Dear Gavin,
As we have been corresponding about identity issues, and particularly the ethnic ramifications of them, it seems that another presidential election has crept up behind us unawares. Naturally someone in your position is going to ask what on earth he is supposed to do. Or, given the larger issues we have been discussing what he is supposed to do in the meantime, all things considered? Your question, therefore, is quite a reasonable one.
So consider this letter as something of a parenthetical break, after which will need to return our earlier themes. Or, more accurately, we can return to our earlier themes if the communists don’t win the election and immediately start to monitor everyone’s email for wrongthink. Let’s not forget that part of it.
The first question is whether “to vote or not to vote.” If we decide that voting is a reasonable, sensible, and lawful thing to do, then we can address how to approach deciding how to vote.
Among those Christians who do not vote (or who feel they must cast write-in purity votes), there are two main motivations. Those motivations are, in the first place, cynicism, and secondly, perfectionism. And of course, people being the way they are, sometimes these two motivations can be combined or jumbled up together.
The cynical individual says something like, “Don’t vote. It only encourages them.” Given your recent history, and how you came to your current political convictions, I am guessing that this approach to all things political could be mighty attractive to you. You have come to the basics of your current convictions precisely because you decided that you had been lied to your entire life by all the respected authorities in your life. About pretty much everything.
That being the case, this naturally throws a dark shadow over everything you have been told by pretty much everybody, and which would include the platitude that “every vote matters.” In the last few years, virtually every major American institution has discredited and disgraced itself, and it is hard to find any source that is worthy of simple trust anymore. This indisputable fact is where the main cynical energy is coming from, and yet because we are all incorrigibly social, people your position are forced to cast about for other alternative groups to identify with. Those other groups could be ethnic, or regional, or ideological. Some people even resort to diehard loyalty to sports teams, or extreme hobbies. What matters is that they have somehow detached themselves from the discredited and hated establishment. But all these new groups have the same fatal flaw that brought the establishment down—they too are made up of people. And people sin.
Then there is the perfectionist, the one who believes that because we should all vote our consciences, and because the Bible requires us to keep our consciences unsullied, this means that we must abstain from voting for any impure candidate or party. Voting is thought of in quasi-sacramental or even sacramental terms, and as we all know, sacraments are not to be entered into thoughtlessly or with any deliberate known sin in our lives. Voting for a compromised candidate, one with known sin in his life, would itself be an instance of such compromise. Thus, the person thinking this way either stays home, or writes in a candidate, or votes for a third-party that is splintered enough to be suitably pure.
But now, if I may, I am going to divide the perfectionists into two camps for you, the hard perfectionists and the soft ones.
The hard perfectionists will generally be part of a movement, or a faction. A good example of this would the hard core abolitionists on the abortion question. It is important to note that I am not referring to all abolitionists here, but some of them most certainly fit the bill. Many of these will refuse to vote for Trump because of his manifest cluelessness on the abortion issue. Despite the fact that he was the reason Roe was struck down, for which we thank God, he has nevertheless signaled in various ways that he does not comprehend what the life issue even is. He understands that he has to deal with pro-lifers who think a certain way about abortion, but he plainly has no idea why we think that way.
A zygote is either a human being, created in the image of God, or it is not. If it is, then he or she is worthy of all the legal protections a society can provide, from the moment of conception on. This would mean that the abortion bus outside the DNC was one of the most macabre and grotesque displays of human perversity imaginable. But if the zygote is not created in the image of God, and it really is just a cluster of cells—then pro-lifers are the most tiresome and tedious people on the planet—a political faction that has disrupted the tranquility of a nation because we decided that no one should ever be allowed to do something that is the equivalent of trimming their fingernails. So everything comes down to the actual status of the unborn child, and men like Trump who think you can split the difference on such questions are simply demonstrating that they don’t know what is going on. And the only people who find such candidates persuasive are other people who don’t know what is going on—which turns out to be a significant number.
Back then to perfectionism. The soft perfectionists will generally be very sweet and very pious Christians, and usually born before 1964. They think longingly about the days when the political process was not nearly as tawdry as it is now. Many of these individuals will refuse to vote for Trump because he is manifestly not their idea of a gentleman. He is a walking incarnation of New York bravado in a brash red tie. He says things that, speaking frankly, ought not to be said. He makes fastidious people feel icky, and they don’t think that ickiness belongs in the voting booth.
The hard perfectionists are usually young radicals and the soft perfectionists are usually old ladies of both sexes. The former doesn’t want to vote for a less-than-perfect candidate because he doesn’t line up with the rigid dictates of the ideological agenda. The latter doesn’t want to because the less-than-perfect candidate is someone who violates their code of the gentleman. But both perfectionist approaches are misconstruing what a vote actually is, and this is because (ironically) they still believe the platitude mentioned earlier—that being the error of placing the spotlight on each vote, as though it matters in a particular way.
Here is what I mean. Suppose you were a wise hermit living on the mountain, and down below you in the valley there was a small kingdom. The way their constitutional affairs were organized, whenever the throne was vacant, they would bring five eligible candidates up to see you, and you (like Samuel at Jesse’s house) would select the man. Now in such a circumstance, you really would be obligated to pick the man who feared God, loved truth, and hated covetousness (Ex. 18: 21). The choice is up to you, and so you need to pick the good man and not the bad man.
But our situation is not like this at all. We are actually playing blob tag with about 160 million other people, and we are doing so over quite rocky terrain.
The problem arises when an individual voter thinks that what he is doing is the identical thing that the hermit on the mountain is doing. He is one rain drop who is making himself feel fully responsible for the flood. But this places a false construction on the whole business.
In a parliamentary system, all the log rolling and deal making is conducted after the election. Everybody gets to vote for their pure, splinter party, which shields the individual voter from qualms of conscience . . . because the party bosses are then the ones who get their hands dirty after the fact by forming a coalition with various weirdos and miscreants. The voter can still feel okay because that is what they did, over there, where I don’t have to answer questions about what they are doing.
In the American system, the deals are cut with the odd bed-fellows before the election—the recent teaming up of RFK Jr. with Trump being a case in point. This means that Americans feel like they have to vote for the whole she-bang, dirty compromises and all. Another example would be Trump signaling to the “moderates” on abortion that they shouldn’t be too worried, which has the effect of making all the pro-lifers who were going to vote for him . . . a bit too worried. Another way of understanding this is that Americans don’t get to vote a la carte. Ours is a modified prix fixe system.
This may look like I am changing the subject, but I am not. Would it be lawful for a Christian to work as an undercover agent for a law enforcement agency? Telling people his name was Brian, when it was Kurt, and having a driver’s license that said he was from Kansas when he was from Delaware? I would say sure. We have godly examples of this kind of thing in Scripture, as in the example of Hushai (2 Sam. 16:16). But would it be lawful for an undercover agent to sleep with various women who are not his wife in order to maintain his cover? Clearly not.
Now the perfectionist wants to say that voting for a pro-choice candidate is necessarily the equivalent of that kind of adultery. You just shouldn’t do it, period. But it really is not the same kind of thing at all. Sometimes it is, of course, and an example of that would be the way that David French is doing it—writing thinkery pieces on the “orange case for pastel blue.” But let me suggest a scenario where the most ardent abolitionist should be able to vote for a pro-choice candidate, and where it would be a sin for him not to. A tall order, sure, but work with me.
The president has nominated a strong pro-lifer to the Supreme Court. The Senate is going to confirm that choice, but the Senate is narrowly held by the Republicans. At just that moment, one of the staunch Republicans has a heart attack and dies, and a special election is held back in your home state. The choice is between a raging commie and a squish RINO, one who is decidedly pro-choice. But, if elected, he will caucus with the Republicans, and they will retain control of the Senate. If he is defeated, the Republicans will lose control of the Senate, and will not be able to confirm the SCOTUS nominee. Now what does purity look like?
It would be better to ask what purity with a brain looks like. When you are voting, you are not performing a discrete action, like putting the eight ball into the corner pocket. And you are not on an undercover mission, sleeping with other women. You are not the holy hermit, appointing the righteous man to be king. Rather, you are leaning in the direction of a more desirable state of affairs, together with millions of others. Imagine the canoe of state, containing millions. You can lean to port, or to starboard. Or you can just sit there, thinking pure thoughts, getting in the way.
So, what should you do this coming November? I will simply tell you what I am going to do, in the light of all the reasoning above, and you can put together my recommendation from that. I am going to vote for Trump, and when I leave the polling station I will do so without any stain on my conscience, and I will climb into my truck, chortling. I will do this because I would greatly prefer the state of affairs that would result from his election to the state of affairs that will result from the alternative. This is not because I want a pleasant state of affairs for me, righteousness be damned, but rather because I want righteousness to not lose any more maneuvering room.
This is not a case of “let us do evil that good may result.” Rather it is an instance of doing as much limited good as we can, so that more good might come from it. What is that limited good? If Harris is elected, there will be no evangelicals in the White House, or anywhere near it. David French might be allowed to come to a dinner a time or two to be given his crust, until they are done with him, but that will be pretty much it. If Trump is elected, the place will be crawling with believers. And at the end of the day, personnel is policy.
Will these believers have other people there to fight with? Will there be palace intrigues? Certainly. The place will also have more than a few grifters, swamp creatures, lobbyists, gypsies, tramps and thieves. The split-the-difference-on-abortion faction is clearly already embedded in the woodwork. Perhaps we should work to address that.
Cordially in Christ,
Douglas Wilson