One more week . . .

Next week, Americans will conduct the fourth presidential election of Mirror of Justice's tenure.  My sense is that, during previous election-seasons, this blog was home to more posts, by more bloggers, that directly addressed the election-choice that it has seen this year.

This -- assuming my sense is accurate -- is probably not a bad thing.  My hope has always been that Mirror of Justice would be a platform and a vehicle not simply for "thoughts about political matters from Catholic law professors" but instead, or at least also, "thoughts, informed by the Church's moral and social teachings, about the legal enterprise, legal education, the legal profession, and  the nature, aims, and limits of law."  The latter, it has always seemed to me, presents a better opportunity to "add value" to the public conversations.

Whatever happens next Tuesday -- as I wrote a few months ago, I thought and still think that Mrs. Clinton will be elected President, even though she would deservedly have lost to a normal Republican nominee, and I hoped and still hope that candidates who are committed to school choice, limits on abortion, religious freedom, and judicial conservatism on the courts will win in Congress and in the states -- it seems clear that we in the United States are very badly divided, that many are alienated, isolated, and angry and feel (correctly or not) patronized, left behind, and uninvolved.  The hostility between our political camps is boiling and it is tainting friendships, working relationships, campuses, journalism, social media, the parties themselves, and relations within the Church.  The fact that there are two major-party nominees is, for now, papering over the reality that the two parties themselves are sharply divided and these divides will, I imagine, re-emerge very quickly after the election.

I know a reasonable amount of history, and I'm not naive, so I don't believe that divisive and angry politics or nasty rhetoric or broken friendships are anything new.  Still, the current situation seems depressingly bad.  So . . . what can we do, if anything, to help?  What, if anything, can we say, or write, or teach, that might help to make things just a little bit better?