As the whirlwind of the political season threatens to sweep us up in a storm of polls, primaries, candidates, conventions, debates and demagoguery (yes, I was watching John Edwards on C-SPAN this weekend), it's important to occasionally step back and keep matters in perspective. In this month's issue of First Things, Robert P. George reminds us not be distracted from the moral truth (sub req):
Our task should be to understand the moral truth and speak it in season and out of season. We will be told by the pure pragmatists that the public is too far gone in moral relativism or even moral delinquency to be reached by moral argument. We will be advised to frame arguments in coded language so as not to scare off the soccer moms or whoever is playing their role in the next election cycle.
All of this must be resisted. We must, to be sure, practice the much-neglected and badly underrated virtue of prudence. But we must have faith that truth is luminously powerful, so that if we bear witness to the truth about, say, marriage and the sanctity of human life--lovingly, civilly, but also passionately and with determination--and if we honor the truth in advancing our positions, then even many of our fellow citizens who now find themselves on the other side of these issues will come around.
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