I want to challenge this directly. This is irrelevant to conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. For full disclosure purposes, I will state that I am a conservative. I become more and more conservative, and probably lean almost to the Libertarian Party in most of my ideas, but have significant differences even with them in certain areas. What I'm writing about has been said by me and others who fall all over the political map. They are voting for one candidate over another because the candidate for whom they are voting is the lesser of two evils.
I want to look at this from a moral perspective.
Let's get some definitions: I define evil by the traditional, Augustinian definition as the absence of good. A thing cannot be evil in and of itself, of its own power. Something is evil only in so far as it lacks goodness. When you hear me discuss something as "evil," that is how that word should be interpreted. In what I am writing here, something that is evil means that there is some goodness lacking in it. It may not be completely devoid of goodness, but there is goodness lacking in it somehow. Secondly, morality means in the context of this essay a deliberate act of the will. In other words, to be moral is to make a choice. In order for something to have a moral quality, it must involve a deliberate choice that a person makes. A person must set his or her will in a certain direction in order for the person to be held responsible for the choice on a moral level.
With these two definitions in mind, morally, we are not to do evil by an act of the will. To will to do evil is to sin, which separates us from God, one another, and creation. Even those who do not believe in God, but believe that there are things that are good and evil based on their own philosophical construct, would agree with the basic, generic moral edict, "A person should not will to do evil."
So here's the first part of the statement: "I’m voting for…because this person is really the lesser of two evils." See where I'm going here? To vote for someone because that person is the lesser of two evils is to will evil. It's like saying, "Well, I could have shot the person in the gut and let him slowly bleed to death, but I chose to shoot the person in the head so it would be over more quickly. It was the lesser of two evils." Either way, you've still killed another person.
If you have two choices in front of you, and both are evil, then to choose either one is to choose evil, and thus you have done something immoral. If in the election, you see that all candidates are evil, and you choose one of them, then you are choosing an evil. You have set your will to choose what you perceive to be an evil for our country. That is an immoral act. It would be better for you not to vote in that circumstance, than to do an evil act by voting for someone that you see as evil.
Now I know that people are going to say, "Well, what I actually mean by that is that I don't see either candidate as ideal." Ok. That's a very different thing than saying you see them as evil, and you're voting for the lesser of two evils. Why is this important?
Our political discourse, especially this election season, has degraded to the point where we are more interested in discussing what is wrong with the candidates we don't like, than by talking about why our particular candidate is better. This was gently pointed out to me after a recent facebook rant I posted about Obama. It is no secret that I don't like Obama. I think he has spent American taxpayer money foolishly. I think that he has interfered with the recovery that the American economy could have experienced had he not put his policies in place. I think that he has weakened America through his foreign policy approach. I think that he is a fool in the biblical sense and a narcissist in the psychological sense. Frankly, he scares me.
To vote for Mitt Romney, however, because he is not President Obama, is just as foolish. I want to make sure that what I said is understood. For me to vote for Mitt Romney simply because he is not Obama is just as foolish. In the same sense, for someone to vote for Obama because he is not Mitt Romney is just as foolish. It's not voting for the person that is foolish, but voting for a person because that person is not another person that is foolish. I'm not making a positive moral choice with my vote in that case. I'm simply voting for someone that I think is less of screw up than Obama would be. To vote for someone because you think he is less of a screw up than the other is to still vote for someone that you think is a screw up. You're not really doing anything good for your country. It's like hiring someone for a job because you think that person will screw up your company less than everybody else. Why would you hire that person at all?
There is a solution to this.
First, we have to get away from the idea that there are only two political parties. The reason there are two dominant political parties is because the American voters allow there to be two dominant political parties. If the American voters were serious about making real change in the government, then the American voters probably need to start looking at Third Party candidates and voting for them. There is the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Constitution Party, the Socialist Party, and others out there. So the first premise of the idea that we have to choose the lesser of two evils is wrong. There are more than 2 choices. Until the American voters decide to do the work of looking beyond what is propagandized in the media, then we will continue to suffer under a two (dominant) party system.
Secondly, we have to get away from the idea that voting Third Party is a waste of a vote. We need to ask ourselves seriously about why we vote. I want my candidate to win. No doubt. To say, however, that voting for a Third Party candidate is a waste of my vote because the Third Party candidate will lose is to say that everyone who votes for the candidates who lose has wasted his or her vote. I want my candidate to win, but I don't vote so my candidate will win.
Thirdly, we have to get away from the idea that not voting is a bad thing. I will repeat what I said earlier: if in your conscience you feel that to vote for either candidate is to vote for "the lesser of two evils," it is better for you not to vote at all. We must begin to look at our vote as a moral choice that we are making. If we are Christian, we must believe that we will be held culpable for our decision about whom we elect to represent us. What we are saying with our vote is, "I support this candidate and what this candidate says he or she is going to do regarding life issues, financial issues, foreign policy issues, and the other areas over which the person will have influence in government." With your vote for a candidate, you are saying you support that candidate's positions. If you can't support any candidate's positions, don't vote, or write in your own name.
My vote is my expression of my opinion about what policies are best for the future of my nation. To vote is to make a moral choice for what I believe is the good of our country. What that means is that I then have to find out who the candidates are and for what they stand in order to make that moral decision. If neither of the two major party candidates reflect my vision, it is my responsibility to do the research to find the candidate who does.
Is any candidate going to be ideal? Of course not. I have to vote, though, for the candidate whom I think is best, not for the one I think is the least worst. I can honestly say that if I cannot find a candidate who I feel reflects what I think is the right direction for our country, then I will not vote. I would rather not vote, than to vote for someone that is the lesser of the two evils. I can only find the candidate who best reflects what I think is the best direction for our nation if I know their platforms.
This means I have to work hard. I have to be able to answer the questions: "What do I think is the right economic policy for the country?" "What is the situation of the world right now and how should we approach foreign nations?" "What are the great moral decisions we face today as a nation (i.e., abortion, gun control, care for the poor, the illicit substance epidemic, etc), where do I rate this on a list of priorities, and what do I think is the right approach to those moral questions we face as a people?" After I have researched and come up with what I think are the right answers to these questions, I have to research the candidates, and figure out which ones reflect most closely my own vision.
I've brought out this quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson before and I will probably bring it out again: "The worst threat to the republic is an uninformed electorate." We, the voting people of the United States, have to get beyond the spoon fed propaganda of all of the media, whether it's NBC and CNN who are biased toward liberal, or Fox News that is biased towards conservative. Even so called "non-partisan" or "non-biased" sites like FactCheck.org need to be fact checked. We have to do the research ourselves. We have to be informed. It's the only way the United States is going to work.
And it is the only way I can cast a moral vote.
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