say, I don’t expect to be making a trip to Richmond in December, nor do I have any other illusions regarding the significance of my vote for the results of this present election. Since 2016, however, I have been a member of the American Solidarity Party (ASP), and have voted for its presidential candidates and participated (virtually) in some of its events. Voting for President of the United States is a way of participating in a vast political process. However, as the practicalities of this process (and the “choices” it offers) become more superficial, unseemly, and remote from our own experiences and opinions and (most importantly) the convictions of our consciences, I think the time has come to be more “creative” in the way we participate.
The ASP is far from perfect, and at present it is very, very small. But it is a party in which the “platform” represents in detail a politics that aspires to put the dignity of every human person at the center of its concerns. It is a party that aspires to uphold the rights of persons and relationships as they are given in this wonderful mysterious reality that is our existence in this world: whether the person or persons are the poor on the margins of society who require our special concern, or desperate migrants and refugees who seek mercy from the world’s richest nation, or persons who exist as frozen embryos in a laboratory, or a mother and her unborn child (who both deserve protection and care that also continues after birth), or families which are the organic (“given”) foundation for maturing in the experience of interpersonal communion, or workers who collaborate in what is always a human enterprise, or persons who make up communities and build the institutions of civil society, or the sick and the elderly who need care and affirmation that their lives have meaning, or even criminals who need punishment and correction but also respect for their fundamental human dignity from a merciful society that doesn’t put them to death or subject them to cruelty. Then there are the issues involving war and peace, our responsibility for the environment entrusted to us, an economy on a human scale, and a wisdom regarding “progress” that serves the enrichment of whole human persons who have a transcendent destiny.
I realize that there are many concerns involving this election, and that most people who vote believe it is necessary to choose one of the two “major” candidates that have been imposed upon us by a corrupt and increasingly dysfunctional political system. These voters focus on concrete issues that, in their opinion, will be better served—or at least less imperiled—by electing or preventing one of these candidates from becoming President. I understand and respect people who make this judgment regarding their own vote.
But I do believe that some of us have to begin now the preparation, organization, and procedural requirements for a new kind of politics in this country. Perhaps it’s quixotic to help build the foundations of a “new party,” but we will never know—and we will never even have a chance—unless some of us try to make a beginning. The reasonable way to make this effort is to enter the political process.
If there is to be any hope for moving in the direction of a politics that respects the dignity of every human person, a politics of solidarity, a politics of mercy, then some of us must begin to move in distinctive ways. We must try new approaches, cast votes and commit ourselves to political processes that—for now—are admittedly “symbolic.” Symbols are pedagogical for ourselves and for others, and they can suddenly become very practical in times of rapid change and instability. In my opinion, the ASP is making an effort to begin traveling this path, and I believe that I am called (in my own necessarily limited and very small capacity) to walk with them. For me, it’s worth the “risk” of my “one vote.”
This is an important point: even if we can’t do much, we can do a little. We can take a step. We can detach ourselves a little from the pervasive delusion that we live in a basically “healthy country,” or that our endemic problems can be “fixed” by a few changes in a legal system that has become unmoored from a dependable foundation in human personal dignity and the “common good.” Those whose efforts attempt to ameliorate the dangers of the present system should not place all their hopes in work that is important, but tenuous and all-too-easily uprooted by the inevitable shifts of power politics.
All of this accounts for why I have decided, with much prayer and deliberation, to stand as one of the Virginia “electors” for the Presidential candidacy of Peter Sonski of the American Solidarity Party, and to vote for him as a write-in candidate in the general election of 2024. I have a conviction that a movement in this direction is necessary for our nation. For me this is a way to be faithful to that conviction, and to the fundamental human needs that inspire it.
