A Consistent Life Ethic: Comments on Joe Schriner

I promised to comment on the Joe Schriner answers, and was hoping to put a few more posts between the original and this, but life is getting very busy, and I’m having a harder time getting things posted than I’d hoped. So, here we go.

The first thing I want to say is that I love his strong belief in a “Consistent Life Ethic.” Relatively early in my interest in politics, I came across certain articles that strongly affected me. One of them was an article in “Christianity Today” talking about the damage done by the “death movement” in the US, and cited the three main parts of that movement as abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. I spent a lot of time rethinking that. Being at the time a good Republican, I was all for condemning abortion and euthanasia, but I found it difficult to condemn capital punishment. I still, actually, struggle with that one.

What it did, though, is get me thinking about what it means to be “pro-life.” It’s a nice catchy label used by the anti-abortion movement, but how many of us are really pro-life? I’ve talked about the difference between pro-life and anti-abortion stances in a few different posts, and won’t recap that here. I think it’s obvious.

That brings me back to Joe Schriner and his candidacy, and why he’s very appealing to me. His belief in a Consistent Life Ethic tells me that he’s where I’d like to be in terms of being pro-life in everything. The fact that he applies being pro-life to environmental and economic concerns shows me that he actually means what he says … which is different from most politicians.

So, here I’m going to throw in my own comments about what Mr. Schriner had to say in the previous post.

I asked:

1) A lot of people, be they punditry or voters on the street, talk about “throwing their votes away” if they vote for so-called longshot candidates. Within the two major parties this worked against Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Dennis Kucinich; a lot of people don’t even think about the third-party candidates, much less an independent.

What would you like to say to those voters?

And he answered:

If that continues, we will continue to have political winners tied to the “dominant paradigm.” And then the salient question becomes: Is the dominant paradigm working? Some 4,400 babies killed in the womb every day in America, a nine trillion (and counting) dollar National Debt, 48 million Americans without health insurance, gang war zones increasing in the inner cities, global warming increasing exponentially…

I think that his is a very good answer. Is the dominant paradigm working? If you answered “yes” to that question, then I have serious doubts about your judgment. I don’t know that anyone thinks that the two-party system is really serving us well. To be sure, letting the two parties define our candidates hasn’t solved any of the major problems being faced by the country … and that applies almost regardless of what you think that those major problems are.

I asked (actually, this was a question suggested by my older brother):

2) What are you trying to accomplish, given that it is very unlikely that you’ll have a major role in the final voting?

He (Mr. Schriner, not my brother) answered:

I’m actually trying with all I have to win. I have spent the past 15 years of my life traveling 200,000 miles through this country doing extensive research for each of my position papers. I told the Jamestown Sun newspaper that: “This is a serious attempt by an average citizen to run for president.” And it is… Concurrently, during a talk at Toledo University, I told the students that each time someone hears about something we’ve researched and try it in their own town — “…we get a policy enacted long before we ever get to D.C.” So we’re campaigning, we’re helping change the country now.

Again, a good answer. Some candidates do get involved in campaigns simply to drive certain issues or bring awareness to things. If he had wanted to say something of that kind, this was his opportunity to do so. I appreciate the fact that he is running, and I think that more people should take a good look at him and see if he is their kind of candidate.

I asked (really meant as a follow up to the previous question):

3) Have you considered, or will you consider, running for a different office?

He answered:

I’ve considered it. But our quite broad brush, multi-dimensional platform would be best for the whole country, now.

I think that the only real problem that this poses is a question of experience. We tend to like governors as Presidential candidates … sometimes Senators. Having said that, there are other ways to demonstrate the kind of experience that makes a good President — and being a community activist and problem-solver is one of those that I think speaks well of him.

I asked:

4) What do you think should be done to improve ballot and/or media access for less-known candidates?

He answered:

While there are some flaws, we’ve been treated relatively fairly by the media given we only have a modicum of support at this time. I mean, we’ve been in some 2,000 newspapers, 175 regional network news shows, hundreds of radio shows… As a former journalist, I know the media makes decisions about the amount of election coverage based on supporter bases, etc. And often independent and third party candidates don’t have much supporter base, so consequently they get less coverage.

He is vastly more gracious than I. I think that with so many 24-hour news networks, online resources, and such, the major media outlets could put a lot more time into reporting about the “minor” candidates, even if they don’t have a huge following. To a certain extent, they don’t have a huge following because no one’s heard of them. No one’s heard of them because they’re not getting coverage. There’s a pattern to this, if you look. The news outlets pre-screen Presidential candidates by deciding that only a few of them are worth discussing.

I asked:

5) What do you think is the biggest challenge that will be faced by the next President of the US?

He answered:

To move America, quickly, to much more of a Consistent Life Ethic. That is, we have to increase, exponentially, placing value on the sanctity of Life as it relates to: abortion, war, poverty, pollution, crime… and anything else that can end life prematurely.

Obviously, I think that this was the key answer in this whole exchange. For this alone, I am planning to give my support to Mr. Schriner and work for his campaign, to whatever extent I can. The sanctity of life is important, and no one else running seems to want to focus on that.

I asked:

6) What do you think qualifies you to deal with those?

He answered:

A Consistent Life Ethic is at the core of my personal/spiritual belief system. And as mentioned earlier, I have spent 15 years criss-crossing the country looking for people who have developed creative projects to impact each of the “Life” areas, for the good. I found them. And as president I would point Americans to them. (Just as I’m pointing Americans to them now as a presidential candidate.) In this, a Culture of Life would start to take place. Example: We researched the Marillac Clinic in Grand Junction, Colorado. It is staffed by volunteer doctors, volunteer nurses and other volunteers who do intake work, filing, janitorial… If you don’t have health care insurance in Grand Junction, Colorado, you can get major surgery at the Marillac Clinic for: $5. (We plant seeds about this all over the country.)

In other words, he’s actually doing something about problems, and trying to be involved in solving them as they exist. I appreciated this answer, too.

I asked:

7) Do you think that a person can run a viable campaign without fitting into one of the commonly-accepted choices?

He answered:

Yes.

Well, you know … I asked a closed-ended question. I should have known better.

Seriously, I think that he’s right — voters aren’t generally sold on someone who is dogmatically Right or Left. This might not go over well with the hard-core activists, but I think that most voters believe a combination of Right and Left orthodoxy, and I think that the Consistent Life Ethic would appeal to many people. Most people who vote for Republicans, for example, do think that we should be thinking about the future in terms of environmental concerns. That might not make the Rush Limbaugh crowd happy, but it’s reality.

I said, then asked:

You have called for amnesty for illegal immigrants working in the US.

8) How would you answer those who say that this represents a security risk to the US because terrorists could be sneaking across the border?

He answered:

We walked the dusty streets of a slum with 200,000 people living in abject poverty at the border town of Juarez, Mexico. Many cross over because their children are hungry. A priest who runs an orphanage for the homeless children there (and there are many) gave us the tour and, at one point, took us to a ridge 10 feet from the border fence. I asked him about immigration. He said that was easy. He pointed to El Paso to the north (which isn’t all that affluent, but looked like Oz in comparison to Juarez.) Then he pointed to Juarez. Then he pointed to the fence and asked. “What do you think Jesus would do with the fence?” That was an easy one. So… A ’security risk’ versus the ’spiritual risk’ of not doing something dramatic to help? Speaking of Jesus, didn’t He say the best thing we can do is lay down our lives (or ‘risk’ laying down our lives) for another?

I admit, this was a slow and easy pitch of a softball question, since it would be easy to answer, “There is no evidence that there has ever been one.”

His answer, though, was brilliant. To Christians, the spiritual risk should be deeply concerning. Mr. Schriner didn’t say anything about it, but I will — a lot of anti-(illegal or otherwise) immigrant sentiment is based on racism. I used to live near Lubbock, TX when my father was stationed at Reese Air Force Base (now closed). I heard people talk about “wetbacks” and “Spics,” among other terms. I think that it’s very important that we be aware of and avoid that trap.

I asked:

9) How would you answer those who say that this corrodes respect for the rule of law, since we reward people for coming illegally?

He answered:

Sometimes the ‘rule of law’ is wrong. Take for instance, slavery. Then later, Segregation Laws. I can’t imagine that God would have agreed with either of those. Just like I can’t imagine God would agree with the kind of American protectionism, slow bureaucracy getting into the U.S., etc.; while people in Mexico, Central America… go hungry, are in the midst of bloody political oppression, watch their children die because they have no medicine…

The previous question was meant to be a slow and easy pitch — this wasn’t so much. However, to continue with the image, he knocked it out of the park. A lot of people tell God to bless the country, and then want to horde what we have and make sure not to share it with anyone else. While we pretend that we have some kind of illegal immigration crisis in this country, there are other people facing real crises and coming here to try to escape them. I think that his answer is nothing less than brilliant.

I asked:

10) What role, if any, do you think that “school choice” should play in improving education?

He answered:

Our genral platform is about moving America back to a decentralized society where people, for the most part, again shop locally, go to school locally, etc. What should be ‘improving’ is education itself in each local school. That means more teachers and better salaries, more teachers’ aids across the board, more creative curriculum choices, more service learning projects, etc.

I don’t guess that I have a lot to add to that. It certainly seems reasonable to me.

I asked:

11) Specifically, what about homeschooling? Vouchers?

He answered:

We home school (or rather, motor home school) our chilldren, and obviously believe there should be a place for that in society. As far as vouchers, I interviewed a former high school principal in the state of Washington who said he was against vouchers because it takes some of the top students from city schools, which are already in trouble. Conversely, we’ve looked at the Urban Community School model in Cleveland, where top students from the suburbs come to school in Cleveland to sit side by side with the inner city kids. While the transport part of this is antithetical to the decentralism we believe in, we do ask some of these same suburban families to move back into the city to reverse white flight and improve not only the schools but the city in general. (Our family has done that by moving into a hardscrabble area of Cleveland to be with a group of Catholic Workers here trying to make a difference.)

Actually, there is a lot of resistance to vouchers from both public and private school administrators. Still, it’s a very good answer … and it goes further outside the box to talk about real ways that people can make such a difference now, talking about the group of Catholic workers.

I asked:

12) How do you answer critics who point out what Saddam Hussein was a thug and a tyrant who went so far as to kill his own citizens?

He answered:

Based on what I’ve read about Hussein, he was indeed oppressive. So were we. The sanctions against Iraq, which we helped enforce for almost a decade, accounted for hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths in that country because of malnutrition, lack of medicine, etc… Using the strategy Ghandi did in India and Martin Luther King did in the South, I would have tried to inject operatives, if you will, into the Iraqi Society — that is, if they wanted them — to teach the people about strategies for non-violent protest.

It’s an interesting approach to foreign policy, and it reflects his real belief in the principles he’s professing. More than once, I’ve wondered whether it would be better to introduce activists than deal with open conflict. Especially in this case, when the stated premise for an invasion was, as any honest observer most agree, seriously flawed.

I asked:

13) What do you say to those who argue that apologizing for the war will weaken our standing in the world by making us appear to be weak?

He answered:

It’s never ‘weak’ to apologize for being wrong. The Bush administration said the primary purpose we went into Iraq, was not because Hussein was being oppressive with his people; but rather we went there to find Weapons of Mass Destruction — for our security. Question: What country has some 10,000 Weapons of Mass Destruction aimed all over the world? Answer: U.S. I said to an ABC News reporter from Toledo: “What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana?” This is a tremendous duality that’s seldom talked about. What’s more, while we pump billions into these warheads for, again, our protection, some 30,000 children starve to death every day in the world. “But Lord, when did we see You hungry?”

The man has a point. I’m still not sold on the certainty that removing our troops from Iraq now is the best thing for that country, but certainly if we could undo the invasion, that would be best. I also agree that apologies aren’t a sign of weakness.

His greater point, though, that we are spending vast amounts of money to make sure that we can kill everyone, while people are dying every day. Pro-lifers? Christians? Where are we on this?

Do you really think that God is going to be pleased with us saying, “But we needed more nukes”?

When did we see Him hungry? That is the kind of question that we are going to have to ask ourselves if we’re really trying to apply Christian principles to politics.

In the parable of the servants with talents, each servant was expected to use what he was given and make gains for his master … how do you suppose that we’re doing in that regard? Bear in mind that this is the wealthiest nation in human history.

Mr. Schriner is, without a doubt, a true believer. He has aligned his political positions and his faith, and lives out what he believes. I admire that tremendously.