Washington D.C., Jun 17, 2020 / 03:19 am (CNA).- Republicans and Democrats aren’t the only political parties finding their 2020 campaigning efforts hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brian Carroll, an evangelical Christian, is the 2020 presidential nominee for the American Solidarity Party, a small-but-growing political party whose platform is based largely on Catholic social teaching.
Carroll told CNA June 15 that he hopes to be recognized as a write-in candidate for president in several states come November.
In most states, smaller parties depend on volunteers to circulate petitions in order to get on the general election ballot.
With many states still imposing restrictions related to the pandemic, volunteers have been hard to come by, Carroll said.
“Some states have recognized the problem and reduced or eliminated their requirements. For example, Vermont. We expect to be on the ballot in Vermont simply because Vermont changed the rules,” he said.
Carroll’s in-person campaigning has been on hold for several months. He said before the pandemic hit, he had planned a lot of travel, making campaign stops throughout the country. California, New York, Ohio and Texas already have fairly active ASP chapters.
Despite being stuck at home in California, he’s been active on his campaign Facebook page, offering his thoughts on recent world events and dialoguing with people in the comment sections.
‘Subsidiarity is well designed for a problem like this’
For Carroll, a retired history teacher, the pandemic and the recent protests for racial justice following the death of George Floyd are best viewed through the lens of ASP’s pro-life ethic.
The party began in 2011 as the Christian Democracy Party USA, and Mike Maturen, a Catholic, ran for president on the party ticket in the 2016 election.
Though the American Solidarity Party of today is not explicitly religious, its platform rests on several principles which the Church has developed as part of Catholic social teaching.
Subsidiarity— the Catholic idea that local authorities are best suited to tackle local issues— is a tenet of the ASP’s platform.
Carroll said he supports more local solutions rather than one-size-fits-all pandemic restrictions, because what is needed in places like Florida, where many seniors live, will be different than in a college town. Similarly, a greater emphasis on subsidiarity would allow urban and rural areas to impose whatever restrictions are appropriate for them.
“Giving the local people the ability to make some of the decisions, that’s better than having one central decision. They could make the wrong decision, and then you’ve lost the chance to see what might work. So I think subsidiarity is a strength there,” Carroll said.
“By giving local authorities more power to make the decisions, you’re more likely to craft a policy that meets that particular local area. So, in that sense, subsidiarity is well designed for a problem like this.”
As the virus spread earlier this year, politicians, including President Trump, were in uncharted territory in many ways, Carroll said.
“Once it got started, you can’t fault [Trump] in a situation where even the doctors didn’t know how this was going to behave. It was new, and it was the first time they’d seen it. And so there’s going to be some errors expected. You have to give them a little bit of grace and mercy on that part of it.”
That being said, Carroll criticized what he sees as “inconsistencies” in how COVID-19 restrictions have been applied in some places, and emphasized that government leaders “need to try and minimize the inconsistencies and then, by all means, live by their own rules.”
Carroll also commented on the economic impact of the pandemic. Distributism, the favored economic theory for the party platform, is a model championed by notable Catholics such as G.K. Chesterton and Hillair Belloc. The model calls for a broader system of ownership to create a more “local, responsible, and sustainable” economy.
The ASP favors a rewrite of regulations and tax incentives to favor small businesses and family farms, rather than major corporations.
Carroll said the pandemic has exacerbated the divide between large corporations, such as Amazon, which have profited greatly since the start of the crisis, and small businesses which have struggled to stay afloat or have already had to close.
“If we had a Congress that was more sympathetic to distributism, the [relief] bills that they put together would have favored the little guy,” he said.
The ASP’s party platform is strongly anti-abortion and supports care for pregnant mothers, as well as a system of universal healthcare. It opposes capital punishment, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem cell research.
“We’re pro-life, but pro-life, obviously, is more than just abortion. It’s, ‘Are we taking care of our elderly who are threatened by a virus?’ That’s a pro-life question,” he said.
Advocating for greater racial equality also is a pro-life issue for the party, Carroll said. Victims of COVID-19 have been overwhelmingly poor, and disproportionately of minority races, such as African Americans and Native Americans.
Many minorities in the United States live in close quarters, do not have the freedom to work from home, rely on public transportation, and are more likely to have preexisting conditions, he said.
“All of those things make them more vulnerable, and that’s a life issue,” he said.
“The American Solidarity Party looks at so many different things as being intertwined, and they all feed back into the question of life and making our communities more friendly to quality of life, encouraging families. All of those kinds of things are where our party is.”
Carroll said he suspects that the pandemic will lead people to the understanding that tying healthcare to employment is a “basic flaw.”
“A lot of people had put faith in their healthcare through their employer, and suddenly realized that they had misplaced their faith, because it was very easy to lose their jobs,” he said.
“And so from that point of view, I think this is going to make the country much more open to the kind of healthcare that we’re looking for, where everybody gets covered.”
In addition, the principle of subsidiarity also applies to policing, he said. Police ought to come from the communities they serve, and not be seen as outside threats.
“We need to demilitarize the police and do everything we can to lower the tensions between police and the communities that they serve in,” Carroll said.
‘A specifically pro-life vote’
Even before the pandemic, turnout at ASP meetings across the country was low, but growing.
Though Carroll and his running mate, Amar Patel, are not sanguine about their chances of actually winning the presidency, their goals remain the same as when they first set out: to build up their party, and raise awareness that there is an alternative for people of faith who do not want to vote Republican or Democrat.
Carroll said he hopes the party will be able to field candidates for local offices across the country, and possibly even congressional candidates, in 2022.
Even if they don’t win offices, Carroll said, their party can affect policy by influencing the national conversation or drawing attention to specific issues.
Carroll pointed to Ross Perot, who ran for president as an independent in the 1990s, while pushing for a balanced federal budget. Though Perot did not come close to winning, the major parties discussed a balanced budget for years after that, Carroll contended.
In Carroll’s mind, if enough pro-life Democrats switch to the ASP, then the Democratic Party may consider softening its position on abortion.
Also, he said, if enough Republicans who “don’t like to see kids in cages at the border,” or who support a more universalized healthcare system, switch to ASP, the Republican Party might also begin to rethink their positions.
“My personal goal is for everyone, whether they love us, they hate us, or are completely indifferent and think we’re a joke, at least will have heard of us by November 3, and that the people who want to vote their conscience have at least that opportunity,” Patel, a Catholic who serves as ASP’s Chairman, told CNA in March.
He said he suspects that many Christians and Catholics end up voting for a candidate who they believe will defend one specific aspect of Christian morality, rather than looking for “ideal candidates who will actually defend the Christian message in total.”
“They can actually put in ‘Brian Carroll’ if they want a write-in vote that is significant, is meaningful, and counts specifically FOR something, as opposed to against something, which I think a lot of people are ending up doing.”
Patel said he hears a lot about “wasted votes” when it comes to third parties. But he has a different view.
In states where a Republican or Democratic victory is all but assured, such as California, even if millions of voters switched to a third party, it would be unlikely to change the outcome of the race, he said. However, the “entire face of American politics would have changed,” because people would be talking about the third-party candidate who garnered millions of votes.
“If you’re strongly pro-life and you vote for Trump in a state he’s going to lose, THAT’S a throwaway vote, because not everyone who votes for Trump is pro-life,” Patel argued.
“But if you change your pro-life vote to Brian Carroll, that will be a specifically pro-life vote that will be counted as such,” he added.
[…]
ACLU would freak out if lawyers had to divulge client privilege.
The plot thickens…as another and former Washington State bishop predicted (from Yakima and then Portland, Oregon), Francis George (1937-2015), later as the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago–his successors would be imprisoned, and their successors would be martyred.
Mr. Beaulieu;
Good point.
As one of many commenting Washington State citizens, yours truly sent this letter to our legislators:
“I respectfully and vigorously oppose SB 5280 because it removes the reporting exemption for Catholic priests for information heard (almost certainly anonymously!) within the Sacrament of Penance. Three points:
FIRST, the bill is ineffective since the sacrament is usually and optionally administered secretly behind an opaque screen (!) and the priest cannot even know who the penitent is;
SECOND, the effect of the bill will be that penitents will simply avoid the sacrament altogether if they suspect a state informant system is in place.
THIRD, under canon law the priest is subject to automatic excommunication (check it out) for violating not only the penitent but, equally seriously, this part of a sacramental life that goes back 2,000 years (to One who is greater than any legislative body).
An alternative would be for all state legislators to address the very broad moral meltdown inflicted on students–and which contributes to a wide spectrum of consequences within society at large, including student suicide and classroom shootings–by a supposedly morally-neutral educational system, but which in fact is a moral vacuum which invites and fosters the historic societal meltdown now terrifying all of us. Legislative posturing on prime-time news in front of spastic legislation is part of the problem, not the solution…
So, I do support legislative concern against sexual abuse–but find this bill totally ineffective or worse on three persuasive counts (above), and even abusively overreaching with regard to Church-State relations. In centuries past, priests have suffered imprisonment and even death rather than violate a penitent or the sacramental life of the Church (I first learned about THIS in 1955 under a Protestant elementary school teacher–in a public school! She would be fired today without a hearing, and would the Washington State Legislature give a damn?).”
The same grotesque leftist law makers are advancing abuse of a nature no less abominable by forwarding a wolf in the disguise of “gender affirming care” which devours the whole vulnerable child. The mirrors of these law makers should work to condemn them in this evil; but, being malformed in conscience they advance an agenda which is no less than the very Handmaid of Antichrist. I fret about the fate of souls in our Novus Ordo parishes whose car bumpers are adorned with political stickers meant to advance this evil Handmaid. I fear it won’t go well for them. I don’t know how, but, they have been misled, deceived, never educated or worse, encouraged, even while being “participants” of holy mass.
1) Pass the law
2) A Priest defies it
3) The cops come and get him
4) They lead him out in handcuffs
MAKE SURE THERE ARE MANY MANY CAMERAS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
“A spokesman for the Washington State Catholic Conference told CNA that the organization is working with lawmakers to craft a bill that protects children and the seal of confession.”
It is, sadly, typical of these people that they use children in this way. I’m glad that Bishop Daly said what he said, but IMO he should have made his statement stronger – MUCH stronger.
I think a far more likely scenario is this: they pass the law, then wonder how to enforce it, since nearly all confessions are anonymous and the priest likely has no idea who the penitent was, if he even remembers the confession at all–and there is no practical way the police would even learn of such a confession in the first place. Realizing that the measure is unenforceable without prior state intervention, they obtain a court order to bug the confessionals. But after a year or two of listening to recorded confessions, they have failed to catch a single child abuser in the act of confessing. Instead, they are forced to listen to hundreds of people confessing sins of anger, impatience, non-criminal sexual sins (such as consuming pornography) and the like. It’s very frustrating. Obviously, they must change tactics. The police now send dozens of undercover officers into confessionals, who then record themselves confessing the most vial sins of child abuse–all of it staged and fake, unbeknownst to the priests, who of course grant absolution and then do not demand the penitent’s identity so that he can be reported to the police. After spending a year or so staging such confessions to every priest in the diocese from the bishop on down, without a single priest ever reporting a single penitent, the audio recordings go to a grand jury, which then indicts the bishop and all his priests. An army of cops, dressed in paramilitary gear, armed with fully automatic rifles, charges the churches and rectories early one morning, hauling in priests by the truckload, who are then ordered held without bail by judges who also order all the churches padlocked. The church is effectively put out of business in that diocese. Period. There’s your scenario. There’s what’s likely to happen if such a law ever passes.
Mr. Northon;
IMO were they even to attempt to get court orders to implement your scenario, the excrement would hit the air circulator to such an extent that they would shy away from taking it any further.
At least I HOPE and PRAY that would happen.
The process would be done entirely in secret–until the actual arrests. As for the rest–in the wake of what happened to Cardinal Pell and former President Trump, I don’t think it’s a safe assumption anymore that the establishment would never stoop to such a thing.
Disregard of religious integrity comes with a deepening of atheistic secularism, the spiritual leprosy that’s spreading worldwide. Former inviolable principles of justice, including those enshrined in the Constitution thought ad infinitum now fall like withered leaves. Deception, pretense, are the new. Religiosity, rosary beads, signs of the cross shadow intense hatred of truth, of innocent life.
Confession, Catholicism’s inviolable sacrament of reconciliation had been under assault in the past at times despotic royalty in the age of Christendom, under Antichrist regimes Nazism and Communism. It survived. Priests were martyred. That sacrosanct transaction between man and God insures the freedom to confess sin and be absolved free of retribution should what’s confessed be accessed [a priest may and should advise some penitents to satisfy civil justice, to seek professional assistance when and where warranted, although never under compulsion].
Our Nation is influenced by an apparent majority who have abandoned God and the values of Christianity that shaped our founding fathers’ thoughts, enactments, principles for rule. Revision of the Constitution has morphed into cancel culture dismissal. Political arms of government, the Justice Dept, is now an enforcement agency for an ideology. Fearfully, it seems the establishment [deep state] will stop at nothing to prevent a return to the true meaning of liberty and justice.
Increasingly evident the Church is the remaining institution that provides a rational just option, a barrier. That is, if its members who still hold to the faith are prepared to pay the price. And with that achieve salvation for themselves and others.
I want the bishops to lead by example
Maybe all the faithful should insist on confessing to their Bishop ONLY. Just a thought . . .
Its been clear for some years that the inmates are running the asylum in Washington State. I would not live there if THEY paid ME. Portland is a particularly badly run cesspool. I feel for the normal folk who have not yet chosen to move from the state. AS for this bill, I dont think ANY genuine catholic priest would obey it. And a question arises, how would the STATE know they were not? Only if they insert themselves undercover into a confessional with a tape recorder and tape themselves falsely confessing just such a sin, then waiting to see if the priest makes a report. This bill is a gross violation of personal privacy and our constitutional freedom of religion. I hope that if it should pass, the Bishop of Spokane will take it to court right up to the supreme court level. This bill specifically targets Catholic priests and therefore is trying to single out one religion with this bill, which is also unconstitutional, as it amounts to suppression of a Catholics practice of faith and unequal application of the law. They appear to be under the impression that the church has a monopoly on pedophiles. It does not. Many children have been abused by teachers, doctors, coaches, family members, and a whole panoply of the rest of society. This is a disgusting distortion of the law.
My bad. Portland is Oregon!!