Posted on 10/27/2008 5:14:52 PM PDT by rhema
I have become something I once reviled: a single-issue voter. I used to think that a wise voter tries to discern each candidate's intentions on major issues, and then casts his vote based on an assessment of who will do the greatest overall good—or the least evil. I thought those voters who support a candidate based on a single issue—whether he will increase school funding, say, or lower taxes—were shirking their duty to consider the full ramifications of putting someone in office. What good is electing someone who is "right" on one thing, I thought, if he gets everything else disastrously wrong? This was the reasoning I used as I congratulated myself for wisely apportioning my votes based on utilitarian calculations.
Now I suspect this sort of calculation misses something. I've become convinced that a nation which sanctions the extinguishing of unborn children, and further, the outright execution of near-term infants, doesn't deserve admiration even if it gets every other policy right.
I used to include abortion as part of my voting calculus, mind you, but only a part. What if a candidate is pro-life, for example, but favors disastrous tax and trade policies that would consign people to lower living standards? Or what if he wants to use our military in pursuit of ill-defined foreign policy goals? Shouldn't these things factor into my equation?
Those other issues certainly affect a country's safety, prosperity, and greatness. But I've come to believe that a nation that tolerates destruction of innocents deserves neither safety nor prosperity nor greatness. We've descended into barbarism, and it poisons how we treat the elderly, the incapacitated, even ourselves. We shouldn't be surprised, having made life a utilitarian calculation, that more and more humans become inconvenient.
It's certainly true that there are other issues that ought to concern Christians, like the sanctity of marriage, and how we treat the mentally ill, the elderly, and children who have been born. But abortion is, in my view, the touchstone. Get this one wrong and your moral compass can guide you in nothing else.
There are complications. Does it really matter, for example, if a county supervisor is pro-life? Maybe so. Years ago the late-term abortionist George Tiller expanded his murderous facility in Wichita, Kan., with little trouble, even as local authorities harassed pro-life groups. The battle over abortion is being waged locally, and it makes all the difference in the world whether officials welcome abortionists with open arms, gutlessly tolerate them for fear of legal trouble, or actually get down to the business of scrutinizing their activities with a fine-toothed comb.
Even worse in the Wichita case, the city's mayor during this period advertised himself as pro-life. Hence an additional problem for the single-minded voter: Many candidates claim this label, yet they have no intention of taking action. The ones who will act, meanwhile, may be far less electable. Voters who don't care about abortion can tolerate a candidate who pays lip-service to the Bible-thumpers. But there's a danger they'll write him off as a nut if he devotes significant energy to the cause once in office.
There's also the challenge that a genuine and committed opponent of abortion may win office, work to end this abomination, and simultaneously arm regimes that slaughter innocents in other countries. If we oppose the murder of unborn infants not because they are cute, but because the execution of innocents is evil, then we have to apply this standard throughout our politics. I always thought the single-issue voter didn't have to think, but maybe that's not the case. There are indeed complications.
Yet there is also painful clarity that comes with single-mindedness. Jobs, highways, schools, economic growth—none of these matter if we're willing to sanction murder to get them. Perhaps my mentality is a recipe for political isolation for Christians, for the losing of elections, and maybe even a loss of national greatness. I worry that the alternative, however, is to lose something far greater, which is our ability to discern good from evil, and to act accordingly.
I am a 45plus million issue voter, because that’s how many babies have been killed since Roe.
Good point. It’s not merely a matter of abortion, here’s a man who thinks the Constitution can be twisted or entirely disregarded for motives of convenience.
That touches every issue of our lives as Americans, our right to life, our civil rights, our right to bear arms, our right to keep the money we’ve earned, our right to participate in free enterprise (including in healthcare), our right to freedom of speech, religion, assembly. Which of these will he decide to eliminate because a special interest group (ACLU, NEA, NAMBLA) decides it would make a more “just” society?
Great line.
Thanks.
I used that in my letters to the editor.
“Once a child is born alive and completely separated from his or her mother’s body, that alive infant is entitled to full Constitutional rights. Barack Obama sought to negate the Constitutional rights of those preemies so the abortions could escape legal consequences for killing those alive children via purposed neglect, such that these preemies suffocate, eventually.”
That is such a great point. I don’t know how even the most hardened or ignorant pro-abort can twist the logic on that.
A person’s views and policies on one issue are almost always a clear reflexion of the whole picture. I see from the replies on this thread that I’m not the only one who’s noticed that.
If a politician will get up on the Senate floor and demand the cold blooded murder of newborn babies (as Obama did), he’s not likely to stop short of trampling anyone else’s rights.
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If a politician does not recognize you have a right to life, he will not recognize your right to defend it.
My own experience has been that the candidate that is right on ONE important issue is more likely to be right on the others.
It’s not 100%, and sometimes BOTH candidates will be wrong on the most important issue, but one will be more right. Then the question becomes, go with the least objectionable overall of the two, or go with a third candidate that is right on the big one, or even all of them, but who has 0% chance of winning.
So far, I’ve gone with option 1, and I will do so this time. God help us all.
ping
It’s a rarity that someone who takes a the conservative stance on any one issue will take a liberal stance on others.
This has to do with your worldview, which is one way or the other, and doesn’t change depending on the issue.
Good analysis in Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions.
There are many other issues on the list as well but those of us with principles and priorities are looked down upon by those who do not.
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