Gregg Krupa from the Detroit News interviewed me two weeks ago for an article on values voters in Michigan which was published in the October 28 issue of the Detroit News. The article is linked here.
The tenor of the piece might lead readers to believe that I and others quoted in the article plan to set aside our convictions and vote for Barack Obama. I can’t speak for anyone else who is quoted in the article, but BECAUSE of my values I plan to cast my ballot for John McCain and Sarah Palin.
Krupa quotes me in the article as saying, “For many of the evangelical voters who supported George Bush in 2004, today, there is one word: Betrayal. The listeners who call this program on a daily basis feel that somewhere along the line he lost track of the commitment they feel he made to them to get their agenda done on consitutional issues like abortion and marriage.”
While Krupa quoted me accurately, he only quoted me partially. The broader context of the quote expresses my view that, while Roe v. Wade has not been overturned under President Bush, statistics do show a significant decrease in the number of abortions during President Bush’s two terms in office. The point I was making was that while conservatives may be disappointed in the president, the reality is that President Bush has made significant advances on the culture of life issues important to values voters, therefore don’t look for values voters to abandon John McCain for the pro-abortion Barack Obama.
Chris,
“Reagan and both Bushes were pro-Life. And what has changed? And like Jeff said, even if the next President appoints supreme court justices, the decision will just go back to the states. ”
The difference is that at least with the decision back at the states, the people will get a voice, they will choose (funny how pro-choice people want the choice to have an abortion, but don’t want people to have a choice in voting about the issue). That is a world of difference from the abortion “right” that has been forced on us by judicial fiat.
If you vote for Obama, you are voting for someone who has the most radical pro-abortion position we have ever had in this country, who will make abortion more accessible than ever. At least try to be intellectually honest and quit saying you are pro-life but are voting for a pro-abortion candidate.
A Message from another “Chris” …*: )
http://homewardbound-cb.blogspot.com/2008/11/can-i-be-christian-and-conservative.html
I think yesterday when my pastor said that if we vote for Obama we have the blood of unborn babies on our hands and that we are better off not voting than voting for Obama, I made my final decision to vot for the Democratic nominee. Also when Dr. Dobson posted his 16-page fear-mongering letter.
Reagan and both Bushes were pro-Life. And what has changed? And like Jeff said, even if the next President appoints supreme court justices, the decision will just go back to the states.
And let’s also be clear: Obama is not going to suddenly mandate abortions. No one is going to be required to get an abortion and doctors are not going to be forced to carry around hangers. As for forcing doctors to perform abortions–don’t most abortions take place at abortion clinics? And don’t the doctors and nurses working there already begin working there knowing what is expected of them?
I’m pro-Life. But right now, Pro-Choice is legal. Maybe instead of wasting time overturning a law that’s been in effect for 30 years, we should be encouraging people to choose differently when they are deciding on having an abortion.
Jeff,
I liked you better when you were solidly in Baldwin’s corner (just a little jab!) 😉
Regarding the Republican Party being for big business, why are Warren Buffet, George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs (Al Gore is on the board of Apple) and so many other big financial guys all Democrats? Why are the richest Senators all Democrats? We do all have a beef with the lack of progress we saw under Republican control. The big problem is that they did not govern as conservatives and they have now paid the price.
Personally, if you want to vote for Obama, go right ahead. I am not concerned with just one vote. If fact, I’m not really concerned about how this election turns out. Certainly, I do not want Obama to win, but even if it happens, it just means that God allowed to happen for a particular purpose. God will receive the glory and that means all is right in the universe! Besides, if we are putting our trust in a particular candidate or a particular political party, isn’t possible we are misplacing our trust by not trusting God?
Just remember, things really didn’t start heading south until the Democrats took over Congress. They can’t be trusted either. Every party and candidate has it’s flaws.
Also remember, snarky is not my thing, so if this sounds that way, It’s not mean to be. Anger never solved anything. Prayer certainly does! And we need to do a LOT more of it! Soli Deo Gloria!
Pixel? Were you gone?
Seriously Jeff, plummeting oil prices and gas prices have taken away THE strongest issue for McCain, domestic energy policy. Now that the sheep can get cheap gas again, the idea of drilling for oil has passed from the memory of the majority. Falling oil prices do nothing but hurt McCain and help Obama. If gas were still over $4/gallon McCain could point out the utter lack of an energy plan by Obama. Not that it would matter because the media would make sure the focus was on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe instead of Obama’s lack of experience, lack of concrete plans for any issue and his far left agenda.
Back to typing up your manifesto.
Who are you hiding from? And why?
Ok, I gave it a week without posting. As this election nears I am starting to have a change of heart. I have been for Chuck Baldwin because he is not John McCain. All my life I have been conditioned to believe that the Republican Party is our party. They support our values, or read Christian values. My eyes have been opened to the reality that idea is a fallacy. I have come to realize that the Republican Party is a party of big business and hey USE the social conservative issues to keep us coming back. We have been told for years that the goal is to reverse Roe V Wade as if this will do anything. As if it will make abortion illegal as the law of the land. Overturning Roe v Wade will only put the decision back in the states hands and getting an abortion will still be as accessible as it is now, just a little more inconvenient. As I grow in understanding of how my Savior would do things I realize that the Christ like thing to do is to live with the awful law and try to do what eve we can to make the conditions of the land more favorable to having less abortions. I will no longer let the carrot of social values be used by politicians. As I unpack all the other social reasons to be a republican I find myself disagreeing with the way that these issues are fought or I disagree with the position altogether. Gay Marriage – We should have proposed civil unions years ago now we are in a mess where gay marriage is gaining great acceptance. Global Warming and environmental issues – for the life of me I cannot understand why evangelicals criticize Al Gore for this efforts in this area other than he is there political enemy. Poverty – Trickle down will never work we need a system that is a hand up not a hand out. I think wise choices in government can do this; the church has already given up the ghost on this in favor of the mega church mindset. Pro Life – Life is precious at all stages, in and out of the womb. I want fewer families effected by dead loved ones coming home from war. I want fewer families broken up because of financial struggles. Family values, let’s look at the candidates personal lives and see who represents family. Obama married once to his first wife, still married. McCain, after standing by his side while he was a POW his first wife got into a terrible accident and after many surgeries was no longer the trophy wife he once had, therefore after fooling around while she was still in the hospital he left his wife for his current. Nice Family values. I want fewer abortions because mothers feel that they actually can provide for their unexpected child. So as I write this, I am giving serious thought to doing a reverse Bradley effect in the booth, except my issue is not race, it is values, I am actually thinking that my christian values are more represented in the democratic party. I am going to apply Paul Edwards method here a use the, if I do what I think is wrong then it is sin method. Definitely voting for McCain would do that, I am still mulling over Chuck Baldwin but I am actually giving serious consideration to Barak Obama. The first time in my life I have ever considered a non republican candidate, it is also the first time that my eyes have been opened to the Christian right and the more political aspirations than values. I say all this to emphasize I hate abortion, as Bush said about the gas prices a while back. If I had a magic wand I would make them go away, but I don’t, I have realized that a political means to this awful ends will not solve the issue.
*NOTE – have you noticed gas prices lately? watch what happens after the election. If anyone thinks there is not market manipulation in that sense they are naive. Big Oil wants us to forget the days of $4.00 per gallon; they will be back by Christmas. They will use the excuse of market demand, etc, etc. They say right now that demand has gone down? Really? in 3 weeks demand has gone down to where gas is half the cost of what is was in early Oct. Very shady still but it might convince enough people that the economy is not THAT bad and might consider pulling the level for their candidate.
OK, I had to post that I will go back in hiding for a while. God Bless
Chris, you are changing the argument mid-stream. You appealed to your Christian conscience in voting for Obama because while abortion is “ghastly””, it is overly emotionalized and really we are commanded to feed the poor. Your words:
“I believe there is a biblical basis to “spreading the wealth,” given the teachings in the Word about caring for the poor and needy and the warnings about wealth.”
Now you seem to be abandoning the “love one another”=increase the size and scope of the government argument in favor of old school liberalism. That at least makes more sense. You said:
“Yes, there are churches and individuals who give. But church groups and non-profits cannot create health care, cannot fund college education and cannot form the social structures needed to help people get vocational training, find jobs, start small businesses and get out of the cycle of poverty they are in.”
The question then becomes, if the church is not able to carry out this mandate, is this the role of the government? Where in our system of government, where under the Constitutionally mandated powers and responsibilities of the Federal government do we see that it is the role of the government to provide job training, to feed the poor, to pay for college?
Like Obama, you seem long on rhetoric and pretty short on specifics. What is going to be different about Obama’s big government liberalism/neo-socialism and the big government liberalism that has failed spectacularly over the past century to lift people out of poverty? The poor will feel “hope” while standing in the unemployment line? The government has utterly failed to improve the lives of the poor despite the trillions of dollars poured into D.C. and it can be argued that it has become worse. Why is that going to improve with another dollar? If we give the department of this or that just a little more money, then things will get better! Or is it the case that the government cannot and should not be relied upon to lift people out of poverty?
The notion that conservatives only care about being pro-life when people are in the womb is tired and ignores reality. Reality is that big government has an insatiable appetite and never delivers the nirvana promised, no matter how much money we shovel into it’s maw.
The proper link to Al Mohler’s blog entry is http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=2688
Chris,
Is it your argument that conservatives are anything but pro-life when it comes to born citizens? I am having a hard time following your argument, unless you are saying Conservatives are not pro-life because of Iraq or enforcing the death penalty (in which case you would have to say the Bible is not pro-life and I doubt you want to go there).
I can see someone not supporting this War in Iraq and maintaining a biblical position (though I would disagree with them politically). I cannot see opposing just war in principle (Rom 13).
I think Al Mohler rightly refers to Abortion as “fetal homicide.” Nothing compares to that, and no one biblically informed can turn a blind eye to the issue. See Dr. Mohler’s blog at http://www.albertmohler.com/blog for some very well-put statements.
Thanks for that reference Nancy. It was an excellent piece – as also were his replies to the “comments”.
I came across the blog that had the post that I link below…this young father has wisdom beyond his years and a biblical knowledge to go with it…this is just one post you might want to read more…they are all excellent!
http://homewardbound-cb.blogspot.com/2008/06/helping-poor-biblically.html
I agree that abortion is horrible. However, I also do not feel that a life is more valuable in the womb than outside of it, nor is the life of an adult any less valuable than the life of an unborn child. If we are going to be Pro-Life, then we must be consistently Pro-Life and until either party shows me something consistent, I refuse to let it be the one thing that sways my vote.
Yes, there are churches and individuals who give. But church groups and non-profits cannot create health care, cannot fund college education and cannot form the social structures needed to help people get vocational training, find jobs, start small businesses and get out of the cycle of poverty they are in.
I don’t believe that the majority of people who are unemployed or homeless are there because of choice or laziness, particularly in this day and age. I know many people who have been laid off or lost their jobs who want to work but simply don’t have the training. I know people who want to feed their family but cannot get a good job because they were in a poor school district and had to care for their families rather than go to college. It is policies proposed by Barack Obama that will help create improvement; they don’t reward failure. It’s a hand-up, not a hand out.
A few points must be made. First, abortion is more than “ghastly” and “emotional.” It is the taking of innocent, indefensible life that mirrors genocides–some of our world’s worst expressions of depravity- in any nation.
Second, while there is much poverty and suffering here in the US, when/if you travel overseas you become very grateful for the compassionate structures we have seen established in our society.
Third, statistics show that conservatives well outgive liberals in their charitable giving and activity. It is just not accurate to make the divide. Again, an informed conscience is a great tool.
Finally, as Arthur says, the most compassionate thing to do is to offer and enable improvement, not reward failure. The most stark Scriptural example is 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.”
Chris,
There is a world of difference between the church feeding the poor and confiscating the wealth of some and distributing it to others by force. Jesus was not a ancient Palestinian Che Guevera. To make the leap from the Christian mandate to care for the widows and the hungry, and arrive at socialism takes a pretty serious suspension of common sense and exegesis. The government is not the church, and vice versa and to assume that Gospel commandments mean that we should elect unbelievers to redistribute wealth from other unbelievers to the poor is naive. The church absolutely should do more to care for the poor, but not as part of a socialist mandate. When the church shared all things in common, they brought their goods voluntarily and laid them at the apostles feet. If you think the government is anything like that, try NOT “volunteering” your tax dollars!
I would also like to point out that far from helping the poor, the liberal social agenda has instead fostered a systemic dependence on the government that instead of getting people out of poverty has led to generation after generation of people enslaved under the “benevolent” hand of Uncle Sam. From education to welfare to the latest financial bailout, the more money government gets control over, the more messed up things get. The most compassionate thing we could do would be to get people off of government assistance instead of perpetuating a failed system by throwing more and more money down the liberal sinkhole. The War on Poverty failed decades ago but the left has a vested interest in perpetuating it to ensure a reliable voting block.
2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
If we are not seeing the promise…maybe we have not met the condition.
Arthursido,
I am a Calvinist, but I am a Christian first (I don’t feel you need to be a Calvinist to be a true Christian). As a Christian, my conscience leads me to believe that I should support a political party that is displaying compassion and assistance to people in need, not helping the rich get richer or expand the size of the American Empire. I believe that it is morally unacceptable that we have people who earn billions of dollars a year and live in utter extravagance while we have people who cannot get jobs, cannot feed their children and cannot afford to get better. Martin Luther King Jr. himself said that a country that spends more on weapons of war than on programs of social outreach has begun to lose its soul.
I’m not Obama’s biggest fan. But I don’t feel we can endure another 4 years of Republican leadership, especially with the state our nation is in. I believe there is a biblical basis to “spreading the wealth,” given the teachings in the Word about caring for the poor and needy and the warnings about wealth. There are many charitable institutions and churches, but they cannot provide help on the scale that the needy require. I also believe we need to start taking serious measures about the environment; regardless of whether or not Global Warming is a myth (I believe there’s some validity to it, but also that some play it out of proportion), it just makes good sense to take care of our environment. And I believe we need to have a plan to begin getting our soldiers out of Iraq (although Obama will find that it’s not going to be possible to work at the time table he wants).
I know the abortion issue will probably come up since I know the fear is that when a Democrat takes office he will require all women to have abortions and allow only gay people to get married. And I’m Pro-Life. But I will not let that be the deciding issue until we have a party present a consistent ethic of life–one that protects babies both before AND after birth, provides for health care, works for peace instead of cheering on war, finds a workable alternative to the death penalty and outlaws euthanasia. Abortion’s a ghastly thing, but we have to be honest that it’s really been made such an issue because of the emotion it brings with it…I hate abortion, but I also feel we can begin to see a decrease in abortion through other work, namely better counseling, improved programs for single mothers, better sex education, taking away the expense and red tape surrounding adoption and most importantly having the church act compassionately and honestly with single mothers.
Chris & anyone else…
Regardless of which candidate or party that, at present, you feel the Holy Spirit is leading you to vote for, I invite you to follow the lead of Christians across the nation as we humble ourselves before God in a day of fasting and prayer for the future of our country on Monday, November 3.
There’s nothing like some spiritual eyesalve to allow us to see God’s perspective a little more clearly. May we all soberly and humbly seek Him, and lay our concerns for the nation at His feet.
2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people who, are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Paul,
Thank you for taking a clear stand. As Biblical believers, we are currently maligned as “single-issue voters” but a better designation would be “Priority Issue Voters” or “Voters by Conscience.” I want to encourage your readers to listen to our pastor, Dave Doran’s sermon from this past Sunday, “A Christian Conscience in the Voting Booth” which can be downloaded for free from http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=102708112531. Given the comment by Chris that his “conscience leads him to Obama,” this is only helpful for a conscience informed and guided by Scripture.
Chris, as a Calvinist what leads you to Obama? What do you think he will do as President that would mesh with your worldview as a Calvinist?
Hi Mr. Palnau. I’m a newspaper reporter and I’m also a Christian (I also plan on voting for Obama, but only by the thinnest of margins–and that is not antithetical to my beliefs at all). I’m sure you enjoy reading the newspaper or turning on television news from time to time and would realize that they are not all godless people. Just the ones on Fox News (little news humor there). And it’s spelled Couric, by the way. Also, “thieves” has 2 e’s. Just for future reference.
As for the article, Krupa didn’t do anything unethical. His story was about values voters and he turned to Paul to get opinions about values voters and how they were reacting; he did not necessarilly care about who Paul himself is voting for (as it probably is apparent that anyone with a microphone AND a Bible is born a Republican and wouldn’t vote Democrat if Moses himself came back and ran as a liberal).
It wasn’t unethical journalism, but it was stupid journalism. The reporter should have at least made passing reference to the fact that Paul is a Republican as a way to properly identify him. But it wasn’t unethical journalism; just sloppy reporting.
And FYI I am a Calvinist, Baptist-bred Christian. And my conscience leads me to Obama; not that it’s wrong to vote Republican. Just that I think the Holy Spirit leads people different ways in politics to work for God’s purpose.
What is the matter with you American Republicans that you are so gullible as to give the time of day to the media reps wanting to interview you people!! Can you not see they are sheep in wolve’s clothing, slimy snakes in the grass, trying to beguile you in the same manner as the serpent did to Eve. I still recall what Katy Currik did when she went to Focus on the Family Headquarters to interview James Dobson. She had gone there with devious intentions to twist and turn the information she gathered and use it to present to the world what contempt she really had for that ministry. Mr. Krupa is cut of the same cloth as the rest of the LIBERAL godless, without conscience, lying media. Why entertain these people and give them the benefit of the doubt that they will see your side objectively? These thives of integrity have redefined fairness and objectivity. Trying to defend yourself will only provide more fuel for them to augment their mockery of any decent and critical thinker’s values.
The Scripture makes it very clear that in the latter days these evil doers will wax even worse with time. May God help the U.S. and Canada.