Introducing Hiraeth – Politics

A new section for Catholics who are tired of hysteria, political fatalism, and the suicidal advice to surrender the public square.

Editor’s Note

This is the first essay in Hiraeth – Politics, a new section of Hiraeth in Exile devoted to politics and public life.

If politics is not your interest, that is no problem! My theological writing will continue as usual, and anyone who prefers not to receive the occasional political essay in this section can simply switch off Hiraeth – Politics in their Substack section settings.

What follows is the reason for the new section and the argument for why it matters.

God bless.

Chris Jackson

Why I’m Starting This

For a long time I kept politics mostly at the edge of this publication. Theology came first. The Church crisis came first. The collapse of authority, the revolution in Rome, the corruption of Catholic institutions, the betrayal by bishops, the cowardice of the religious right when it is convenient, the cowardice of the religious left as a permanent principle; all of that has deserved sustained attention, and it still does.

But politics does not stay politely outside the sanctuary doors. It reaches the family, the school, the military, the courts, the border, the economy, the speech laws, the medical regime, the hiring office, the tax code, the criminal code, and the social order in which Catholics are expected to live. Eventually you either confront that fact or you start talking as if public life does not matter and civil power has no bearing on the conditions under which souls must try to survive.

That is fantasy. Dangerous fantasy.

So I am opening this section because too many Catholics, including too many traditional Catholics, are now being fed a mixture of panic, bitterness, impotence, and theatrical doom that leaves them politically useless at the very moment when they should be thinking most clearly.

The Problem

“There’s absolutely no way to vote as an American” - Michael Matt

There is a strain of commentary on the Catholic right that has become deranged.

Every prudential disagreement becomes an apocalyptic revelation. Every military action becomes proof that one political camp is no different from another. Every election becomes meaningless. Every voter is treated as a dupe. Every strategic compromise becomes treason. The result is paralysis dressed up as purity.

That poison spreads fast because it flatters the ego. It allows a man to feel above the crowd, above prudence, above coalition-building, above ordinary political judgment. He no longer has to ask which outcome is better, which policy is less destructive, which administration is more tolerable, which party will leave the Church more room to breathe, which judges are preferable, which cultural forces are more hostile, which side will punish his family more aggressively. He can simply announce that everything is equally corrupt, voting is pointless, and the whole game is over.

That posture may sound hard. In reality it is soft. It is the luxury of refusing responsibility.

Catholics Do Not Have the Luxury of Political Suicide

Catholics are not choosing between an ideal ruler and another ideal ruler. We are choosing inside a damaged republic, under conditions we did not create, with options that are frequently ugly, limited, compromised, and incomplete.

That is called politics.

The question is not whether any candidate is immaculate. The question is whether one outcome gives the enemies of Christian moral order more power to punish the good, corrupt the young, and press the state further into open war against nature and grace.

On that question, Catholics should not be confused. The American left is not neutral toward us or merely mildly mistaken. It is aggressively committed to a moral and social program that is incompatible with Catholic teaching on life, the family, sex, education, parental authority, national borders, religious liberty, and the basic structure of civilization. It wants power, and it uses power.

A Catholic who cannot see the difference between that and an imperfect political coalition that at least leaves room for resistance is already thinking like a man who has given up on preserving anything.

Why This Section Exists

This section will argue for political seriousness.

That means no utopianism. No fake neutrality. No fatalism marketed as insight. No lazy declarations that participation no longer matters. No chest-thumping prophecies from men who can diagnose decline all day long but go strangely vague when asked what Catholics should actually do in November.

I am interested in consequences. I am interested in power. I am interested in which institutions are capturing the culture, which factions are destroying what remains of normal life, and which political choices give Catholics a better field on which to fight.

That does not mean every Republican deserves praise. It does not mean every conservative slogan is wise. It does not mean foreign policy questions evaporate or that prudence may be suspended whenever our side is in office. It does mean that adults learn to distinguish between a flawed ally and an open enemy.

More Catholics need to relearn that distinction.

A Word About Trump

(See Gaspers’ hypocrisy on Trump here)

Part of what pushed me to start this section is the absurdity of watching certain Catholic commentators talk as though Donald Trump were the great civilizational threat while the American left, the administrative machine, the media class, the academic regime, and the sexual revolution either fade into the background or get treated as secondary.

That is delusion.

Whatever his defects, Trump has plainly done more for conservative Christians and traditional-minded Catholics than the people who would replace him. More importantly, the coalition around him has created actual political space for people who are treated by elite institutions as obstacles to be managed, shamed, or eventually suppressed.

That matters.

A man does not need to treat Trump as a saint to understand that a movement willing to restrain the cultural left is preferable to one determined to accelerate it. He only needs functioning political judgment.

Against the Counsel to Stay Home

One of the most reckless messages now circulating on the right is that voting no longer matters, that Catholics should withdraw, or that refusing to act is somehow the higher path.

No. That is how enemies win.

If your opponents are organized, ideological, relentless, and institutionally embedded, the answer is not to cultivate a romantic disdain for the ballot box. The answer is to vote in your own interest, vote in the interest of your family, vote in the interest of your children, vote in the interest of order, and vote in the interest of pushing back, however imperfectly, against people who would gladly use the state against you.

Politics is not everything. But surrender has consequences.

Midterms matter. Local races matter. Courts matter. Personnel matters. School boards matter. Attorneys general matter. Governors matter. Bureaucratic control matters. A Catholic who shrugs at those things because some online oracle has informed him that the whole system is fake is not acting above the fray. He is serving the winning side by default.

What You Can Expect Here

In this section I’ll be writing about:

• elections and voting strategy

• Catholic political priorities

• the failures of the Catholic right

• the manipulations of the Catholic left

• foreign policy and national interest

• the role of religion in public life

• the way ecclesiastical and civil power increasingly work together against tradition, order, and common sense

Some of these posts will be analytical. Some will be blunt. Some will be aimed directly at the commentators poisoning Catholics with despair, passivity, and theatrical denunciations that lead nowhere.

All of them will begin from a simple premise: Catholics still live in public life, and public life still matters.

The Point

I am not starting this section because I think politics can save the Church.

It cannot.

I am starting it because bad politics can make a nation harder to live in, harder to raise children in, harder to worship in, harder to speak in, and harder to fight in. Catholics who ignore that reality, or who tell others to ignore it, are not detached. They are irresponsible.

Theology remains at the center of this publication. It will remain at the center of my thinking. But the political order shapes the battlefield on which ordinary Catholics are forced to live out their duties. That is reason enough to take it seriously.

So this is the beginning of Hiraeth – Politics.

If you want serious Catholic political analysis without the hysteria, the doom-mongering, or the cultivated helplessness, subscribe to this section.

The Church is in crisis. The country is in crisis. That is no excuse to stop thinking.

---

If you want to stay with the theological writing but opt out of the political essays, you can turn off Hiraeth – Politics in your Substack subscription settings at any time.

---

If you value independent Catholic analysis and want to help keep this work going, you can make a contribution or subscribe below. Every donation and subscription directly supports the writing, research, and production of Hiraeth in Exile.

Thank you for helping preserve independent Catholic journalism rooted in truth and tradition.