Can we agree that both parties are offering candidates with some less-than-perfect personality traits, and that both parties have lied on numerous occasions?
If that’s the case, then how does one decide how to vote in November? I suggest by looking beyond the personalities and the accusations, and focusing instead on the policies that each party supports, which usually are written down, straight forward, and hard to lie about.
Another reason to do so is that it is these policies, if and when they’re implemented by either law or executive order, that will most impact all of us, and for the longest period.
My hope with this post is to move beyond the Personality Contest arguments that dominate the discussion, and instead examine where each side comes down on several important issues.
National Debt/Budget Deficits. Tragically, I don’t think either party has the courage to tackle this most serious issue. See my recent blog post on the consequences of ignoring our debt, as well as some possible common-sense solutions.
The Southern Border. We don’t have a border. In the four years before January, 2021, border security was imperfect, but effective. Since then, thanks to official policies enacted by Democrats, we have had no border security. Roughly 12 million people have entered our country, about whom we know almost nothing. If one half of one percent of them are violent, or terrorists, that’s 60,000 bad guys. On 9/11 there were 19.
This failure has terrible implications beyond just the border itself, impacting National Security, Drug Deaths, Child Trafficking, Street Crime, and enormous future entitlement costs. It is totally unacceptable and difficult to correct, but with the right leadership, still possible.
Climate Change, Fossil Fuels, and The Economy. I enjoy reading Judith Curry, previously the Chair at The School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The Georgia Institute of Technology. She writes and speaks on the huge uncertainties related to what has really caused the Earth to warm for 200 years, as well as on the incredible costs in terms of lost production and human suffering caused by assigning the blame to fossil fuels, then trying to eliminate them. For a relatively brief summary of her beliefs, see her recent speech and her very understandable PowerPoint slides.
It is insane to goad or to force everyone in our nation to give up our abundant and relatively clean and inexpensive fossil fuels for a possible but uncertain outcome many decades in the future, and to prevent Third World populations from enjoying better lives for the same unproven, elitist reason. Please, read Professor Curry.
So the only Energy Policy which makes sense to me is “All of the Above,” substituting battery, wind or solar power when and if it makes economic sense—but for the near term, “Drill, Baby, Drill”. We should create a booming economy based on lower energy costs, a factor in almost every good and service, to raise the living standards and opportunities for all Americans, as well as for the wealth creation which makes more and better technology possible. Clearly that is not a Democratic policy.
Defense/Ukraine/Gaza. It would be a huge mistake, with both immediate and long-term consequences, to let thugs get away with unprovoked
aggression. The results are never good. The most immediate cases are Putin against Ukraine and Iran/Hamas/etc. against Israel. On this issue, while both political parties themselves seem committed to standing up, the two candidates both leave big questions. So this one is a toss-up. And, by the way, the argument that “we’re spending too much” on stopping this aggression would be laughable were we not so overextended in other areas and in so much debt—another bad consequence of ignoring that issue.
The Administrative State. In general, Democrats never saw a problem that could not be solved by creating more Federal rules, or empowering another agency, or spending more money. While that approach is sometimes useful in extreme cases, it has become way too commonplace, with huge consequences. Gas Mileage mandates, HVAC components, Transgender Sports, EV component sourcing, Covid mandates, DEI requirements, Student Loan forgiveness—everywhere you turn there is a government-generated rule for how we are to live, or for how business is to be conducted.
The government picks winners and losers by the funds it doles out and/or the punishments it inflicts. While Republicans are not without their own interventions, like requiring that gasoline be made from corn, in general they support less government, not more.
Tariffs. One universally agreed upon concept in classical Economic theory is that tariffs harm everyone. They cause scarce resources to be allocated imperfectly, driving up costs and prices, and depriving the world of greater production.
That said, we don’t live in a perfectly theoretical world. Moving the production of everything to China—from medicines to microchips—because they have lower labor costs may have improved worldwide resource allocation and corporate profits, but it may also prove to be a disaster for us as a nation. If China hasn’t read the same Economics textbooks and turns off the supplies, what will we do?
In general, I believe we should not utilize broad tariffs on all goods from a particular country, particularly from our long-standing friends and allies, because the result will include higher overall prices and invite retaliation, which will then multiply the problem. But we should employ tariffs—or in extreme cases outright prohibitions—where the production of a good needs to be encouraged or required here for national security or supply chain reasons. The jury is still out on whether either political party can thread this needle to balance cost against security.
Truth. This is an important topic. Let me give an example of what I mean. I haven’t seen credible evidence that the last Election was “stolen” in the sense that sufficient improper ballots were cast to change the outcome. On the other hand, between the long-running Clinton-paid Russia Collusion Hoax, the prosecution of government officials, and the 51 former Intelligence Officers’ position that Hunter Biden’s laptop was probably Russian propaganda, when the government knew it was real, enough lies were spread across the land to influence the election against the incumbent.
And all of these lies, along with three years spent covering up the current President’s mental fitness, were enthusiastically spread and multiplied by most of the traditional media, in lockstep with Democratic talking points.
So was the election stolen? No and Yes. And as I look forward, I believe it’s much harder to separate Democratic lies from truth because the majority of the press either doesn’t want to look for them, or is actively involved in the manipulation process. If you want Truth, I think it’s safer to vote for Republicans, because the press might actually do its job of truth-checking where they’re concerned, and keep them honest. Which it certainly hasn’t done with Democrats.
By the way, the words above are about the Election of 2020, not the one just stolen from millions of Democrat voters by their party bosses.
Abortion. Our founding documents are silent on abortion, though one would think that the “pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” should apply to a living but unborn American as much as to her mother.
Like all issues not mentioned in the Constitution, the logical place for addressing it is at the state level, which is where the Supreme Court and
the Republican Party have settled. Some states have, or will, pass restrictions; others will do the opposite. Perhaps over several more decades we’ll reach a true national consensus, but for now the state-by-state result appears to conform most correctly to our Constitution and our laws.
I personally oppose abortion as the premeditated murder of a child, though I recognize the need for balance where rape, incest or the true health of the mother is concerned. What I cannot imagine is advocating for the right to an abortion right up until the time of birth, when a viable baby is clearly being killed. And yet the Democratic position is always to have no restrictions on the mother’s ability to abort her baby at any time. I simply cannot vote for anyone who doesn’t understand the moral depravity of doing so.
There used to be Pro-Life Democrats, but no more. As on other middle-ground issues, the Progressives have made anything but lock-step agreement with their position to be unacceptable and intolerable.
So for me the Democratic policy positions and answers to issues are as much or more of a problem than the personality of either candidate. I can’t imagine four more years of no border and more intrusive government, no matter whose face is at the top of the ticket.
Finally, as I wrote in a post on this subject ten years ago, “As a Christian, I believe that men and women are made in the image of God, and so we have divine attributes of love, reason, choice, wisdom, etc., but we are simultaneously also fallen, sinful creatures who are inherently selfish and capable of small and great evils.” In that essay, I think I make a strong case that I will tend to vote for a Libertarian or a Conservative who supports less government run by imperfect people, rather than more. Otherwise, there will always be too much power, money and influence in the hands of a small, imperfect elite. And no matter how educated or wonderful they are, it is always true that power corrupts. We are living through that now.
Absent other information or events before November, I plan to simply pull the Republican lever for all positions. Given the Democrats’ irresponsible and damaging policies, I can do no other.
Comments