Category: Politics

On Voting Third Party During Presidential Election Cycles

Yesterday I was having a conversation with folks counted as good friends. We were sitting underneath the shade of our beautiful maple trees at Church during our fellowship meal. Some were insisting that my intention to vote for Darrell Castle for President is a wasted vote. Of course, I politely demurred.

In this short piece, I want to pursue the reasoning as to why voting third party in Presidential cycles is not only not a wasted vote but a positive good.

The reason voting for Darrell Castle in 2016 is not a wasted vote is the long term vision. When third party candidates receive votes the effect is that in later election cycles the major party candidates look at those voters who voted third party previously and ask themselves, “How can I secure those voters for myself who voted for that third party candidate in the previous election cycle.” As a result, the parties begin to shift in order to capture voters who previously voted third party in previous election cycles.

If people, with contrary interests to the candidates they are voting for, continue to vote for major party candidates, like Trump and / or Clinton, that they only barely agree with the result is that the major parties will conclude that they really do not need to shift in order to gain what might have been a well placed third party vote. HOWEVER, if people refuse to vote for the major party candidates in any given election cycle then in the next election cycle Presidential candidates will begin to ask themselves, “what must I do to secure those third party voters,” and will shift accordingly in those voters direction.

1968 is a classic example of this. In 1968 the Democrats lost the deep South to the third party candidacy of Geroge Wallace. In 1972, instead of taking those Wallace voters seriously the Democrats tacked harder to the left with McGovern. However, Nixon went after those “68” Wallace votes and captured them giving Nixon a HUGE landslide while at the same time turning the deep South Republican for two generations now.

Voting third party for George Wallace in 1968 was definitely not a wasted vote.

Something similar happened with all the third party votes cast for the Socialist Presidential candidacies of Eugene Debs, and later Norman Thomas over several election cycles in the early 20th century. Eventually, Democrats decided to go after those Socialist votes and with the candidacy of FDR those third party votes found a major party candidate who appealed to them. All those third party votes over the years had not been wasted as the Democratic party became the party of Debs / Thomas Socialism though retaining the name “Democrat.”

Norman Thomas is even reputed to have said

“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.”

The effect of the Republicans embracing the independent voters of Wallace’s 1968 campaign pushed the Republican party further to the right. The effect of the Democrats embracing the independent voters of the Debs – Thomas campaigns was to push the Democratic party further to the left.

The point for our purposes is that those Independent votes of previous election cycles were not wasted votes. History teaches that they had an impact on later election cycles. If those Independent voters had not voted Independent and said to themselves instead, “I have to vote for one of the major parties if I want my vote to count,” neither of the parties would have had the later incentive to move in the direction of those third party voters in order to capture that vote.

So, we see that voting Independent is not  a wasted vote.

Ask The Pastor — Why Not Trump? — A Conversation With A Christian Trumper

μὴ γίνεσθε ἑτεροζυγ.] Bengel: “ne fiatis, molliter pro: ne sitis.”

“Be ye not unequally yoked”

God does not forbid all intercourse with the heathen whatever (see 1 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Corinthians 10:27; 1 Corinthians 7:12), but the making common cause with heathen efforts and aims, the entering into the heathen element of life. There is no ground for assuming exclusively special references (such as to sacrificial banquets or to mixed marriages), any more than for excluding such reference.

Meyers NT Commentary

II Corinthians 6:11-18– “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.”

It is wrong for believers to join with the wicked and profane. The word unbeliever applies to all destitute of true faith. True pastors will caution their beloved children in the gospel, not to be unequally yoked.

Matthew Henry commentary

Lori Thomas wrote,

“If we are “yoked” by our vote for Trump, we are already yoked by living here and partaking of all the blessings this governance brings and bearing personal responsibility for all the deviance this governance brings us.”

Bret offers,

Distinctions

It is true that we are yoked together regardless, BUT it is not necessarily a yoking of our making. When we vote for wicked men who hate Christ we are making the yoke of our making. We are yoking ourselves with unbelievers. The precise thing that God forbids here.  We are lending our strength to continuing an already present yoking.

LT wrote,

“We are, after all, paying taxes to this government and by that very token, we are supporting it, like it or not.”

Bret offers,

I fail to see how being robbed at gunpoint to pay taxes means that I am supporting this wicked government who takes my money to kill babies, to support wicked governments overseas, to import people here who hate Christ etc.  I fail to see how when someone robs me it means I have yoked myself to my muggers.

LT wrote,

“If this is your view, you need to move to another place on this planet where everything is governed according to the dictates of the Word of God.”

Bret offers,

No, that is not true. I need to do all I can to disciple the Nations to bring them under Christ’s authority (Matt. 28:16f). I am to engage here upon the work that Vos speaks of,

“The thought of the kingdom of God implies the subjection of the entire range of human life in all its forms and spheres to the ends of religion. The kingdom reminds us of the absoluteness, the pervasiveness, the unrestricted dominion, which of right belong to all true religion. It proclaims that religion, and religion alone can act as the supreme unifying, centralizing factor in the life of man, as that which binds all together and perfects all by leading it to its final goal in the service of God.”

Geerhardus Vos
Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God & the Church – p. 194

LT wrote,

“I find no Biblical mandate or example to do that (and couldn’t find another place if I had to). The people of God also “rendered to Caesar the things that were Caesar’s.” There were things that were “Caesar’s” ? And the people of God were commanded by Christ Himself to give these things to Caesar? Did we hear that right? Yes.”

Bret offers

The giving of what is due to magistrates (Romans 13:7) or the rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesars must be measured by some standard that is beyond and above whatever the magistrate or the Caesar determines. Any Christian people who would allow a wicked Caesar or magistrate to determine on their own what is their due or what should be rendered to them would quickly become an enslaved people. Any glance of history will reveal that there are times when the magistrate has wanted taxes that were not his due. Any glance of history reveals that there have been times when the magistrate desired a fear and/or honor that were not his to command due to his disobedience to God. There are times when it is conceivable that dishonor, as the magistrate counts it, would be done out of honor to God.

Further, as a Christian to be obedient to God, I must render Caesar to God since Caesar belongs to God. Caesar owns nothing that God does not first own. 

Secondly, Scripture does not compel me to render unto a wicked potential Caesar my vote.

LT wrote,

“So, there is no Biblical warrant for insisting that we are “yoked” together with a disobedient government. But personally, we are bound to support the government of the space that we occupy.”

Bret offers,

II Corinthians 6:14-7:1 is a text that clearly and unequivocally forbids Christians to vote for Christ-hating men. I already have quoted two sources (Meyers NT Commentary and Matthew Henry). Here is the Expositors Greek NT,

“2 Corinthians 6:14. Μὴ γίνεσθε ἑτεροζυγοῦντες κ.τ.λ.: be not (mark that the pres. tense γίνεσθε indicates the beginning of a state, sc., “do not become”) unequally yoked with unbelievers, the constr. being “be not unequally yoked, as you would be if you were yoked with unbelievers”.

The most obvious application of such a prohibition would be to intermarriage with the heathen, which was continually forbidden to the chosen people (see Deuteronomy 7:3, Joshua 23:12, Ezra 9:2, Nehemiah 13:25), and this is probably the main thought here (see ref. Lev. for ἑτερόζυγος); but to indulge in any excessive familiarity of intercourse would be “to be enlarged in heart” in a way which the Apostle strongly deprecates (cf. 1Ma 1:15). He enforces this by five contrasts which illustrate the incongruity between Christianity and heathendom.”

When you vote Trump you’re voting for a man who has said he will increase funding for Planned Parenthood. You are voting for a man who is actively courting the LGBTQ community thus indicating he will mainstream sodomy. You are voting for a man who has admitted whore-mongering. You will be unequally yoked.

LT offers,

In our country we are blessed to have the right to VOTE for our governance. As in our payment of taxes to a deviant government, we can’t always choose every thought, word, or deed of our governors, but we can choose a BODY of governors who espouse POLICIES that will best advance our faith, the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”

Bret offers

Given that Democrats and Republicans are two heads of the same bird of prey I’d say your vote means very little. How many Republican Presidents have you voted for since 1973 in order to keep the dreaded Democrats out of office Lori? Has Abortion been overturned? Has Title IX and X been ended? Has Government been shrunk? Have the Republicans done anything to actually reverse the far left agenda?

Honestly, in our current political context, to talk about the advancement of our faith via Political policies that have been pursued because of our vote doesn’t seem to connect to reality.

The option now is to realize that both Republicans and Democrats use the Christian vote to advance paganism and as we vote for them we are being yoked to the advance of the anti-Christ agenda.

LT wrote,

We have plenty of evidence this past eight years, and especially this last year, that our current BODY of governance, particularly the EXECUTIVE BRANCH, will stop at almost nothing to jeopardize our religious freedom which will undermine our efforts to use our churches, build our Christian schools, practice Godly morals and on and on and on.

Bret offers,

You mean as opposed to the lying that “W” did to put us in a War where our sons and daughters have been killed? Where the Christian community that did exist in Iraq was snuffed out because of US policy? Where the deficit was larger than ever until Obama? Where the Government grew by leaps and bounds? Where the Patriot Act was passed that ensured Statist Tyranny? The wreckage that Republican “W” left behind him competes with the wreckage that Obama has wrought.

Sure, Obama is a Demon from the pit but maybe Christians deserve him because they keep voting for wicked Republicans?

LT offers,

A vote for Hillary Clinton, or even a vote for a third party candidate that cannot win, or a write-in vote that cannot win, will place us in the position of an irreversible downslide in this country. It will put our future generations in the cradle of corruption.

Bret offers,

Your solution has been pursued for several generations now and the result has been the corrosion of the Christian faith in the public square. That erosion can be seen by otherwise fine Christian people not being able to see that Scripture explicitly forbids them to be unequally yoked to a wicked man like Trump.

And in my estimation, the irreversible downslide is already irreversible. It is certainly not going to be reversed by voting Republican.

LT wrote,

And, while God is certainly capable of reversing things in future generations, it does not seem to be His pattern to do so. So now I have broken my promise to myself not to remain in the discussion on this site. But since I am back in it, I do want to say that I have read all of the comments above, and I am stunned at the judgmental attitude of some to categorize a position like ours as Alt Right propelled by Satan, and in some cases consigned to hell itself for not “buying into a vote for a third party candidate or a write-in candidate, or staying at home and not voting.” This is offensive and untrue. Although we feel strongly about our position, we make absolutely no spiritual judgment about any fellow believers who feel differently. I am signing off now.

Bret offers,

First, I have no doubt of your Christianity. I simply believe that Christians who intend to vote for Trump are woefully deceived. There are times when I am deceived and people challenge me. This is what I am doing now.

Look, the Alt. Right is backing Trump big time. Obviously, not all who vote for Trump are Alternative Right. Shoot, if the Alt. Right would just own Christ, I’d be good with most of what they promote. But many many of their Representatives do not as this linked article demonstrates,

http://faithandheritage.com/2016/05/the-top-10-reasons-the-secular-alt-right-is-not-the-answer/

And, respectfully, I can not look at II Corinthians 6:14f and understand how Christians can yokethemselvese to an anti-Christ like Trump. I just can’t understand ignoring the clear implications of that passage.

And so I speak.

Hillary’s Social Engineering Commitment — Election 2016

“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts, I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not.”

Hillary Rodham-Clinton

1.) This is as clear of a confessional statement in regards to social engineering as you will ever find. Hillary is admitting here that change does not come via persuasion but rather by brute Governmental force. The Government is the Potter and the citizenry is the clay and those who handle the pulleys and levers of the Government change people by changing their environment via legislative, executive and judicial diktat. People then change not because they are persuaded but because they are forced by governmental tyranny.

2.) This heavy emphasis has a theological origin. The theology that is driving this anthropology, is one where people are seen, not as free moral agents but rather as those who are behaviorally conditioned and who are responding to a top down stimuli. In this worldview, Hillary and the Government are the mad scientists and the citizenry is the Pavlovian dog made to salivate upon being conditioned by Governmental decree.

3.) This attitude also conveys the attitude of legal positivism. The law is not discovered. The law does not belong to some objective transcendent order that exists to be discovered and bowed to. Law, instead, is created by humans as a tool to shape other humans. The law is subjective to the ever-shifting need of the zeitgeist as determined by the State as God walking upon the earth.

4.) This is the mindset of most of our politicians and it is the mindset of tyranny. Seize the reins of power. Rule in a top-down fashion. View the citizenry as clay to be molded at the magistrate’s command. Change the way systems operate so that rank and file in those systems are forced to comply. Resistance is futile. The citizenry will be assimilated.

Who Does the Shaping?

“This is what this election is about — who will have the power to shape our children for the next four to eight years of their lives.”

~Michelle Obama @ the DNC

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers
Thomas Hodgskin

1.) I’ll make the obvious but necessary observation that this is an example of the State thinking that it is the State’s role to shape our children. Parents are merely instruments of the State.

2.) Look folks, this culture has been cooked for decades. Anybody who has managed to get out of the statist Matrix and on to the good ship Nebuchadnezzar (Matrix reference) and so out of the State conditioned culture are already the exception. It simply is the case already that the State is shaping most Children. One way we know that is that the shaping process means adults remain intellectually children. Only a handful of people would have ever caught Michelle’s words as irregular.


A Few Words On Hillary, E-Mail Servers, & The God State

Today, the FBI Director, James Comey, made it clear that his department would not indict, because they could not indict, Hillary Clinton for her Email server crimes whereby she compromised State security. After Attorney General Lorretta Lynch last week made known that she would follow the FBI’s advice this means that once again, a Clinton walks away from something that if a non-Clinton had perpetrated they’d  be held culpable. Witness Gen. David Petraeus’ conviction for essentially the same crimes for which Hillary will not be indicted.

I am not interested in spending any time in the entrails of Comey’s decision. Suffice it to understand that he doubtless knows that Clinton enemies have a habit of disappearing when about to slap the Clinton mafiosi family.  What I am interested in doing is bringing out a theological point in connection to this event that I doubt you’ll read anywhere else.

This event where Hillary skates above the law once again proves that one way to locate the God in any given social order is to locate the person or institution which can not be held responsible. One characteristic of being god or a god figure is the fact that there is no one to whom you can be held responsible to for anything that you do.

This is true of the God of the Bible, the only true God. God is not answerable to anyone. This is where Arminians make their error by constantly trying to make God answerable to themselves. God is not answerable to anyone save Himself and He is under no compulsion to actually provide answers for His actions. One of the perks of being God is that you are not answerable to the non-gods. This was demonstrated in the account in the book of Job. When you read the book of Job you see that Job has all kinds of questions about God’s actions. You also see that Job never gets an answer to any of those questions demanding that God be accountable to Job. What Job gets from God, in terms of answers, is basically, I’m God and I owe you no answers.

This is how it should be between the Creator and the creature. God is not responsible to the creature and owes no answer to the creature about anything He does.

And this is exactly how the Federal Leviathan is acting in this Hillary affair. The State is God and Hillary, as the likely soon incarnation of the State, is not answerable to anyone. She could commit cold-blooded murder on FOX News as broadcast across the world and she would not be held responsible, because the God or god concept of any social order by definition can not be held responsible. So, when we see Hillary not being indicted for what she is clearly guilty of it is merely another case proving whereby the State takes itself as being the God of the social order and so not responsible to any law to which mere mortals are responsible.

This demonstrates that we live in a social order where Rex Lex applies to the State and its key minions. Rex Lex means that the King is above the law, or that the King is not responsible to the Law. The same is true for a God, of course. Hillary, as a minion of the God State, and likely soon to be the incarnation of the State as President,  is above the law.

This, in turn, clearly demonstrates that we do not live in a nation ruled by law but rather we live in a nation ruled by men. Which, of course, means that law is applicable only depending upon how well you are or are not connected to people who can make the ramifications of the law go away for those who know them.

The next implication of this is, that since we do not live by the rule of law but by the rule of men, we are no longer responsible to the law. Now, we may still obey what is called the law because we can be hurt by the rule of men who decide to apply the law haphazardly but if the law is not uniformly applied to all men then no men are responsible to a law that has lost all its legitimacy because it is not really law as seen in the fact that it is indiscriminately applied.

Let us be clear here. This kind of action whereby the God-State escapes being held responsible by the law, communicates again that the Government we live under no longer is legitimate. We are living under a illegal Government. As such we owe this illegitimate State no obedience. We still might render obedience up for several reasons, but we do not owe a illegitimate State obedience.

Another couple of points before summing up. Those who are servants of the one true God go out of their way to expose the false gods walking upon the earth. There was a time when Christian clergy would not be silent in the face to an action by the God State where, as in this case, it would seek up to take up the prerogatives of God walking on the earth. For example, when Herod had his brother’s wife that was an act that implied his thinking of being above the law and John the Baptist as God’s man let him have. How many clergy across America will inveigh against the State as false god this Sunday?

Finally, this once again points to the fact that Theocracy is an inescapable category.  All States reflect and descend from some God or god concept. Sometimes, as in this case, the State is its own God concept.

So, today,

1) We learn once again that the State see’s itself as God walking on the earth. As God it cannot be held responsible for its actions. Gods, by definition, are not responsible to anyone.

2.) We learn that the modern State, like Kings of old, are above the law.

3.) We learn that the current State is a illegitimate as well as immoral god. As such the citizenry owes it no obedience.

Christians who cannot see this are involved in State-olatry regardless whatever intentions they may have.