Ryan ChartrandSuppose I were to announce that an unknown candidate has just entered the presidential race. He is a natural leader and, most importantly, he stridently opposes abortion. In fact, his position is much stronger, purer and and more severe than that of both McCain and Palin combined. Is this the star candidate Christians have been awaiting?
Yet, I’m afraid this 2008 election will not allow you to express your enthusiasm for such a superlative candidate. For that opportunity, you’d have to return to fascist Italy and vote for Benito Mussolini, as many Italian Christians regrettably did. Dare I ask whether Christians today are above repeating their Italian predecessors’ folly?
The Italian Christians illustrated a bitter lesson about what happens when narrow political gains are sought to the exclusion of other principles. It is a lesson that has instructional benefits for all, regardless of religious or political affiliation. The relevant question to begin with is, how could Christians, admonished to be as shrewd as serpents, have been blind as bats to the wickedness of Mussolini?
It seems reasonable to expect that Christians be especially inclined to distinguish between means and ends, never ignoring evil today in order to obtain good tomorrow. Do Christians not strictly distinguish between good and evil? Do they not bravely address the latter by its rightful name? Are they not acquainted with the myriad manifestations of evil against which to guard the heart? Do they not recognize that even to oneself, the heart is treacherous and beyond human understanding?
But if the above is an accurate characterization of what Christians ought to do, or at least attempt, it is extremely unclear how Christians have become such a predictable footstool for the political right. Nowadays, Republican leaders hardly bothered with wooing the Christian constituency. Christians are as a bird in the hand, and, after all the dutiful, condescending anti-abortion speeches, a neglected one at that.
This election, Christians must ask themselves if their former relationship with the Republican Party remains a holy matrimony. They must look clear-eyed at the world around themselves and consider the facts: the Republican Party has become the party of war, of unconstitutional war, of unjust, preemptive war, of undefined century-long war. This is a detestable disfigurement of late, and one that cannot be ignored.
Regrettably, many Christians intend to vote against Obama by voting for McCain. The sentiment is understandable, but the reasoning is weak. McCain’s feeble position on pro-life hardly merits Christians’ votes. And I caution that you have just as little hope in trusting your cause to his puppet, Palin.
But even if you were faced with a genuine anti-abortion candidate, would that alone be sufficient? How long will you ignore the unpleasant issue of the war? Do you not know that war kills the innocent and the guilty alike? Will you limit your Christian virtue to unborn American babies while ignoring the plight of those who have already left their mothers’ wombs and awoken to a flaming dawn of pure hell in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Please note that I intend no particular insult upon Christians. And if I have heaped any abuse upon Christians, I have served myself an equal portion. I am not insisting that you vote Libertarian, though I believe it’s one of the better options for Christians. Nor do I advocate voting for Obama. As a Christian, your conscience, if it is consistent, forbids you to elect Obama, a forcible advocate of taking innocent human life (and one whose opposition to the war fluctuates with the weather, I might add). But I do urge you this election to educate yourself and remove your rotting Republican robes. If you are honestly pro-life, you must. If you are adamantly Christian, you shall.
And please do not trouble me with any tears spilt over your lost chance to vote for a major party candidate. Surely you, of all people, should be able to discern the false and immoral choice proffered by the “better of two evils.” Consider this: if you oblige such a mindset and select the lesser evil, have you not made evil your first choice?
Jeremy Hicks is a 2008 political science graduate, the founder of the Cal Poly Libertarian Club and a Mustang Daily politcal columnist.