The Road Paved With Good Intentions
Vol: 83 Issue: 19 Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Of course, you know where the road I am alluding to in the title leads. As the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” At the risk of over-explaining the obvious, the point here is more practical than it is theological.
If one does the wrong thing, even with the best of intentions, the end result will still be wrong. The reason is because man’s capability is limited to action and intent.
Outcomes are the exclusive province of God. Another way of saying the same thing, would be the old saying about the best way to make God laugh — make plans.
I’ve been watching with some interest the Worldnetdaily campaign to “send a message to Washington” by not voting for either candidate in the November election.
Joseph Farah has published a new book dedicated to the principle that, if we don’t vote for either candidate, then next time around, maybe we’ll get the one we want.
The book, entitled “None Of The Above” argues that this year is exactly the right year to “cast the ultimate protest vote.” According to a promotional blurb on WND’s website;
“I think all the experts are in for a big shock this year,” says Farah. “This is not just another presidential election year. This is a year of revolt. This is a year of grass-roots rebellion. Because this movement is happening spontaneously, without any leaders, the media and even the campaigns have been slow to recognize the extent of the disgust and revulsion voters are feeling. I know one of these two candidates is going to win, but the real story of this election may end up being the way so many Americans say, ‘No thank you, none of the above.'”
WND claims it commissioned a Zogby poll “for the purpose of gauging voter discontent’ the results of which WND describes as, ‘far more stunning and far more persuasive than this anecdotal poll’.
WND says that some 43% of its readers plan to follow Farah’s lead and not vote for either candidate. Other promo spots for Farah’s book bear titles like, “2008: A Time For Resistance, Rebellion, Radicalism”; “What They’re Saying About None of the Above” and; “None of the Above Choice Gains Approval”.
It may sell a lot of books for WND. But at what price to the nation?
Assessment:
Let me say this first: I don’t believe that not voting for either candidate will accomplish anything positive for America.
If it sends any message at all, it is that both party candidates can comfortably ignore the views of the conservative right — since they won’t get their vote in any case.
Instead, we’ll continue to have guys like Ross Perot hand over the election to guys like Bill Clinton — courtesy of well-intentioned conservatives trying to “send a message.”
The only message sent in the 92 and 96 elections was that if the Democrats can get a conservative third-party candidate to pull votes from the other side, then it only takes 41% of the popular vote to win.
Without a third-party candidate, the Democrats would have to get more than half the votes. It is not easy to fool half the country into voting to raise their own taxes, while at the same time, agreeing to sacrifice the next generation of workers on the altar of ‘choice’.
After all, as Lincoln observed, you can’t fool ALL the people, ALL the time. (Actually, you only have to fool half of them (with a 3rd party conservative candidate, LESS than half), and THEN only for the last half of an election year.)
One has to wonder WHY 2008 is the perfect year for conservatives to waste their vote. Why not 2000 or 2004 — when there was a bit less at stake domestically?
The next president will determine the majority worldview of the Supreme Court for generations to come. It is more than probable that the next four years will see two, or maybe three of the most liberal justices on the court either retire or die in office.
Justice John Paul Stevens is rated THE most liberal jurist on the Supreme Court. He is 87 years old. He will almost certainly be replaced during the next presidential term.
His replacement will be named by either by John McCain or Barack Obama.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is rated the second most liberal jurist on the Court after Justice Stevens, who is 76 years old.
In all, there are five Supreme Court justices on the north side of 70 — four of them are liberals who support the Roe v. Wade decision.
If Barack Obama names Ginsburg and Stevens replacements, abortion will remain the law of the land for decades more.
Let’s get real for a minute. If enough people vote “none of the above” — then those appointments will be filled by Barack Obama.
WND claims to be fiercely independent and non-partisan — and I believe that to be true. They tell the truth. One could make that same argument about Fox News.
Some years back, somebody ran a survey of the five major 6:00 news programs, categorizing them as either left or right-leaning. No surprise that CNN and the Big Three leaned left.
What was a surprise was that “Brit Hume’s Special Report” was rated both the most liberal and the most conservative. That can only happen if one reports from BOTH perspectives.
So, here’s the problem. The truth always favors the conservative position. That is why WND is the number 1 news website and why Fox News is the number 1 cable news station.
Since the truth tends to favor the “conservative” (meaning ‘not Democrat’) position, AND since WND tends to tell the truth, it means that Farah’s “none of the above” campaign will affect a lot more potential McCain voters than it will Obama voters.
Even if they are registered independents, a likely Obama voter is an unlikely WND reader. The WND poll now running breaks down like this:
Those who are either likely McCain voters, or those who said they’ll join the ‘None of the Above’ protest vote, statistically make up 100% of those who voted in the poll.
There are five choices in the poll that indicate a preference for Obama. There are three choices that indicate a preference for McCain. Of those who indicated a preference, 21% favored John McCain.
0% (that would be ZERO percent) indicated that they intended to vote for Obama. The remaining 79% intend, according to the poll, are in solidarity with Farah’s ‘none of the above.’
So, that gives you the WND reader demographic. Mostly conservatives who ordinarily would vote against Barack Obama on principle.
So, what happens if it catches on across the country? Even Farah cheerfully admits it will mean four more years of a Democrat-controlled Congress PLUS a Barack Hussein Obama administration.
“Barack Obama is possibly the worst major-party candidate ever to be nominated to run for the presidency,” he says. “I understand his still largely unknown but extremist views will hurt the country. But, as I explain in my book, McCain will actually be worse for the country in the long run. A victory by McCain, whose positions on many of the major issues of the day parallel Obama’s, will actually forestall the day of reckoning America desperately needs to right its teetering ship of state.”
I’m not intending on picking a fight with Joe Farah or WND. (I did that once many years ago and I am still paying for it to this day).
But I suppose it all depends on whether or not one wants America to ‘have a day of reckoning’ that will reverberate for decades to come. A ‘day of reckoning’ under a President Obama could mean anything from a total surrender to radical Islam to the total collapse of our economy.
That seems a rather high price to saddle our kids with so that we can ‘send a message’ that we’re willing to bite off our own nose to spite our face .
It is one thing to have a liberal Democrat in the White House. It is another thing for him to control a rubber-stamp Congressional majority. For eight years, the Democrats have held up virtually every federal judicial appointment, backlogging the judicial system by creating a critical shortage of judges. The strategy is to wait for the Dems to capture the White House.
For liberal activists in the Congress, it is the “perfect storm” so to speak, and they’ve worked hard to get the timing just right. The situation is desperate — the next president will HAVE to fill all these vacancies.
So, in one administration, the federal courts can be packed with judicial activists who can legislate from the bench for life.
Or it can be packed with conservative jurists who will ALSO set the direction of the American justice system for decades to come.
It all depends on who is sitting in the Oval Office come January 20, 2009. If WND’s ‘none of the above’ campaign succeeds, (unless Hillary manages to steal the nomination next week), it is an absolute certainty that his name will be Barack Hussein Obama. Because the Democrats aren’t going to vote ‘none of the above’.
But they are sure hoping that we will.
Omegaletter 