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The Long-term Consequence of Temporary Compromise
I didn’t grow up in a moral home. By kindergarten, I was tapping beer kegs. By elementary school, I was curiously inspecting my father’s bong. By junior high, I was heavily addicted to pornography with a readily available supply. And by high school, I was treating women like toilet paper. Changing wives, pinup calendars, gaming the system … I’d learned that these were just things men do. I watched my able-bodied stepfather create a permanent dent in the sofa while cashing disability checks and enjoying endless reruns of Magnum P.I. I learned how to justify deception and to take whatever you can get while letting others shoulder the cost. Naturally, I rejected responsibility and lived as I saw fit, not caring much about others, how they perceived me, or whom got trampled along the way. I learned to justify any decision if it offered temporary victory. Of course, there were times when I went too far, prompting some rare lectures from my devastated mother (whom I later learned was making some painful compromises of her own) but these were few and far between and the men always had the greater influence on me.
What do young men raised like this become? Over the last several months, it’s pained me to see how fleeting supposedly bedrock standards are when tested in the fire of potential defeat. Seemingly principled men and women — some of whom I highly respect — have spoken passionately one week of core principles, only to abruptly and wantonly set them aside a few weeks later as politically inexpedient. The very cancer they warned would destroy us was to be embraced in light of new circumstances. The wind blows, and the house made of straw dissolves in a world where behaviors not tolerated in our children are (somehow) inconsequential when exhibited writ-large in leaders.
I have four sons and three daughters. Every day of their lives, I’m keenly aware of my role in shaping their characters and I consider it my greatest privilege and my highest calling. By what standard will the men of tomorrow, growing-up in these days, measure their decisions? Will they look to their fathers and see men willing to cast aside everything they believe in for the uncertain chance of a decent judicial appointment? Will others remember seeing that their fathers would not do so? And how will those conversations go? “Forget what I said last week son, the politics have changed.” Perhaps temporary moral compromise does yield important short-term victories, but it also risks influencing a generation of men to believe that women are disposable, that respecting others is only marginally as important as seizing control, that one can buy anything (or anyone) to achieve any end, and that God’s standards are best left out of some arenas.
A generation of men like that will make the Supreme Court of it’s time an instrument of evil. They will become husbands lacking character, unfit for honorable deeds. They will produce standards where ridiculing the weak is brushed away as media demagoguery. They will create a society void of ethical restraint nor any framework for understanding the meaning of the word.
I began with examples of my father’s failings. Let me now redeem him a bit and point out that — though lacking in many areas morally — he had the wisdom of experience in others, some of which may be particularly suitable today: That one should always be quick to forgive, that complaining only makes you look the fool, that belittling others is wrong, and that if you’re going to follow a leader, be sure you know where he’s going.
Published in Culture
How does turning to God equate turning to Trump to stop Hillary? I propose turning to God and trusting Him to carry us through, regardless of who is elected which year in whatever nation.
We should be turned to G-d in all circumstances.
A prayerful disposition, though, does not relieve us of our civic duty.
Right now, the best way to preserve the free exercise of religion for G-d’s American people is to vote for Trump. Hillary has made it very plain that she intends to reduce “free exercise” down to “freedom of worship.”
Turning to Trump out of fear of Clinton is very different than turning to God out of fear. I don’t find it an exact precedent, but God also condemns corrupting alliances made out of fear. If you are clear on the moral issue, that is fine. But if one sees voting differently, telling us about the consequences of a Clinton presidency — things we know full well — do not resolve the moral issue. Fear motivating someone to do right is healthy; fear motivating someone to do something they would otherwise consider wrong is not.
Trump was not exactly encouraging about religious freedom in his acceptance speech. And boy has he embraced the agenda of the sexual revolution. None of this makes me think a vote for him is going to help. I think he will even go for people who don’t care about religious freedom in his Supreme Court picks. This is not a man we can entrust our religious freedom to. Nor is Hillary, of course. I think we’re going to have to rely on Congress and our states. And ADF and other great organizations like that. Buckle up. It’s going to get very ugly, but our faith is up to the challenge.
Trumpers and nevertrumpers can’t help but talk past each other, even when they try hard to engage each other’s arguments. They are acting from divergent premises.
Trumpers say Hillary is worse, therefore vote for Trump. All the details they argue are in support of this main point. It’s a valid point. It is enough to convince a lot of people. But not all.
Nevertrumpers say that Trump and Hillary are both so bad that they they (nevertrumpers) cannot vote for either one. This is a point whose validity is sufficient to persuade a lot of very intelligent, conservative people, many of whom I think are the best people around, including Rob, James, Mona, Jay, Jonah, Kevin Williamson, Charlie Cooke.
No one on Ricochet is going to convince me with a logical argument that I haven’t already heard and dismissed as insufficient. Adding petty insults to the argument will not help.
There is only one person who could possibly persuade me to switch to the Trump camp: Trump himself. He got off to a bad start yesterday by resurrecting the charge that Ted Cruz’s father was the spotter for Lee Harvey Oswald. He lost many additional points by threatening to abandon our NATO allies and praising Erdogan’s crackdown.
He has three and a half months to prove he is not a stupid, cruel, vindictive, petty man, and that he knows something about foreign or domestic policy. I’m waiting.
MWtA, Trump is 70 going on 17. He is not going to become a grown-up in 3 months. But you knew that.
Trump’s brand includes his reputation for deals. With Trump, there is the possibility that we can make a deal. What are SoCons willing to support in return for solid Supreme Court nominees?
Compare that to Hillary, whose brand includes a pledge that our traditionalist Christianity “has to change” to get in line with her Leftist Methodist approach to morality.
I strongly prefer to take our chance with Trump.