On the Problem of a Two Party System

when the supposed options of left/right just don't fit the bill:

Most of us when placed in a milieu will identify with it and accept it. Thus Catholics who are concerned more with issues our society deems left will usually come to support the entire left program; similarly for those Catholics who are more concerned with issues our society puts on the Right. We Catholics, then, are made to serve others’ agendas and to subordinate a complete vision of Catholic political topics to a set of priorities that is not of our making and is even based on unreality.

We must discover that real Catholic politics are outside the Lockean spectrum, and we must learn to see ourselves as neither right nor left-Lockeans, but as Catholics, who ought to differ from one another only within the clear bounds of permissible Catholic teaching. When once we begin correctly to see ourselves for what we are, it will become harder for various self-interested parties to co-opt us for their own purposes as simply adjuncts of the Right or Left. There are enough Catholics in the U.S. and the world that if we were educated to understand what we are and what we stand for, then political commentators, not to speak of practicing politicians, would have to accommodate themselves to us, and at the same time to the real nature of things, as they realize that not everyone exists and thinks within a Lockean framework.

Along these lines, see also Michael O'Brien:

As Cardinal Josef Ratzinger pointed out more than 25 years ago, the political terms “liberal” and “conservative” are grossly misleading when applied to the Kingdom of God. They are especially so when applied to the ongoing evangelical mission of the Church, which is to draw all men to Christ, to work while the light lasts, to be a “light to the Gentiles.”

The most destructive aberrations in social and political thought of the post-war era have arisen from the application of these artificial constructs to the human community: left versus right, liberal versus conservative, neo-liberal versus neo-conservative, love versus truth, justice versus mercy, etc, etc. These adversarial templates present to us as fact certain images that function in the mind much the same way as does myth, faith systems, and symbols. But myths, if they are not based in reality, can create artificial dichotomies that derive from damage done to man’s concept of himself and his societies. They alter consciousness, the psychology of perception at its very roots. And thus they alter conscience. This in turn largely determines the choices we make and the actions that come from them.

While the templates may have a strictly limited value in their particular sphere of reference, they become destructive to the degree that they displace or negate “the whole truth about Man...”