I am fifty-six years old. I have voted in every presidential election since I was first age qualified in 1970. My first vote was in 1972 when President Richard M. Nixon was challenged by George S. McGovern. Mr. Nixon won that election, giving him his opportunity for a second term, in what is considered one of the great landslides in presidential politics. Mr. Nixon won in excess of sixty percent of the popular vote and the Electoral College vote was a walk over. Two years later Mr. Nixon would resign in disgrace over what was known as the Watergate Scandal. Republican Party operatives were guilty of invading the Democratic National Committee's Washington, D.C. offices in the Watergate Office Complex. The thieves were arrested and in the following investigation it became known that the robbery was instigated at the "highest levels" of government, meaning the White House, its staff, even the President. Mr. Nixon worked hard to cover up the connection and it was this cover up that caused him to be faced with impeachment and removal. Seeing the hand writing on the wall Mr. Nixon resigned leaving the Presidency to Mr. Gerald Ford who all believed (and it turned out rightly so) to be the antithesis of Mr. Nixon. Mr. Ford was a good and honest man. At the time I voted for Mr. Nixon. I confess that at the ripe age of twenty I didn't give it much thought. Democratic Presidents had led us into war and Mr. Nixon promised to get us out...with honor. My parents tended to see things from the Republican point of view. Mr. Nixon also canceled the draft. I had a low number, was likely to be called up, and then "poof" the draft was over. I went back to college, a long story that I will not bother you with. Looking back I see my apologetic for my vote as being intellectually simplistic and obviously self serving.
I have voted in each subsequent election whether it be a local or national one. I have been both pleased and disappointed with the outcomes of those elections. I have also thought much more deeply about those elections, much more than I did the one in 1972. I did not know at the time that Mr. McGovern had been a bomber pilot flying out of Fogia, Italy during World War II at the same time that my father had been. My dad flew B-17's and Mr. McGovern flew B-24's. There were tens of thousands of soldiers there and I have reason to believe they never met. Both did receive the same decoration, the Distinguished Flying Cross. They were true heroes of equal stature. My father was a very sober thinking man regarding war. He never bragged about it, didn't talk much about it, and when he did speak about what he and his fellow soldiers did he never spoke without mentioning that he had the utmost concern and despaired for the people "on the ground" who were at the receiving end of his crew's bombs. Mr. McGovern spoke in a biography of his war years about how terribly concerned he was about two bombs that got stuck in his bomb bay which wrongly released and hit a barn in a farmer's field near the family house. For years Mr. McGovern lost sleep over the possibility that his mission had ended in the death of innocent people on that beautiful farm. The bombs were intended for military targets like rail yards and weapons factories. Years later he found that small farm, spoke to an eye witness, and was told that his bombs had killed no one. Mr. McGovern speaks of the immense relief he experienced nearly fifty years after the event. In 1972 Mr. McGovern was considered the "Peace Candidate." He spoke frequently of the collective guilt that we Americans had regarding the death and destruction going on in Indo China.
Apparently we Americans, at least most of us voting Americans, didn't want to hear that. Mr. Nixon ended up expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia, brought death and destruction to hundreds of thousands of innocent country folks (farmers) while carpet bombing jungles and villages. Mr. Nixon actually lead the United States to drop more tons of explosives on Vietnam that it did in Europe during World War II. Go figure. Victory with honor. And...when all the fire, smoke, and dust settled the North Vietnamese Communist Government was victorious. America came home with a strong sense of defeat and, to some, great shame.
Years later our veterans are most likely not able to find someone in Vietnam who can assuage their emotional pain. B-52's, F4 Fantoms, F105 Thunder Chiefs, F100 Super Sabres, and A6 Avengers each dropped four to fifty times as much high explosives as could a B-17 Flying Fortress or B-24 Liberator. Hit or miss those bombs killed somebody somewhere on the ground. No one escaped. Little wonder some Vietnam veterans suffer deep and debilitating emotional pain more than thirty years later. There is no one in Vietnam who could say to them, "Oh, we are all right. You missed us."
At fifty-six I face another presidential election. This is the most difficult vote that I have ever had to cast. I have never been so conflicted. At the same time I have never been so well informed. Thinking can be dangerous, boys. Guns or butter, war or agriculture (peace), conflicting economic philosophies, racial injustice, sexism, health or aging, experience or youth, divergent views of what it means to be patriotic, to abort or not to abort, confusion about the President's "pay grade", to grow government or to shrink it, to support my interests or to let them sublimate to the needs of others, to be young at heart or wise in middle age. These are the things that I am thinking so hard about. What should I do? The pain of not knowing is excruciating in a very real sense. Will my vote make a difference? Has it ever? I truthfully am not sure. I encourage you guys to think hard about life, your soul, your family, your nation, the world. I am asking you to accept pain. I think you and I need to suffer through election times. Soon, and even now, some of you will be asked to blacken in a dot, punch out a chad, or pull a lever. When you do, and I hope you will take this responsibility seriously, make sure you have suffered long and hard before you decide and cast to the future you heart's desire, your vote. And when you do, win or lose, don't brag or cry. Pray and work hard for righteousness. Live by Faith in God our Father.
8 comments:
Great post. I'm looking forward to voting in my second eligible election, one which I feel much more at ease with in 2008 than 2004, as I was not fond of either candidate four years ago.
That being said, while I may not agree with many of the policies of McCain (or Obama for that matter), I am reassured that I believe both of them to be honorable men who have each served their country heroically in vastly different ways... so while I personally think we need a more liberal administration to balance out the mistakes of the last 8 years, I will not be fleeing to Canada should McCain pull off a less and less likely victory. Shoot, I'd even go to the inauguration if I could get tickets :)
Looking forward to Christmas.
Fantastic post Bruce. It is humbling to her the point of view of someone who has vastly more experience in voting than myself.
Question: Do you think it is ever right to be a single issue voter?
I think that abortion is an abomination and I believe that my conscience will not allow me to vote for anyone who supports it. I can not in good conscience vote for the deaths of countless unborn human beings.
So, even if I don't agree with McCain on anything else (I do however), I feel that I must vote with my conscience.
What do you think, Bruce?
Josh, One issue voting is perhaps a dangerous course of action. "One size fits all" answers seldom succeed. Also, consider the possibility that being pro-choice can be pro-life at that same time. Were not Adam and Eve tempted because God gave them an absolute? Could it be part of "brokenness" that having a law condemns us to violating it. Therefore, "absolutely no choice" could lead to an absolute drive by broken people to seek that which is outlawed. Some in the abortion debate allow choice and then work to convince pregnant women to keep their child, not because of the law of man, but rather because of the Law of God. That Law is the law of love and respect for that which is so, so beautiful. This suggests that the premise that one is pro-choice means that one is pro-death or anti-life is a false premise. We must not be mislead to vote based upon false premises. Being pro-choice does not necessarily mean pro-death to babies. If I could show one person or give one solid apologetic to confirm this then the Pro-Life arguement to the contrary could be shown to be false. Any additional thoughts?
Was God wrong in giving Adam and Eve an absolute? I think it is an easy answer to say no. So also I think that abortion should be an absolute "no."
To me, we could take the principle you have suggested and apply it to theft or murder. I do not believe that we should say that people can do these things so as to not tempt them and then try our very best to convince them to not commit these crimes.
By God's blessings we do not do all the evil that we can do. He gives us free choice, but never wants us to choose wrong.
Have I misunderstood what you were trying to say?
I do believe that abortion is murder. Therefore, believing this, how can I in good conscience vote for death? As long as there is government in place to punish those who commit crimes. I want abortion to be treated as the horror and evil that it is.
Does this help you to understand where I am coming from better?
I don't feel any of us should vote against our conscience. At issue in this discussion is what criterion do we use in making our discission as to how we should vote? What informs our conscience? My suggestion is that "one issue" voting is perhaps dangerous and that one size fits all seldom if ever works. God hated divorce yet He allowed it because of hardened hearts. Jesus did not back off of His position on divorce, he reiterated it. God did put governments in the form of families, work place, city, state and federal authorities to hold people accountable. Yet, did God annimate every law ever written by His governments?
What if we had a pro-life candidate who was aggressively seeking to over turn Roe vs Wade and you liked him for that. At the same time he was a real red neck and thought that America had a manifest destiny, that our military might was given to us from God, he had no doubt about that, and that he was willing to unleash that might against a nation putting at risk hundreds of thousands of adult lives. His opponent was pro-choice, believed that Roe vs Wade was decided correctly, but he was very hesitant to use our military might as the possibility of killing many thousands of people seemed to him immoral, and that it should be done only in absolute and direct defense of our home land. Colateral damage was not, to this candidate, a pass for war that he or she accepted lightly.
Obviously, this is a real scenario. Then there are differences on economic issues, gay rights, racial justice, work safety, and the like. If we allow ourselves to be one issue voters we are vulnerable to voting for a candidate who could unleash the dogs of war unjustly, establish economic policies that bankrupt the nation leading to increased poverty and abortions, who allows distruction of critical habitat, eliminates job safety rules to help business leading to thousands of injuries and deaths on the job, simply because he or she is willing to take an anti-abortion stance. The one issue does not have to be abortion. It can be one of any of these and more.
My point is that being a one issue voter can be dangerous. It means that one issue is paramount regardless of the importance of other issues. When the first atomic bomb was ignited in the atmosphere in Arizona there were a number of scientists who felt there was a real possibility that the entire planet's atmosphere would be burned off killing all life. It was never studied in depth. They just lit the candle and hoped it would not happen. Thankfully it did not. Someone made a very important decission that potentially had unfathonable consequences. If you believed that the atmosphere would burn off, that all would die because of it, but you voted for the guy who was anxious to test right away becauses he was "pro-life" and that was enough for you then I suggest to your thinking that you were at best short sighted, and at worst intellectually shallow and selfish.
Bottom line is we must not take the easy road when voting. NOTHING is obvious. It takes deep thinking, overcoming environmental predjudices, working to become as totally and accurately informed as one can be before one casts ones vote. And, no one is ever sure they are absolutely correct in their vote. We can only hope and pray that we have done the best we could do, then we must work for godly outcomes regardless of election outcomes.
To say that you voted correctly and with a free conscience simply because you voted pro-life would be falacious.
Thank you for the insights Bruce!
I posed the question, not because I wanted you to agree with me, but because I wanted to create an interesting discussion. This did just that.
I think that my original statement was not completely thought through, but that is possibly because I just wanted discussion.
I am not just a one issue voter. I agree that there are many other issues where life is at stake. I will say this: someone who is pro life already has scored major points with me. However, this does not mean that I will automatically vote for that person.
I have many reasons why I like McCain besides the fact that he is pro life. Therefore, I think it is fair to say that I am not questioning my position much, if at all (but I am keeping an open mind).
Thanks again for the discussion. :)
Thinking things through thoroughly is very important. Unfortunately there are vast numbers of folks who just follow what they have always heard, are Dems or Republicans because Mom and Dad were, don't purchase Japanese cars because they would rather drive a Ford Fusion (a disguises Mazda 6), and worst of all equate being a Christian with voting Republican and conservative. One of the worst manifestations of that later point is that those people frequently use political voting paterns as a litmus test for faith. So often I hear, "How can so and so be a Christian if they vote for such and such a candidate." Then there is a scowl, a clucking noise, and they move on to other subjects before getting the answer. Often times they don't want an answer they simply want to judge. It is a shame. It is a major divider of the Body of Chirst in our nation and we must fight against such attitudes with love and information.
In my last not the "you" was generic, not Josh. I assume you knew that. Your insights are excellent and yes, the abortion issue is a worthy subject to keep in the forefront of our political discourse. It is, more importantly, something that should be in the forefront of our "lived out" faith. Voting only is not enough.
I agree that voting is so not enough. Many conservatives say that they don't want the government to do everything for them and yet they think telling the government that abortion is bad is enough. I am guilty of this as well.
It is always best to vote what we are already living out.
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