As an addendum to that last post, it strikes me that one way to think about the contribution that Catholics can make to American political discourse is precisely to show the problems with a politics characterized by an ideological dichotomy between "individualism" and "collectivism." Both of those tendencies can indicate, by a kind of shorthand, some problems and possibilities attached to different policy choices, but they break down as independent and substantive norms for policy (not to mention morality). There certainly are important and legitimate differences in politics between those who end to trust in the efficacy of state intervention in particular areas and those who are more skeptical of it, between those whose trust is more in market-based outcomes v. planning and those sorts of opposing arguments are always necessary for adequate and fruitful deliberation. But they are defeasible in the face of the normative center of political deliberation in the common good, itself grounded in the social nature of man. Catholic Republicans and Catholic Democrats must agree about that and about the moral norms that are partly constitutive of the common good and it's this agreement that makes the Catholic perspective a distinctive contribution. But that leaves a great deal about policy to disagree about. If Catholics in both camps can show the problems with conceiving of politics as normatively grounded in either individualism or collectivism that would be an important contribution to refining and enlarging public discourse. Of course, that means being a pest in different ways towards the two dominant parties. But being a pest of the right sort can be a real vocation.