What Would You Do to Win an Election?
Lie? Cheat? Steal?
In an earlier post - “Jesus Was a Loser” - I referred to an online forum interlocutor, Bill (not his real name), who argues that Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has an Heritage Action for America 96% conservative rating compared to 80% for the average Republican senator, is a failure because the conservative initiatives he regularly votes for rarely succeed in a Democrat/RINO-dominated senate. By Bill’s twisted logic, Lee is bad because the conservative bills he votes for often don’t pass. In that earlier piece, I noted that, by Bill’s measure, Jesus, though he stood for and embodied everything good, was a loser because he was rejected and crucified.
Here is Bill’s latest offering, and my response to him below:
"I don’t think I am getting across to you… Keep voting for crappy candidates [Mike Lee] and things will not change, but… I don’t think you want things to change. The status quo seems to be your objective. Democrats paint Republicans as the party who wants to turn the clock back in America, and it is hard to argue that point when I read comments like yours.”
You don't think you're getting across to me?
Bless your heart, Bill, but you don't seem to realize that you and I are addressing America's problems on two different planes, one fundamental and essential, and the other superficial and secondary, one the critical precursor to the other, the latter just an expression of the former.
On the assumption that once in charge you - or people who think like you - can make things change for the better - and I don't doubt for a minute you are sincere in that - you, in a classic example of getting the cart before the horse, are obsessed with the superficial - winning elections, gaining control of and manipulating the machinery of government - while ignoring the fundamental - the underlying quality of the electorate.
Your mentality doesn’t differ in the slightest from that of liberal Democrats, who believe they are the brightest lights among us, know what is best for us all, deserve to be in control, and, wrapped in their glorious good intentions, have the right to do whatever is necessary to win - without reference to any set of governing laws or principles - any outmoded intellectual, moral or spiritual standard of conduct. For them, apparently like you, the end justifies the means. Winning is everything.
What wouldn't you do to win an election, Bill? Would you lie? Deliberately deceive? Misstate your real beliefs and intentions? Promise to do one thing while intending to do another? Cheat in the actual election process? Whatever it takes, right? Where, if anywhere, would you draw the line, and based on what?
By your measure, Bill, what constitutes "a crappy candidate", and what would a good candidate look like? It sounds to me like your bad candidate is anyone who, in the political sphere, stands up for any sort of traditional intellectual, moral or spiritual principle or value, while your ideal choice would be an unprincipled, Godless, skilled panderer - an amoral political whore - whose objective is never to speak of principle but to read his audience and tell them what he thinks they want to hear - whatever it takes to get them to vote for him. In other words, your ideal candidate would be a Democrat.
On the other hand, in the certain conviction that only intellectual, moral and spiritual enlightenment can ensure the future and good government of America - that, first things first, such enlightenment must be the bedrock foundation of a viable, free and prosperous society - I am focused, as were the Founders, on society's intellectual, moral and spiritual substructural - the critical dynamics that are the wellspring of any society, that underpin and give expression to your superficial level of things - politics and government. Politics and government are just expressions of the underlying, collective intellectual, moral and spiritual reality.
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
- George Washington, Farewell Address
Everything that happens in the political sphere is an expression of the collective intellectual, moral and spiritual substance of the people. As we are witnessing today, intellectual, moral and spiritual rot in the people expresses itself in a corrupt political system, bad government and a suffering people. "By their fruits shall you know them." "When the wicked rule, the people suffer." Sadly, I believe we have only seen the beginning of dark days to come.
To right the ship, the underlying problem must be addressed, and before it can be addressed it must be named. The problem is not losing elections, nor the answer winning them. In past years Republicans have won more often than they have lost, but to no avail because, like their opposition, they are largely without principle. The root problem is the widespread corruption of the people and the evil so many of them are willing to support.
"For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted.
"Yea, and this was not all; they were a stiffnecked people, insomuch that they could not be governed by the law nor justice, save it were to their destruction." [The Nephite people in ancient America about 30 BC]
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Book of Mormon, Helaman 5:2-3
Do you suppose, Bill, that an election going one way or another would have been the answer for these people, the Nephites, who, in their majority were corrupt? What kind of candidate could have won an election among them? What kind of candidate could have actually made a real positive difference in their society, given their state of moral decay? Should the corruption of the people simply have been conceded and catered to, as you seem to advocate, rather than resisted by a principled candidate?
Do I and constitutional conservatives like me "want to turn back the clock in America"? Looking down your nose, you say it as if it were a bad thing. When we contemplate the intellectual, moral and spiritual rot that permeates our society today, and knowing such rot, left unconfronted, unremedied, will be the end of us as a free and prosperous people, as it has been historically for all peoples and nations before us , absolutely we do wish to turn back the clock, intellectually, morally and spiritually - returning, repenting, to a time when people were able to reason rationally from point A to point B with the honest objective of getting at the truth - the way things really are and really work. A time when the majority of the people could tell the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. A time when most people were God-fearing and decent. What clear-minded, patriotic citizen would not wish to live again in such a society? Moreover, we understand that, win or lose, the political process is one of the key ways we can and must work to bring that about.
The path you propose, Bill - pandering to the corruption in the people in order to get elected - whatever it takes to win - will lead society quietly down to hell (2 Nephi 28:21-22). Standing up for principle might not win an election (but then again it might), but it will at least be a declaration of truth, shine a light in the darkness and provide a glimmer of hope.
If the American people, in their electoral majority, will not support or tolerate candidates who openly embrace and promote sound intellectual, moral and spiritual principles, they, like the Nephites before them, are finished and are “ripening for destruction”.
If that is where we are, America is already dead.
These are the times that try men's souls...
Torquemada