Rare Jewel
Insight:
November 3, 2004
COMMENTARY
- "The Returns ARE In"
(by Rick Marschall, Managing Editor,
Rare Jewel Magazine)
Lord God, in the name of Jesus,
we thank You for having brought our nation through
this process of election -- the inspirational moments
as well as the rancor -- and we turn quickly from
celebration to humbly ask Your favor on this nation.
By Your Holy Spirit we dedicate ourselves to purify
this nation, redeem this culture, and encourage
the saints to build the City of God in this place.
The recently concluded presidential
campaign has been a national roller-coaster ride,
an intense solar eclipse of most other topics...
some might even say a prolonged political migraine
headache. Whether you loved it or are enormously
grateful it's over (or both!) we must pause to see
it as a watershed in our national life.
This is more than a question of war
or peace. More than a question of who fills cabinet
offices. This is even a larger question than who
nominates judgeships, steering the judicial course
of American culture.
There were those among us (including,
apparently, George W Bush) whose confidence was
shaken in the last moments of the campaign. How
many of our minds raced to short-term strategies
and long-term tactics? Did we permit ourselves to
channel resentment over another close election,
or a lost election, and plan battles for the next
four years -- and beyond -- to take back the political
turf?
Something's going to have to change:
until the 21st century, voter fraud --
dead people "voting," for instance --
has been a way of life. Dead voters in Democrat
Chicago snatched the election from Nixon to Kennedy
1960; there is no dispute about this, and Nixon
did little more than shrug his shoulders. The day
of shoulder-shrugging is over -- leeching lawyers
have forever changed that, over-compensating for
abuses by creating extra-electoral devices for manipulating
results.
Another thing that
will have to change -- free speech and free press
notwithstanding -- is polling. Polls have become
the issues. We have gotten to the
point in America where elections are being held
mainly to validate what the pollsters have said.
They influence, they don't reflect. It's wrong.
Do we regret the invective in this
campaign? This has been called the most rancorous
campaign in American history. Not by a long shot.
The partisans of Washington and Jefferson savaged
each others' heroes mercilessly. Andrew Jackson
was accused of having trollops at his cabinet meetings.
Lincoln was called a baboon. In 1884 Republicans
made charges that Democrat candidate Grover Cleveland
had fathered an illegitimate baby... and the charges
were true. (Cleveland won anyway because his opponent's
public sins were more offensive than Cleveland's
private sins.) In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt called
President Taft a "nitwit" and "fathead"
and was in turn termed a "dangerous madman."
In the same campaign Eugene Debs -- a Socialist
who, eight years later, ran for president from a
federal penitentiary -- received more than a million
votes for president. So, in a way, this recent campaign
has been a little like a Sunday School picnic by
comparison.
But, again, let us not think that
any of this means that it's business as usual in
America, or that reforms can be made by tweaking
around the edges.
If a Kerry victory would have finally
energized the Christian Right, and finish the Reagan
Revolution, then so must a Bush re-election.
Patriots must finally
get really
serious about holding officeholders'
feet to the fire. We might go outside the boundaries;
we might support new candidates or parties -- or
withhold such support; we might sacrifice in ways
American patriots seldom have.
Every analyst immediately after the
recent campaign referred to the "Evangelical
Vote" -- variously tallied at 25 per cent to
40 per cent of the total vote -- and its impact
on the election. The "Youth Vote" vaporized,
leaving hopeful liberals at the altar... but Christian
voters remained faithful, and active, in the system.
If Christians stayed home, one party
-- maybe both! -- would start treating our favor
like precious gems.
Even with the happiest Election Night
results, it still will not be the Millennium. Even
our best friends in politics need to be reminded
of their core beliefs -- and those of their supporters,
from the shades of Founding Fathers to you and me
-- and stay pure, brave, and productive on matters
of importance to our heritage and culture in Christian
America.
The point is this:
Rare Jewel Magazine
asks you to join with us in prayer
that we all survive these last machinations of the
winding-down campaign. But we implore you to join
us in considering the next four years -- and the
next generation, and beyond -- in the same way that,
say, we would think about them if our worst electoral
dreams were dashed instead.
That is to say, we are still facing
a moral crisis in this culture. Christians and conservatives
must stop retreating and compromising. We have got
to realize that stopping the killing of babies,
restoring the Name of God to classrooms, and such
positions, are not kooky extremes but bedrock values!
What am I suggesting? Many things!
So we pray for a satisfied electorate,
we pray for our nation and its future. But especially
let Christian Patriots, adopting a mature and robust
Biblical worldview, pray for wisdom. Our fight has
just begun.
"I reckon
that the sufferings of the present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall
be revealed in us."
(Rom 8:18)
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