for the wedding. awesome:
1. sadie hawkins dance - relient k.
2. ugly day (a.k.a. the original 'rhubarb pie') - five iron frenzy.
3. stickshifts & safetybelts - cake.
4. the cure for pain - jon foreman.
5. do you remember - jack johnson.
---
25 days!
---
p.s. getting a marriage license is a strange experience. if you've gone through it, you know what I'm talking about.
18.11.08
7.11.08
start the day with a smile..
hey, someone's still got brains and that old enlightenment crap going for them:
now, if folks would only apply the same sort of argument-ad-absurdum from the self-interest perspective w.r.t. iraq, we might have more intellectually honest dialogue about the history there..
good day!
Dan Rather’s conspiracy theories about CBS make about as much sense as a two-story outhouse, the network says.just to remind folks of the backstory, this goes back to a 60 minutes ii episode about president bush's national guard service that was all well and good.. modulo the fact that it was based on completely (and rather obviously) fradulent documents supplied by a democratic party operative.
Rather and his old bosses were facing off in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, where the former Evening News anchor was seeking documents he says will prove his storied career there was sacrificed to appease the Bush administration. ...
“We allege this was a sham investigation on be half of CBS so they could mollify the right” and get rid of Rather, who’d been a thorn in Bush’s side, Gold said.
In their court filings, CBS states, “Rather’s position defies logic and common sense.”
“Rather’s theory is that CBS News commissioned a costly panel, in order to criticize itself, exonerate Dan Rather, and give themselves cover for doing something that it had a contractual right to do anyway,” which is remove Rather from his anchor seat, the filing says. CBS lawyer Jim Quinn said that while the report found Rather did nothing wrong, it “excoriated CBS.”
“If that’s a sham, it’s the dumbest sham I’ve ever heard of,” Quinn said.
now, if folks would only apply the same sort of argument-ad-absurdum from the self-interest perspective w.r.t. iraq, we might have more intellectually honest dialogue about the history there..
good day!
6.11.08
damn straight
will bunch gets it:
"Yes, they’re voicing outrage today inside the sacred sanctuary of the Temple of Objective Journalism, where the celebrants nervously fingered their rosaries rather than confront the Constitutional bonfire that was building outside.
But for eight years now, there’s been an out-of-control fire raging outside of that temple – a fire that was built upon the USA Patriot Act and Guantanamo and rendition and torture and signing statements and 16 words in a State of the Union Address. Ultimately, saving the last fabric of democracy is more important than worrying about what contrived commandments of journalism were stepped on while the blaze was finally extinguished.
I myself would call it truth-telling, and honest journalism, but now we have some who want to call it “media bias.” That’s fine with me, but understand this.
"Media bias” may have just saved America."
---
seriously! out with the arrogant bums who suppress truth in favour of their own vision for what's best for our country! let's save democracy by getting rid of 'em.
"paging george orwell.."
---
jeff goldstein has the best reaction to this nonsense:
"Objectivity suppressed in the name of the Greater Good.
Call that attitude fascist, and you’re a crazed wingnut. Because in the world of the progressives, the highest form of patriotism is a willingness to cast off bourgeois conventions (when to do so is convenient, of course — just call it “pragmatism”) if in the final analysis the Greater Good is the result.
Never mind that presuming the Greater Good is yours to define against the will of an informed electorate is anti-American (and so de facto unpatriotic). The solution to that is simply to redefine patriotism in a way that matches your agenda.
The ends justify the means. And if a democratic republic consistently proves itself incapable of doing the right thing, the right thing to do is to make sure that they no longer trip over their own persistent idiocy.
As defined by progressives.
Welcome to Hotel Orwell. Free cable — but no Fox News."
"Yes, they’re voicing outrage today inside the sacred sanctuary of the Temple of Objective Journalism, where the celebrants nervously fingered their rosaries rather than confront the Constitutional bonfire that was building outside.
But for eight years now, there’s been an out-of-control fire raging outside of that temple – a fire that was built upon the USA Patriot Act and Guantanamo and rendition and torture and signing statements and 16 words in a State of the Union Address. Ultimately, saving the last fabric of democracy is more important than worrying about what contrived commandments of journalism were stepped on while the blaze was finally extinguished.
I myself would call it truth-telling, and honest journalism, but now we have some who want to call it “media bias.” That’s fine with me, but understand this.
"Media bias” may have just saved America."
---
seriously! out with the arrogant bums who suppress truth in favour of their own vision for what's best for our country! let's save democracy by getting rid of 'em.
"paging george orwell.."
---
jeff goldstein has the best reaction to this nonsense:
"Objectivity suppressed in the name of the Greater Good.
Call that attitude fascist, and you’re a crazed wingnut. Because in the world of the progressives, the highest form of patriotism is a willingness to cast off bourgeois conventions (when to do so is convenient, of course — just call it “pragmatism”) if in the final analysis the Greater Good is the result.
Never mind that presuming the Greater Good is yours to define against the will of an informed electorate is anti-American (and so de facto unpatriotic). The solution to that is simply to redefine patriotism in a way that matches your agenda.
The ends justify the means. And if a democratic republic consistently proves itself incapable of doing the right thing, the right thing to do is to make sure that they no longer trip over their own persistent idiocy.
As defined by progressives.
Welcome to Hotel Orwell. Free cable — but no Fox News."
4.11.08
as for me and my vote..
local:
- governor. I voted for rossi on three major grounds:
1. divided government. letting a single party run olympia for nearly twenty years has induced massive amounts of inefficiency, corruption, and the generally salient features of any one-party state that you expect, regardless of what name they bear. consider sheena's situation at public health: massive services for, you know, poor people are being cut while management positions in bright, new, and really shiny buildings are added. along with sophisticated and awe-inspiring technology for those managers to manage their now-dwindling functions really really well.
2. fiscal responsibility. our state's response, I suspect largely due to its nearly one-party governance, to any kind of financial difficulty is invariably to say "we can't do this! we must raise taxes so that we can provide new services! help yourselves by helping us." or rather, post-2004-election, do this under the guise of 'emergency legislation' and charge .15USD/gallon statewide in new gas taxes to 'fund' non-existent transportation projects around puget sound that will in fact be funded by tolls and new taxes installed at the time. see, that way, voters forget about the old massive tax hikes you installed to pay for your promised pretty roads and then you can tax them again later on and they won't know the difference. because they're just going to vote for a democrat anyway. thus encouraging accountability for politicians. anyway, rossi's clearly not from this pattern. I'm not expecting great things and perhaps he'll go too far (doubtful with a democrat-controlled state legislature; people forget these things..). in which case, we'll then have another fifty million years of one-party democratic control after him during which things can slide completely in the opposite direction for like, forever.
3. somehow my third reason got absorbed into #2. don't ask me why. maybe it's because I'm still pissed about the post-2004 debacle and general mismanagement of resources with our government.
- initiative 985. I voted no. summary:
1. another classic tim eyman initiative that sounds flippin' awesome at first and then becomes more and more sour; leaving you with a sort of bitter feeling as you realize you got taken in by a guy who's likely more about himself than actually helping traffic congestion.
2. I liked: the carpool lane, roadside assistance, and toll limitation bit. the last one I thought was important: just like new taxes, new tolls should be passed by a simple legislative vote instead of instituted by fiat.
3. but anyway, the thing meddles way too much with telling state & local government how to manage minutiae. that strikes me as a bad precedent for good governance from either the right or the left.
4. but seriously: having come from the east coast, the washington DOT is one of the most absymal organizations I've ever seen. seriously. and their knee-jerk taxation impulse for anything new just indicates some of the institutional non-accountability I hinted at in the governor description.
- initiative 1000. I also voted no on this one.
1. as a small 'l' libertarian (long discussion there), I was naturally predisposed to vote 'yes' for something like this. as contrasted with abortion where we don't have a clue about a fetus' consciousness or potential volition about whether or not it would like to be crushed or maimed or dead.
2. but the decisive thing here was what happened in oregon after they passed a similar initiative. essentially, the matter comes down to insurance.
2a. down there, they've had a number of cases where insurance companies would tell terminally ill patients that they would not help fund expensive, life-prolonging medication (which they funded before the initiative passed) in lieu of a much cheaper assisted suicide option.
3. which is the generally scary thing about government-run health care, now that I mention it. the availability of health care and its options should never be subject to perceived social interest. ever.
- initiative 1027 (I think). I voted yes on this one.
well, it seemed rather obvious. quality control for long-term care is just as important as quality control in the hospital. and the utter absence in the former (and associated horror stories from nursing homes) is pathetic.
- president. I voted for mccain/palin.
1. much like the governor note above, there's this whole divided government thing that I value. essentially, ideological 'movements' based upon bettering the people and sweeping out old corruption tend to very quickly settle into new corruption and new problems that are just as immature and/or, well, problematic. divided government at least ensures that the progress of such rhetorically boldened movements is kept pretty close to earth, if only by slowing its rate of 'progress.' there's also much better public accountability this way. which brings me to my second destructive reason..
2. essentially, the prospect of having a man in the white house who engages in the foundational lie and isn't called on it by a supposedly interested media scares the shit out of me w.r.t. the health of the republic. don't get me wrong: all politicians lie to a greater or lesser extent. the beautiful thing about our republic is that we have (i.) at least one opposition party and (ii.) a private media who both have self-interest in rooting out lies/deception to make the other party look bad or make news [of course, they often generate fictional or assumed 'deceptions' that lots of really smart people then process without ever worrying about whether or not they are verified; but that's a separate issue]. here though, no one really believes a word coming out of the republican party (for better or worse) and the media has been permanently engaged in worship mode for months. as a result, we've seen justification and rationalization for all sorts of massive lies/self-contradictions from obama's campaign and obama himself. not at all limited to:
- preconditions in negotiating with iran
- free trade
- foreign policy in latin america
- addressing russia
- iraq and the success/failure there
- israel
- tax increases/decreases
in additional to the foundational lies about obama himself and his transformative lightworking being, including:
- post-partisanship
- campaign finance
- his pastor and other radical associations
- any pretension or claim to being 'moderate'
- copious amounts of vacuous rhetoric and empathy that shrouds a very different policy vision
as I said, all politicians engage in a massive amount of deception. obama is no different in that. the crucial difference to my eye is the willingness for large numbers of smart/educated/important people to rationalize obvious self-contradictions into suave arguments for his awesomeness. the fact that the media has assisted this is abhorrent and sets awful precedent for future governance. it essentially introduces the possibility of no electoral accountability for a man who mouths the 'right' sort of words (judged by some informational elite), even if they sometimes include statements like "black is white." and even if mr. obama doesn't misuse that lack of accountability to his advantage, like I said: it sets awful precedent for the future.
2a. if you don't agree, imagine karl rove as president with twelve versions of fox news broadcast in every cafe. with everyone smiling knowingly about all the things they don't actually know, but merely assume. because, well, it's true dammit. then you'd live in my world - in reverse. either way, it's bad.
3. oh, and the last destructive reason that's more me-oriented rather than more global: I don't actually agree with him on, well, anything policy-related. and while it's very nice of him to consider little people like me that probably got brainwashed into a non-progressive value set, his voting record indicates that his consideration is purely abstract. I personally have no use for such big-minded people.
4. now, on to constructives. economically, if we have to choose between, say, increasing capital gains/property/estate taxes on the 'rich' (while crucially affecting small business and investment incentives for the not-so-rich) and not, then taking option 2 will be healthier for everyone - period. if you want to prolong whatever recession and economic troubles are country is plunging into, then a good way to do that is to motivate rich folks and corporations to move their money overseas by taxing the shit out of them. see, that way, you increase unemployment (since the jobs left) AND decrease economic output (since the money left) AND generate even more despair as your economy suffers even more, which naturally leads itself to invest more power in government to help out further. this was the good old great depression model that - not to be too blunt - prolonged the depression far longer than it would have likely lasted under a more minimal government approach. but hey don't believe me, listen to this guy. anyway, that's a long way of saying that populist rhetoric is all well and good (if entirely unjust: an extra zero on your tax return suddenly kicks in conditional social ethics that make theft legal and appropriate), but its historical effectiveness for, you know, actually helping the poor is actually poor itself. all the while, it also decreases individual conceptions of responsibility for their fellow man. because, well, Jesus didn't reaaallly call you to love your neighbor you know, yourself. that's government's job to 'make sure it happens;' your free will and love pale in comparison to the act of achieving nominal dependence on some impersonal entity.
4a. not that mccain's that great in this region either; but he's certainly better.
5. iraq. well, not that anyone cares about that place anymore not that it's doing so much better, but I do. and pissing away achievements there and disengaging from active conflicts with AQI and others to.. umm.. fight them in afghanistan even though they're primarily localized near iraq.. umm, oh I lost myself again. oh yeah: pissing away those achievements is quite dumb. tackle afghanistan/pakistan soon; secure one front first and then move on. you know, like you learn from basic military history.
5a. random interlude: I'm terribly sick of the fact that many smart people think of iraq entirely in terms of the 2003 invasion. you know, the folks that love to contextualize everything simply fail to contextualize this: that regardless of how you felt about whether or not we should have or should not have invaded iraq, we are there now. and we will be there for the near future. this act of presence can either be something that benefits the iraqi people, the middle east, and us, or it may not. the ethical question of 2003 is now a historical question; saying 'we shouldn't have gone there' is fine, but the statement 'and so we shouldn't be there now' does not logically follow. obama half-falls into this nonsense (likely for political reasons, thereby engaging much political support from the perpetually outraged) while also advancing this "they're in afghanistan! seriously!" business that, were it true, would be much more advanced in convenient leaks by higher-ups in the defense dept. in some fashion that shows that they aren't simply convenient for obama's benefit, but convenient toward shaping public policy.
5b. people forget, after all, that people and institutions act primarily out of self-interest. the defense department & co. have a vested self-interest in actually doing their jobs well. which means they usually know a helluva lot more what they're talking about than the vocal lot that make it onto sunday morning talk shows. of course, they also have a self-interest in manipulating publicly released information as well. but here, a hyperactive and tourettes-like press is actually useful.
6. for all that people have made fun of palin (to the point of absurdity), her policy outlook is actually the closest to my own; namely, small 'l' libertarian. not that people care about that when they can butcher quotes to prove that she believes in holy war; you mess with the narrative when you do that. not that it terribly matters anyway; vice presidents, even cheney, don't do that much compared to other offices.
hmm, that seems like a sufficient summary for now. I need to actually mail my absentee ballot and then get back to work.
---
all in all though, none of this truly matters on an eternal timescale. I have voted my conscience while recognizing that my hope and duty does not reside in politicians or our republic, but rather in our God and King. it is my desire that beyond my vote, that His Will is done and that our government and its function reflects His wishes and desires. that whoever He wants in office will be elected.
but now I go back to my duty: love for Him and love for my neighbor. those He will lift me up to pursue independent of who is in earthly power. and as my hope lies in Him, He will bring about the change He desires in me, the change and redemption that I cannot bring to myself. praise be to God.
- governor. I voted for rossi on three major grounds:
1. divided government. letting a single party run olympia for nearly twenty years has induced massive amounts of inefficiency, corruption, and the generally salient features of any one-party state that you expect, regardless of what name they bear. consider sheena's situation at public health: massive services for, you know, poor people are being cut while management positions in bright, new, and really shiny buildings are added. along with sophisticated and awe-inspiring technology for those managers to manage their now-dwindling functions really really well.
2. fiscal responsibility. our state's response, I suspect largely due to its nearly one-party governance, to any kind of financial difficulty is invariably to say "we can't do this! we must raise taxes so that we can provide new services! help yourselves by helping us." or rather, post-2004-election, do this under the guise of 'emergency legislation' and charge .15USD/gallon statewide in new gas taxes to 'fund' non-existent transportation projects around puget sound that will in fact be funded by tolls and new taxes installed at the time. see, that way, voters forget about the old massive tax hikes you installed to pay for your promised pretty roads and then you can tax them again later on and they won't know the difference. because they're just going to vote for a democrat anyway. thus encouraging accountability for politicians. anyway, rossi's clearly not from this pattern. I'm not expecting great things and perhaps he'll go too far (doubtful with a democrat-controlled state legislature; people forget these things..). in which case, we'll then have another fifty million years of one-party democratic control after him during which things can slide completely in the opposite direction for like, forever.
3. somehow my third reason got absorbed into #2. don't ask me why. maybe it's because I'm still pissed about the post-2004 debacle and general mismanagement of resources with our government.
- initiative 985. I voted no. summary:
1. another classic tim eyman initiative that sounds flippin' awesome at first and then becomes more and more sour; leaving you with a sort of bitter feeling as you realize you got taken in by a guy who's likely more about himself than actually helping traffic congestion.
2. I liked: the carpool lane, roadside assistance, and toll limitation bit. the last one I thought was important: just like new taxes, new tolls should be passed by a simple legislative vote instead of instituted by fiat.
3. but anyway, the thing meddles way too much with telling state & local government how to manage minutiae. that strikes me as a bad precedent for good governance from either the right or the left.
4. but seriously: having come from the east coast, the washington DOT is one of the most absymal organizations I've ever seen. seriously. and their knee-jerk taxation impulse for anything new just indicates some of the institutional non-accountability I hinted at in the governor description.
- initiative 1000. I also voted no on this one.
1. as a small 'l' libertarian (long discussion there), I was naturally predisposed to vote 'yes' for something like this. as contrasted with abortion where we don't have a clue about a fetus' consciousness or potential volition about whether or not it would like to be crushed or maimed or dead.
2. but the decisive thing here was what happened in oregon after they passed a similar initiative. essentially, the matter comes down to insurance.
2a. down there, they've had a number of cases where insurance companies would tell terminally ill patients that they would not help fund expensive, life-prolonging medication (which they funded before the initiative passed) in lieu of a much cheaper assisted suicide option.
3. which is the generally scary thing about government-run health care, now that I mention it. the availability of health care and its options should never be subject to perceived social interest. ever.
- initiative 1027 (I think). I voted yes on this one.
well, it seemed rather obvious. quality control for long-term care is just as important as quality control in the hospital. and the utter absence in the former (and associated horror stories from nursing homes) is pathetic.
- president. I voted for mccain/palin.
1. much like the governor note above, there's this whole divided government thing that I value. essentially, ideological 'movements' based upon bettering the people and sweeping out old corruption tend to very quickly settle into new corruption and new problems that are just as immature and/or, well, problematic. divided government at least ensures that the progress of such rhetorically boldened movements is kept pretty close to earth, if only by slowing its rate of 'progress.' there's also much better public accountability this way. which brings me to my second destructive reason..
2. essentially, the prospect of having a man in the white house who engages in the foundational lie and isn't called on it by a supposedly interested media scares the shit out of me w.r.t. the health of the republic. don't get me wrong: all politicians lie to a greater or lesser extent. the beautiful thing about our republic is that we have (i.) at least one opposition party and (ii.) a private media who both have self-interest in rooting out lies/deception to make the other party look bad or make news [of course, they often generate fictional or assumed 'deceptions' that lots of really smart people then process without ever worrying about whether or not they are verified; but that's a separate issue]. here though, no one really believes a word coming out of the republican party (for better or worse) and the media has been permanently engaged in worship mode for months. as a result, we've seen justification and rationalization for all sorts of massive lies/self-contradictions from obama's campaign and obama himself. not at all limited to:
- preconditions in negotiating with iran
- free trade
- foreign policy in latin america
- addressing russia
- iraq and the success/failure there
- israel
- tax increases/decreases
in additional to the foundational lies about obama himself and his transformative lightworking being, including:
- post-partisanship
- campaign finance
- his pastor and other radical associations
- any pretension or claim to being 'moderate'
- copious amounts of vacuous rhetoric and empathy that shrouds a very different policy vision
as I said, all politicians engage in a massive amount of deception. obama is no different in that. the crucial difference to my eye is the willingness for large numbers of smart/educated/important people to rationalize obvious self-contradictions into suave arguments for his awesomeness. the fact that the media has assisted this is abhorrent and sets awful precedent for future governance. it essentially introduces the possibility of no electoral accountability for a man who mouths the 'right' sort of words (judged by some informational elite), even if they sometimes include statements like "black is white." and even if mr. obama doesn't misuse that lack of accountability to his advantage, like I said: it sets awful precedent for the future.
2a. if you don't agree, imagine karl rove as president with twelve versions of fox news broadcast in every cafe. with everyone smiling knowingly about all the things they don't actually know, but merely assume. because, well, it's true dammit. then you'd live in my world - in reverse. either way, it's bad.
3. oh, and the last destructive reason that's more me-oriented rather than more global: I don't actually agree with him on, well, anything policy-related. and while it's very nice of him to consider little people like me that probably got brainwashed into a non-progressive value set, his voting record indicates that his consideration is purely abstract. I personally have no use for such big-minded people.
4. now, on to constructives. economically, if we have to choose between, say, increasing capital gains/property/estate taxes on the 'rich' (while crucially affecting small business and investment incentives for the not-so-rich) and not, then taking option 2 will be healthier for everyone - period. if you want to prolong whatever recession and economic troubles are country is plunging into, then a good way to do that is to motivate rich folks and corporations to move their money overseas by taxing the shit out of them. see, that way, you increase unemployment (since the jobs left) AND decrease economic output (since the money left) AND generate even more despair as your economy suffers even more, which naturally leads itself to invest more power in government to help out further. this was the good old great depression model that - not to be too blunt - prolonged the depression far longer than it would have likely lasted under a more minimal government approach. but hey don't believe me, listen to this guy. anyway, that's a long way of saying that populist rhetoric is all well and good (if entirely unjust: an extra zero on your tax return suddenly kicks in conditional social ethics that make theft legal and appropriate), but its historical effectiveness for, you know, actually helping the poor is actually poor itself. all the while, it also decreases individual conceptions of responsibility for their fellow man. because, well, Jesus didn't reaaallly call you to love your neighbor you know, yourself. that's government's job to 'make sure it happens;' your free will and love pale in comparison to the act of achieving nominal dependence on some impersonal entity.
4a. not that mccain's that great in this region either; but he's certainly better.
5. iraq. well, not that anyone cares about that place anymore not that it's doing so much better, but I do. and pissing away achievements there and disengaging from active conflicts with AQI and others to.. umm.. fight them in afghanistan even though they're primarily localized near iraq.. umm, oh I lost myself again. oh yeah: pissing away those achievements is quite dumb. tackle afghanistan/pakistan soon; secure one front first and then move on. you know, like you learn from basic military history.
5a. random interlude: I'm terribly sick of the fact that many smart people think of iraq entirely in terms of the 2003 invasion. you know, the folks that love to contextualize everything simply fail to contextualize this: that regardless of how you felt about whether or not we should have or should not have invaded iraq, we are there now. and we will be there for the near future. this act of presence can either be something that benefits the iraqi people, the middle east, and us, or it may not. the ethical question of 2003 is now a historical question; saying 'we shouldn't have gone there' is fine, but the statement 'and so we shouldn't be there now' does not logically follow. obama half-falls into this nonsense (likely for political reasons, thereby engaging much political support from the perpetually outraged) while also advancing this "they're in afghanistan! seriously!" business that, were it true, would be much more advanced in convenient leaks by higher-ups in the defense dept. in some fashion that shows that they aren't simply convenient for obama's benefit, but convenient toward shaping public policy.
5b. people forget, after all, that people and institutions act primarily out of self-interest. the defense department & co. have a vested self-interest in actually doing their jobs well. which means they usually know a helluva lot more what they're talking about than the vocal lot that make it onto sunday morning talk shows. of course, they also have a self-interest in manipulating publicly released information as well. but here, a hyperactive and tourettes-like press is actually useful.
6. for all that people have made fun of palin (to the point of absurdity), her policy outlook is actually the closest to my own; namely, small 'l' libertarian. not that people care about that when they can butcher quotes to prove that she believes in holy war; you mess with the narrative when you do that. not that it terribly matters anyway; vice presidents, even cheney, don't do that much compared to other offices.
hmm, that seems like a sufficient summary for now. I need to actually mail my absentee ballot and then get back to work.
---
all in all though, none of this truly matters on an eternal timescale. I have voted my conscience while recognizing that my hope and duty does not reside in politicians or our republic, but rather in our God and King. it is my desire that beyond my vote, that His Will is done and that our government and its function reflects His wishes and desires. that whoever He wants in office will be elected.
but now I go back to my duty: love for Him and love for my neighbor. those He will lift me up to pursue independent of who is in earthly power. and as my hope lies in Him, He will bring about the change He desires in me, the change and redemption that I cannot bring to myself. praise be to God.
3.11.08
derek webb on the election tomorrow
and that well said.
from patrol magazine - how then shall we vote?
yes.
"..And whatever is not from faith is sin." - Romans 14:23b
(see the rest of the chapter for the appropriate discussion on conscience; see also 1 john)
from patrol magazine - how then shall we vote?
Part 1: A Brief Statement On Matters Of Conscience
Depending on when you’re reading this, we could be on either side of one of the most evocative elections in our country’s recent history. It shouldn’t really matter, as this writing isn’t necessarily about our current election but rather on living an honest and integrated political life. Even so, there is no time for clever stories or introductions. I’ll cut right to the chase: ultimately our problems will not be solved by the right man (or woman) in the White House. It simply doesn’t work that way. We live in a democracy, a representative form of government, where it’s as much if not more our responsibility to love and take care of our neighbors than our politician’s responsibility. Real and lasting change comes from knowing and loving the folks who live in the houses that sit next to ours rather than saving all of our longing and hope for the voting booth.
Now that’s not to say that we shouldn’t make informed decisions, be involved in the process. Of course we should. I mean, if your conscience allows, you can even vote. But that’s tricky, especially in a two party system (but I definitely don’t have time for that).
But in all seriousness, I want to be perfectly clear on this point: it is never advisable, in any decision that you make, to violate your conscience. As it applies to this election, you might have serious moral conflicts with both candidates, and therefore feel as though you must vote in a defensive manner or for the lesser of two evils.
Now let me say before I go any further that that may not be you. And in terms of the body of followers of Jesus, it would likely be sinful if we were all reaching the same conclusions on how to best love our neighbors, so there’s plenty of room for a difference of opinion there. But if that is you, I have a few suggestions:
1. Look through your bible for a mandate that you must vote.
2. When you don’t find one, listen to that conscience of yours. That’s what it’s there for, to be a guide and a red flag when you’re making difficult and significant decisions.
What I’m not saying: you should not vote.
What I am saying: if your conscience is seriously conflicted over both candidates, you are at liberty to not vote.
Part 2: Some Common Objections
Some would say that not voting is giving your vote over to those who seek to use the governmental process for evil. I would actually argue the opposite. By voting, especially when based on just one or two issues, you’re giving your ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ to that party’s entire platform, which likely goes far beyond the statement you’re trying to make on these few issues. This is certainly more perilous and less nuanced that abstaining altogether. No party can co-opt a vote that isn’t cast.
Others would say, ‘Jesus said to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Therefore we have biblical an obligation to vote.’ And of course Jesus said that. That’s why I pay my taxes and try to drive the speed limit. These are among the laws of the land. But my conscience doesn’t belong to Caesar, therefore I don’t render it unto him. Caesar cannot force me to violate my conscience. Voting is a legal right, like carrying a gun or having an abortion. And I can abstain from doing anything that I have a legal right to if it violates my conscience.
Some say that we’ll never completely agree with the agenda or platform of a politician, that if we wait for a candidate that we line up with 100% we’ll never vote. I completely agree. There are many issues upon which I can disagree with a politician that don’t amount to a crisis of conscience. So there will always be necessary and acceptable compromises to make when engaging in the system of politics, but never when your conscience is on the line.
Which brings my to the last common objection: our forefathers fought and even shed blood so that we would have the right to vote. While there’s obviously nothing in this statement that I would disagree with, there is a context to consider. Even greater than our forefather’s sacrifices are those of our heavenly Father, who also shed blood in order to stir in us an allegiance greater than that of nation. We have an ultimate allegiance to our King and the Kingdom he’s building in and through us that trumps all others.
In the early 1520s Martin Luther famously stood before a general assembly in Germany, at the beginnings of what’s known as the protestant reformation. In his legendary speech Luther risked excommunication and death in order to keep from violating his conscience when he said, “To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot, and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”
These matters of conscience are serious and should be considered at great length. I have many friends who have considered the issues of this current election in all their nuances and have chosen to vote for either Obama, McCain, or a 3rd party candidate, and I support them in doing so. Again, we are diverse members of one body in our following of Jesus. It would be suspicious if we all reached identical conclusions to such complex problems. So again, maybe there is no conflict of conscience for you in this election. By all means vote. But if there is, be at liberty not to vote.
Our ultimate hope is not in politicians or powers or governments, but in a day coming when all things will be made right. And our ultimate concern isn’t success but faithfulness. So if you find it necessary to abstain from voting in this election because to do so would be a violation of your conscience, be at liberty to remain faithful and leave the worry of success or outcome to God. He, after all, created governments in the first place.
---yes.
"..And whatever is not from faith is sin." - Romans 14:23b
(see the rest of the chapter for the appropriate discussion on conscience; see also 1 john)
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