Stop voting for the hypocrites who pander to your cause!
Since Clark brought it up, I thought I’d rant about the single-issue voter.
Whenever we talk about single-issue voters, we’re pretty much talking about people who are against abortion. There aren’t many other single issues out there that get people so riled up. There are definitely environmentalists who only vote on that issue; I know a few. That’s about it.
In both cases, these folks concentrate on their one issue because they see it as absolutely important. The anti-abortion crowd see abortion as murder; they simply can’t vote for anyone who condones it. The pro-environment crowd likewise sees pollution as murder—not necessarily of humans, though we are “collateral damage,” so to speak—and they can’t vote for anyone who permits that. No other issue is as important or as urgent to them. Everything else must fall by the wayside in the pursuit of their goal.
You gotta admire their conviction, if not their brains.
I’ve seen the anti-abortion “voter’s guides” nearly every election; they keep sending them to churches, and I keep going to church. They endorse all the candidates who say they’re against abortion. (Some of them make an exception for candidates who are against abortion but are in favor of other “anti-family” things that the guides are against. One of the “anti-family” things, I notice, is being a Democrat.)
That sounds impressive, but if you do a little investigating, you’ll find that a lot of these anti-abortion candidates have voting records that don’t exactly match up with their public statements. In other words, they’ve done little or nothing to ban abortion; they’ve done little to nothing to stop funding for organizations that promote abortion; and they’ve done absolutely nothing to provide for the women who have opted out of abortion and want to try to raise children under the shadow of poverty and abuse.
Does the federal government financially support any crisis pregnancy centers? No. Why? They’re all faith-based. What about President Bush’s faith-based initiatives? Makes no difference. Congress does fund women’s shelters, but nothing specifically designed to provide alternatives to abortion. Unless you count abstinence programs.
It’s even harder for the environmentalists. Show me a politician who hasn’t politically backed a corporation that took a dump on the environment. You can’t find one above the state or local level. Who do you think funds these people’s elections?
That being the case, I think we first need to STOP VOTING FOR HYPOCRITES. Once the parties get it into their heads that hypocrites can’t win, especially among Christians, they’ll stop backing them, or at least stop sending them to the churches for their unofficial (’cause it’s illegal) backing.
We also need to recognize that we’re directing a lot of sound and fury at the wrong targets. The abortion debate will be decided by the state houses and the Supreme Court. Why, then, are we focusing so much angst on the House? The House members don’t confirm justices. They don’t ratify treaties. It’s not their job! And it’s already full of (supposedly) anti-abortion Republicans who would change the Constitution today if they could be guaranteed the Senate vote and the state house vote. But we tend to ignore the state house elections, because we mistakenly think Congress is more important.
Same with the environmentalists. And they need to work harder on the presidency; the Kyoto accords will be violated, and the
In the meanwhile, what about other pro-life activities? Is the death penalty murder? Is the war? We keep calling these things “justice” because the president does—is he right? Would Jesus execute a convicted felon in the name of justice? Would he go to war to stop terrorists or power-mad dictators? Would he condone any of his followers doing likewise?
What about the things that Jesus demonstrably found most important—the poor, the sick, the needy, the hungry, the children? What are we (and by extension, our elected representatives) doing about that? Jesus never spoke out against abortion, even though the Romans practiced child exposure, which is far worse. He did speak out against the rich oppressing the poor, something our government does nothing about every day that the gas prices stay above $3 a gallon. (And it doesn’t help the environment any that all the hybrid cars are actually only getting 26 miles per gallon.)
But work on the anti-hypocrite thing first. That’s more than enough of a task for everyone to follow. Just concentrating on that may take the next two lifetimes.
Comments.
Clark responded:
…Mary Cheney said yesterday on [Sean] Hannity’s radio show and on [Hannity and Colmes] that she didn’t think it was right to be a single-issue voter on the federal marriage amendment (in 2004) when the country was in the middle of a war, which she thought was more important and we needed a candidate that was strong on the war and national security.
I appreciate her willingness to be more openly concerned with a cause that she percieves to be more important than a cause that would obviously be in her personal interest, regardless of what other people think of the war.
It would be great to see Christians stand up for things that Jesus more clearly found most important. I appreciate that many more evangelical and Pentecostal churches have done so in the few years that I have been around, it would be great to see some more.
Mori pointed out there are probably other single-issue voters, but abortion stands way out in front as the biggest single-issue. And, “a Xangan I correspond with posted this recent entry about American religion and politics mixing.” It’s a song called, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” You might want to listen to it.