Vote Like It's Your Life That Depends On It
Or why I didn't vote for Trump in 2016, but "would crawl over broken glass" to vote Republican today
Four years ago I could not have wanted someone—anyone—less than HRC as President. I also could not imagine DJT as President. That was outlandish, preposterous and, frankly, seemed very, very unlikely. But as I rode my bicycle to the ballot box near my house that Tuesday evening, I knew my write-in candidate was even more unlikely.
I found some consolation in knowing my conservative viewpoint would have been lost amid the wash of Blue votes that control this state, and so I self-justified my strategy. I had done what I set out to do. Participate in the political process and keep my hands clean.
But when I returned home to work into the evening, with multiple tabs open on my computer and the radio in my ear, I watched the spectacle of 2016 unfold before my own unbelieving eyes. I was giddy as the results rolled in and the talk show hosts and newsmen and women revealed their own levels of incredulity.
I admit that I was not only gobsmacked, but delighted to see that we’d have front-row seats over the next four years to watch what a maverick outsider and showman might actually do. Would it be a circus or a rodeo, a farce or a tragedy? Or some of each? Was DJT the clown the left claimed or would he rise to the circumstances and prove to be the patriot and champion that he promised?
On paper he certainly aligned better with my politics. And he had defeated that most unpleasant and unlikeable woman (to put her personality and her politics mildly). It seemed to be far and away the most unlikely outcome possible. And so it began.
And what a long, strange trip it’s been.
I've done my best to bide my time and bite my tongue during this election season. Maybe you have too. I know we're all war-weary from four prolonged years on the frontlines of political theater. And dizzy after months on the coronaviral Tilt-a-Whirl.
Who could possibly still be undecided? Today is Election Day. Many have already voted early. Did we make the right choice? It should be obvious, right? We all believe that. The only trouble is we’re still split somewhere near the middle on what *that* actually looks like. On whom we believe our nation should stake its fortune. This stark divide—even greater than the one four years ago—offers little for anyone in the way of solace as we go into this election evening.
Either this administration is to blame for all the evil in the world, or it’s part of our rescue from it. Those seem to be the opposing lines. Soon enough (?!) we’ll find out. Just who it is America will choose to lead us into the next four years.
I honestly believe this to be the most important election of my life, and yours. Never has there been as much at stake—and such confusion over what that difference even is. Personality is only a small part of this. Policies play a much more important role. But even more, it’s the perspective and proposed trajectories between the two parties that could not be more divergent.
These differences are dividing states and counties, family and friends, neighbors and co-workers. Unfortunately, many of the real issues on both sides are cloaked under deception, covered by battle cries attempting to drum up partisan support rather than face the truth head on. Welcome to politics x2020.
Donald Trump is the most pro-life president ever. I don’t mind using abortion as a litmus test in this election. Because it’s the fundamental issue of human rights, human freedom and human dignity of our day. Do we really stand ready to hand over our hard-won rights and history to a man and party enamored with unrestricted abortion up the point of birth? Should we advance a party that stands even opposed to providing care to an infant that survives an abortion?
None of this requires a Christian to be a simplistic, single-issue voter. Hardly. Should we select for the party falling head over heels for the diabolical siren song of socialism? That would turn upside our personal responsibility to care for each other and assign it to a secular government to extract by force? Or must we prefer the party that glories in the destruction of the family as product of a man and woman united in marriage? That confounds our children with barrages from all sides defying the created nature of men and women? On Christian philosophical grounds alone the Democrat proposition is repugnant. Appeasement of the world is not a strategy of love, it’s retreat from truth and our call to speak it in love. The world will never understand when we refuse to fall in step with evil. This is undeniable scriptural truth.
A vote for Biden is not only a vote to forfeit our national birthright of freedom for pottage. It’s more than tacit approval of evil in myriad disguises. It is a vote to say that the most defenseless human life is nothing. Nothing worth standing against the tide of injustice and saying that “enough is enough.”
This is actually nothing less than voting for official, governmental approval for a country to protect and advocate a culture of sin and death. How can Christians not stand in opposition to this?
If we don’t…who else will?
A vote for Trump re-elects a man that honestly rubs almost everyone wrong at some level. But this man, and his party, represents and advances policies that provide the hope of a future of freedom. For all Americans. At every stage of life.
For better or worse, once (and if) you are able to see through the smokescreens and chaff fired up by each side, once you see the vision of each side for the future…you will see the choice. It’s clear. It’s present. And that choice is danger we are voting on. It’s not a party. Not a person.
No.
We will either choose to forge ahead as a nation of people that has a government in its control. With a deeply flawed man at the helm.
Or, we will choose to submit to being a nation of people that are subjects of a government given to evil. With a deeply flawed man at the helm.
Choose wisely. And vote.
[Below are some unbelievably appropriate words spoken years ago by Ronald Reagan at another such watershed moment. But they are for *us* today. Read them and ask yourself the questions they pose.]
“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
"You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down—up to a man’s age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
"In this vote-harvesting time...[they say] we must accept a “greater government activity in the affairs of the people.” For example, they have voices that say “the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.”
"Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me—the free man and woman of this country—as “the masses.” This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government”—this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
"Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment.
"Somewhere, a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men…that we are to choose just between two personalities.
"You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it’s a simple answer after all.
"You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” There is a point beyond which they must not advance. Winston Churchill said “There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
Very well thought out and spoken David - I could not have said it so eloquently but I concur! 😉
It’s very difficult for me to understand how ANYONE in this FREE country is so willing to continue this path toward total Gov’t control and of course the despair that WILL follow!
Pray for our country!
Wade
Well said David. I just wanted you to know that Angela and share your view. I could never articulate as well as you did! I fear for the future of our country and for our children’s future.