Single Issue Voting

While the frenzy that marked the recent crowning of Obama reached ever higher pinnacles of man-worship, I found myself unhappily canvassing my friends for their pick. "Unhappily", because I felt it wasn't much of a choice (and still don't), but I kept at it regardless ... in hopes that someone could give me a reason to prefer one over the other.

I knew that Obama was a Democrat, and I'm no fan of Democrats. Their social agenda frequently feels like the unofficial and Heaven-damned policies and pleasures of Babylon. And yet, a perusal of the actions of recent Republicans reveals them to be from the same species of person-hating and war-mongering international thuggery that marked Alexandros, Adolf, di Buonaparte, and Iosif. Who knows, maybe Cyrus, Sargon, and Xerxes too.

I wanted a reason - a good reason - to prefer one over the other. Something better than my horror at what Bush Jr. has unleashed on the world and a consequent knee-jerk reaction to McCain, Bush's successor. But time and again, I found my (conservative) friends whole-heartedly embracing McCain. And time and again, I was confounded by their resolve to reduce their decision-making process to a single issue.

Naturally, this single issue refers to abortion.

Abortion is a horror and a travesty. In the year 2000, 857 000 children were legally aborted in the US (source). Like the Carthaginians and the other Baal-worshippers of old, for the sake of insignificant gains in this life Westerners have chosen to sacrifice their children upon the altar of Moloch. It is the ultimate parody of the Gospel: reaping life now in order to suffer at the Last Judgment; laying down another's life for oneself.

And yet, and yet.

... There are more than a single issue at work in the world today, and some of them involve issues and consequences no less horrific than abortion. I mean war. I mean the elimination of freedoms. I mean yet more war. And I mean rendering ourselves up for ridicule (Christian adulation of Sarah Palin jumps to mind) in a world that is increasingly hostile to Christians, where Christianity rarely reflects anything of the Gospel of Christ.

... The [alleged] proponents of pro-life policies (the Republicans) sponsor at the same time some heinously pro-death policies.

• Since 2003, between 90 000 and 98 000 Iraqi civilians have been killed (s) - total deaths probably exceed a million (s). And who knows how many will eventually die from the decision to employ depleted uranium in American missiles.
  
• Since 2001, between 9 000 and 27 000 Afghani civilians have been killed (s) - I don't know total deaths.
• From 2001-2006 374 people were executed in American jails (s).

I don't know what other American-sponsored deaths have occurred in the years of Republican power (and many of the figures above can and will be debated). The point is that the Republicans have bloody hands. Choosing to vote for them because they oppose abortion sounds good, but it is likely to be no more than a sop to Christian conscience. A Republican government has not been shown to reduce our infant mortality, but it certainly has raised world mortality.

... I see two consequences to single issue voting. Neither of them is the desired outcome of abortion outlawry.

First, this forces Christians to bed down with the proponents of death: the military industrial complex, warmongers, apologists for capital punishment. It forces them to side with Big Pharma, Big Business, Big Agriculture, the enemies to the little man, the individual, the family.

Second, this leads, and I think inevitably, to a cynical manipulation of an often unreasoning body of people who will accept any idiot so long as he (or she) mouths the right words. A chilling but timely reminder: it wasn't atheists or leftist social engineers that elected Hitler to power, but conservative Lutheran Christians.

- V.