(This is repeated from a post back in 2007, but I think, in an election year, it is appropriate to bring up again.)
The accusation -- from both conservatives and liberals -- is that many Christians are "single-issue voters." I would have to confess that likely in many cases this is true. The issue of abortion is a deal breaker. And I am one that would have a hard time (read "nearly impossible") voting for a pro-choice candidate despite the alternatives. I am not, however, a single-issue voter. Let me explain.
Meet Tim. Tim is a fictitious wannabe candidate for the presidency. Tim is an excellent candidate. He supports everything you support. He is opposed to everything you oppose. What a guy! Oh, one little thing ... Tim is a drunk. Tim is, in fact, always drunk. He may do outrageous things when he is drunk, as drunks are prone to do. He may just pass out. But, hey! Let's not dwell on that! Tim is an excellent candidate!
Is he? If you chose not to vote for Tim because he was always drunk, would you be a "single-issue voter"? I don't think so. You see, Tim's drinking would have large ramifications. He couldn't be relied on to run a country. He doesn't have the self-control required. He would be signing or vetoing bills under the influence and who knows what he'd do in those situations? He could easily be passed out when he is needed in a crisis. He would be an unacceptable representative of our country to the world. That kind of a problem provides many reasons not to vote for Tim.
The same is true in my mind with the topic of abortion. The primary role of government is to protect its people. If a person who is trying to occupy the highest office of the land refuses to protect the most vulnerable, the unborn, then on what basis would I think that he/she would do the job in other applications? If murdering babies is acceptable, what other atrocities would he/she allow? If the person that I am considering for office doesn't care about protecting -- the most important descriptive for the job -- why would I think that he would care about other important issues? And the questions just keep coming.
Maybe I am a single-issue voter. I want to elect someone to the presidency who will do the job. Someone who doesn't care about doing the job at the outset is not someone that I think I should vote for. Perhaps it's a single issue, but it's not as small as "the abortion issue". It's a matter of doing the job that government is supposed to do. That's my primary "single issue".
4 comments:
I always laugh when I hear these kinds accusations. Like the average person on welfare is not going to vote to keep the money flowing. Or like the average homosexual is not going to vote for some person who wants to redefine the word marriage. What a hoot. Pots and kettles everywhere.
Still, to a degree, there can be found the same kinds of ulterior motives in the person voting consistently pro-life. But there's much more to it than that. By voting pro life we know, without listening to endless sham, opposition-organized-attack-media "debates", that the guy is much more likely to have a worldview consistent with reality; i.e. he's not drunk on some kind of new and destructive utopianistic nonsense philosophy.
When asked, I always urge my friends to vote pro-life; and that voting pro-life is much more than voting pro-life, its voting right.
Yes, I'd guess that most voters are "single-issue" voters: "What gives me the best outcome."
I feel that the illustration is illogical, because drunkeness is a state of being based on alcohol consumption, not a political belief. It may affect your behavior uncontrollably. Pro-choice is a belief, not a state of being. It cannot control your behavior without your express consent. If that were true, then pro-lifers would be against war, the death penalty, hunting, and taking from the poor to enrich the wealthy. Most pro-lifers support those pro-death things, showing that a single issue can be compartmentalized, and should not serve as a litmus test. How drunkenness has anything to do with single-issue voting is beyond me.
Thanks for the input. I was trying to illustrate how something apparently unrelated to a person's political position could actually reflect on their ability to be in that office. Obviously you do not understand what "pro-life" means (for instance, hunting is not related -- it's human life) and obviously you are not pro-life (which requires necessarily that you favor killing babies if the mother so desires). Since you believe that killing babies is a perfectly acceptable thing and doesn't reflect at all on the rest of a person's character, I understand that you wouldn't get the illustration. Others seem to understand it fine.
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