Happy Election Day, America! Despite the fact that Americans can vote early — and have been doing so in record numbers — today, the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, is officially Election Day.
After four years of one of the most contentious presidencies in recent American history, believers in binary election choices will cast their vote for either a tomayto or a tomahto.
It’s simply a reality that the Republican/Democrat duopoly has hijacked representative government in America. We need look no further than shenanigans taking place by both parties to stack the deck in their favor every two or four years.
The political dysfunction and brokenness of our great Republic can be a bit depressing for constitutional conservatives, but I think it’s important to remember how great a privilege it is to live in America and how we get to vote. And as a result, we should hold our right to vote as the sacred trust it was meant to be. As Samuel Adams once stated:
“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”
There’s a lot at stake on this election day, just as there is in every election. And with Republican Nationalists and Democratic Socialists working together to steer America in a socialist direction, pushing us ever closer to becoming the type of tyrannical government our Founding Fathers fought and died to avoid, we need to not only be grateful for the right to vote, we need to reject the binary lie the duopoly uses to control the outcome of future elections.
After four years of Trump’s incessant barrage against the Constitution, his failed trade wars, his blatant immorality, his long list of broken promises, and the unconditional support of the faux conservative media and the Fellowship of the Pharisees, the 2020 election has had a fatalistic feel to it from people on both sides of the political spectrum.
But it’s not the system that’s broken; it’s the people we’ve allowed to run it.
This is the reason for my recent article emphasizing the importance on voting down ballot for local candidates and issues because the real power to change things lies at the state and local levels of government. It’s we the people who possess the ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution, enforce it, and protect ourselves from violations of it by the federal government.
- The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation. — Alexander Hamilton
- This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them. — Alexander Hamilton
- [W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another. — Thomas Jefferson
Washington’s game of binary politics has been successful in convincing America that the White House, Congress, and the judiciary hold all the cards concerning liberty, but that’s simply untrue. The dismal state of affairs in Washington won’t change until we take back local control.
I don’t say these things because I’ve given up or don’t care about politics and the future of America, nor do I share the attitude of many spiritually ignorant believers today who write off the outcome of elections as “God’s will” when it is our freewill making the decision.
I say these things because even though this earth is not my home, it is where I live, and I am commanded in Scripture to be a good steward of the good things God has entrusted to me. When I consider the good things I have received from God, being an American with the power to choose who will lead our nation is most definitely a good thing.
So let’s give thanks to God for Election Day, and for the privilege of being able to vote for our leaders because, beginning tomorrow, we’ll be rolling up our sleeves to resume the fight for liberty.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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