Steve Deace made an interesting point on his show today. They were talking about the tendency for some people to vote purely along cultural lines, even when they disagree with almost everything that “their” candidate stands for—or in other words, people who vote Democrat “because we are Democrats” or Republican “because we are Republicans.” In that context, he posed the question: in the Fetterman-Oz race, where Fetterman clearly is not mentally fit for the job, would he and his co-hosts have voted for the Fetterman candidate if the R and the D were reversed?
They all admitted that yes, they would have plugged their nose and pulled the lever for the incompetent candidate over the one from the party that is, in their words, advancing a demonic agenda. In other words, when you’re in the midst of a “cold civil war” (I don’t really like that term, but it is gaining traction for a reason), the most important thing is to close ranks and defeat the other side, no matter how bad your own guys may be.
With the way our politics are trending, I think there are a lot of people on Team Red and Team Blue who see it that way. I also think there are a lot of people on Team Don’t-Talk-To-Me-About-Politics who despise that, and are deliberately voting against the partisan firebrands because they are such firebrands. And that’s laying aside the question of voter fraud, which is really starting to piss me off. Seriously, if Arizona were a developing country, our State Department and half the NGOs in Washington would be crying foul right now and declaring that Arizona is no longer a democratic nation capable of holding free and fair elections. But I digress.
The discussion made me think about something my wife said about the abortion debate, how the deeper problem is that we only ever frame it in terms of what is legal, not in terms of what is good. By focusing on the law and on what is or should be permissible we overlook things like the rape victim who decides not to get an abortion, but put the child up for adoption instead, or the struggling young mother who doesn’t want to get an abortion, but doesn’t feel like she has any other option.
This tendency that have to make everything about politics, or everything about the law, is very convenient for those agendas that are seeking to subvert our individual liberty and sovereignty, and turn us from citizens into mere subjects and wards of the state. Under these circumstances, the more we look for a political solution, or turn to a political savior, the more we play into the factions with the anti-freedom agenda.
In other words, we don’t just have a political problem in this country: politics is the problem. If our families were strong, our culture were wholesome and uplifting, our churches (or mosques, or temples) were full, and our money were based on honest value, our politics would not be so toxic and divisive, because we wouldn’t feel like we needed our politicians to save us.
Of course, if this is true, it means that the partisan divide is merely symptomatic of a much deeper political problem. Even if one side got their savior, be it Trump, or Desantis, or Bernie Sanders—or dare I say, Barack Obama—the underlying issue would remain. And what is that issue? I suspect it has to do with our transformation from a nation of citizens into a nation of subjects, or of debt-serfs subjugated to a fundamentally dishonest fiat money system.
At the end of the day, we get the politicians that we deserve and are willing to put up with. Even the most totalitarian dictator only rules because of the will of the people. When enough people are willing to risk everything to stand up to him, that is the day that he falls. Likewise, it’s not our “sacred democracy” that makes us free. God made us free. The state cannot grant us the freedom that God has already given us; it can only take our freedom away.