PrintThe Unpopular Cure for Our Electoral Woes
Here we are, a week after the 2022 elections, and we are still in the fog of ballot-counting. A nation who put a man on the moon a half-century ago somehow cannot tally the votes of the people in a day. Read into that whatever you wish.
Over at the Conservative Treehouse, site owner Sundance provides an excellent article distinguishing the difference between ballots and votes. Votes are the expressed intention of a voter for a particular government leader. Ballots are filled out pieces of paper that express the choice of a particular leader. Both are counted for an election. In the current system, ballots are gathered or harvested either, legally or illegally, and submitted. Given the lack of prosecution, the legality of it apparently does not matter. Votes represent the will of the people; ballots may or may not.
This disenfranchising process could not happen if one political party vehemently opposed it. Another excellent, must-read article by Dan Gelernter on American Greatness observes that the fault lies not with a particular political party, but with all "the politicians," to include their supporting cast of donors. It's not a grand coordinated conspiracy based on an ideology. It follows the fractal pattern of self-organization with a common motivation: greed.
Our first president, George Washington, provided a warning of the eventual power political parties could attain. In his farewell address, Washington cautioned, "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
We, the people, see two opposing political parties with competing platforms, governing ideals, and value systems. How scary is the thought that despite their opposing rhetoric, they secretly collaborate based on mutual self-interest and greed? The concept of "never let a crisis go to waste" has now been advanced to create a string of crises (inflation, debt, gas/diesel shortages, pandemic-inspired business and school closings and mandatory vaccination, rampant illegal immigration, child-grooming/transgenderism, etc.) that keep the nation in a chaotic environment such that more funding of corrupt projects and controlling governmental laws can be passed. One political party pushes it while the other raises money to oppose it, yet they both profit off it and could not care less about the outcome. In a global environment of food and energy scarcities, the greatest shortage in America today is the integrity of our leadership.
Our second president, John Adams, spoke of this. He warned, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other."
If one is able to override their personal cognitive bias and motivated reasoning, then it is easy to see the fishy results of the last two elections and recognize that we have a whale of a problem. Using Alexander Tytler's life cycle of a republic, the U.S. has cycled through the phases of spiritual faith, great courage, liberty, and abundance. We could not handle our own prosperity. Pride replaced humility, and entitlement supplanted gratitude. Thus, we have sadly continued into selfishness, complacency, and apathy and are now into the dependence phase. The next and final phase is bondage, where freedom dies. Today, roughly half of our populace receives government assistance. Our national debt exceeds thirty trillion dollars. A trillion one-dollar bills laid end to end would go past the distance to our sun. At thirty trillion, folks, we're way past Uranus in debt. Soon our debt will not just be out of this world, but out of our solar system.
In the history of humankind, no republic has ever recovered from this state. However, the United States is no ordinary republic. If we adhere to Adams's warning and return to our founding worldview of humble dependence upon our Creator and Supreme Judge for our providence, then this cycle can bypass the inevitable bondage phase and return to spiritual faith.
With God, all things are possible. We must demand and pursue truth with fervent energy in every aspect of our lives. As Augustine opined, "All truth is God's truth." If we, the people, who are called by His Name will humble ourselves and pray, seek His Face, and repent of our wicked ways, then God will hear our prayer, forgive our sin, and restore our land (see 2 Chron. 7:14). It's a promise from our Creator, and we either believe it or not. There is no one in this country who is ignorant of God. There are many, however, who ignore Him, and that never bodes well for a nation. Our decision in how we respond will determine the destiny of our Republic.
Despite our trajectory of impending doom, there is a precedent — an incident in human history where a nation repented and turned itself around. It too had some fishiness surrounding it, as it happened in the city-state of Nineveh about 140-score years ago. A man named Jonah preached a one-sentence sermon (now, that's efficiency) to the wicked people there: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!" This pagan city's response: "And the Ninevites believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least" (Jonah 3:5). Because of their faith, God spared their nation.
We, the people, must recognize the urgency of our situation and take appropriate action before we descend into bondage. This may be our last chance before being hooked into unmitigated disaster.
Tom McAllister, Ed.D. is a business strategy consultant and the author of the book Short Strolls in Faith.
