Vote Anyway

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 20^th 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.