Dialogue
John: I have thought this through again and again, and I just can’t bring myself to vote for either major party candidate.
Adversary: But you have to! Don’t you admit that one of the candidates is not only incompetent and crazy but also supports all sorts of wickedness? He supports all the kinds of immorality that caused God to flood the earth, rain down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, and put the inhabitants of Canaan under the ban. You have to stop him from being elected!
John: Yes, I know he is wicked, but I can’t vote for the other candidate.
Adversary: He also proposes to exterminate all Jews and Black people! You have to stop him from being elected!
John: I know, but his opponent wants to exterminate all Blacks, too.
Adversary: Blacks but not Jews: that is a lesser evil. And besides, you like her views on other issues, such as on fish and game regulations.
John: I know, but it is not enough.
Adversary: You acknowledge her business acumen and track record of success. And the poverty in the state is causing untold harm to millions of people.
John: True.
Adversary: How can I dissuade you from this position you hold so stubbornly?
John: My reason can see no other course.
Adversary: Single-issue voter!
John: There are some issues, any one of which all by itself would make it impossible for me to vote for a given candidate. It follows from this that there is no single issue that would make me vote for a candidate.
Adversary: Where I live, there are many people who see that sometimes you need to do the lesser evil in order to avoid a greater evil.
End of the dialogue.
[Notes: The Hebrew word for “adversary” is “satan”. There are about 2.8 million Blacks in California. The number of abortions in California per year is around 280,000. So, the number of abortions in the last ten years in California approximately equals the number of Blacks in the state. I have no idea how many Jews there are: the point is only that Jews and Blacks together are more than Blacks alone.]
Commentary
Speaking precisely, one may never do something evil, no matter how small. “Do good and avoid evil” is the most fundamental principle of moral action. Without this principle, moral action is impossible. But if this means anything, it means that good is to be done precisely insofar as it is good and that evil must be avoided precisely insofar as it is evil. To make an exception to this rule, any exception, is to say that evil may sometimes be done. This, in turn, means that it is not being evil that causes an action to be shunned; but if being evil does not do so, nothing else will.
Rarely is one candidate best on all the issues. A candidate who is best on some issues may hold to positions on gun control, for example, that are imprudent or perhaps even unjust. Another candidate who has wiser views on gun control may be misguided on environmental regulations. A vote for a candidate cannot be interpreted as an endorsement of every position of that candidate. This is an application of the classic “principle of double effect”. It is a foreseen but undesired effect of voting for a candidate who is on the whole the best choice that he will also pursue some unwise or perhaps even unjust policies on one or a few issues.
The principle of double effect requires, however, that the good to be achieved must be greater than the evil that is tolerated. There is something of a calculation here. One must weigh good and evil and see which is greater. If there is a candidate that does not support the legal destruction of some portion of the society, there can be no question of another candidate who does support such destruction being better on the whole. In a sane world one would never vote for a candidate who thought it should be legal to kill Blacks no matter where he stood on all the other issues. But what if both candidates fail in this way? What if both candidates—let us say there are only two—want to keep legal the destruction of the people they are meant to serve?
The crux of the moral analysis is whether one looks only at the margins. Who one votes for is a choice in some way dependent on who the other candidates are. To look only at the margins is to decide that the only evil that enters into the calculation is the difference between the two candidates. “Candidates A and B both want to kill Blacks, but candidate A also wants to kill Jews. To save the Jews, vote for B.” The difference in evil is the destruction of the Jews, since both want to destroy Blacks. Not wanting to destroy Jews is thought to justify a vote for someone who wants to destroy Blacks in the context where both candidates want to destroy Blacks.
The other view is simply to look at the evil in itself. There is no good a candidate can do that will justify the desire to destroy blacks.
But what does it mean to vote? It means that I am trying to put into authority those who will promote the common good of my society. If someone is fundamentally opposed to the common good of the society—for example, approving of the annual destruction of 1% of that society’s population—how can I vote for such a person at all? Is there any good they will do that will outweigh such an evil? If I can stop one candidate from being elected only by voting for another who fails to promote the common good on the most fundamental level, is this not choosing to do a lesser evil?
I am not jaded to the point where I say, “Everyone wants to kill the Blacks. Voting against this is getting old and doesn’t work anyway. Let’s focus on issues where we can make a difference.” I will not try to save the Jews by sacrificing the Blacks.
Afterthought: Do not be misled by the distinction between actively doing evil and allowing it to be done. This distinction has application elsewhere, but in this case the government has the obligation to protect those who live in its jurisdiction. Failing to do so is a cause of their destruction in the way that a pilot of a ship causes the shipwreck by not guiding the ship when he should have.
