With the ascension of Donald Trump as the presumed
Republican nominee for President, many Christians are talking about staying
home on Election Day this November. Enough believers had an adverse reaction to
Mitt Romney that Barak Obama won re-election in 2012 (my opinion). I admitted
my own reservations about Romney (See http://whammonline.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-not-mitt.html),
but I concluded that the value of electing the lesser of two evils precluded
staying home. I’d like to lobby for that again.
No one who is even slightly familiar with Donald Trump would
argue that he is a wholesome Christian candidate. Some may even question the
legitimacy of his faith; that is for God to judge, not me. Regardless of where
the Donald will spend eternity, we must take part in deciding where he spends
the next four years. There are good reasons to want him in the White House in
spite of his religious attitudes, or his lack of them.
First of all, while believers may not like Trump’s soft
position on some important issues, he comes out as better than either
alternative currently vying for the Presidency on the Democrat ticket. It is
possible that a Trump administration may be able to throttle back the
quickening slide into socialism that President Obama and the rest of the
progressives have been orchestrating for the last seven years. I say
“quickening slide” because we started down the path to a social democracy early
in the 20th century. It is only recently that wide majorities have
begun to believe that they are entitled to government handouts. This broadening
support for socialist policies has emboldened progressives to push their ideas
more aggressively.
For example, national health care has long been on the
progressive wish list. Karen S. Palmer has written an
excellent history of the push for national health care in America’s past.
She notes that Europe instituted socialized medicine in the nineteenth century,
long before the US. Her list of reasons why America was slow to follow a
similar course is revealing. She says efforts to socialize health care in
America failed in the last century due to, “ideological differences,
anti-communism, anti-socialism… the entrepreneurial character of American
medicine, a tradition of American voluntarism… and the association of public
programs with charity, dependence, personal failure and the almshouses of years
gone by.”
Some may be wondering why I suggest that Christians should
be opposed to socialist policies, since so many think that socialism is more
closely aligned with biblical teachings than free-market capitalism. First of
all, that is not a correct interpretation of the Bible position on social
welfare in my opinion. Second, history proves that, in practice people have not
fared better under socialism. (For a more complete treatment of this see my
post, “Obama
isn’t the Problem.”) Also, if you study Palmer’s explanation of why
socialized health care failed, you will see a list of decidedly conservative,
and may I say Christian, positions. The biblical model promotes private
industry and personal charity, not government giveaways and legislated
morality.
There are other aspects of the progressive or socialist
agenda that should worry Christians: the wholesale approval of the murder of
the unborn, the forced acceptance of “alternative lifestyles”, the implicit
infringement of the Christian religion alongside widening acceptance of Islamic
practice, the attitude that collectivism is valued over individualism. These
differences (and more) should be motivation enough to get out and vote in
November. Donald Trump is certainly far from the ideal candidate, but he is
closer than anyone the Democrats are likely to offer as an option. If
Christians stay home in large numbers this election cycle because they don’t
like the Donald, the victory of the opposition will be almost certain. I
maintain that a “None of the Above” choice next November is short-sighted and
serves to undermine the traditional values upon which our republic was founded.
