Alan Keyes
2016: A 'binary' election?
The choice we face is not 'between Trump and Hillary'
By Alan Keyes
I often hear the argument that the 2016 election is a binary election, offering no choice but Trump or Clinton. If neither of the candidates represents you, this "binary" choice is no election at all. Yet representation is the defining practical goal of the U.S. Constitution. Turning voters into quantities that must go one way or another, according to the programming of an elitist clique that has abandoned America's common good, reduces human beings to irresponsible objects, doomed to follow the dictates of their master programmers. If we embrace this paradigm, we kill the decent liberty of our country. Of course, this is exactly the purpose of the elitist faction's partisan charade.
Yet there is a glimmer of truth in this binary error. The universe does, in fact, depend on a binary choice – God's choice for or against its very existence. By His act of creation, the free choice of His absolute will, He has chosen to liberate all Creation, determining His own being so that theirs may come to be. By His specific intention for our nature, we human beings are conscious of this utterly free and generous choice. We are called upon to reflect it, or not, in our own will.
Thus, the binary choice on which our existence depends is the choice to accept God's will for all existence, including our own, or to reject it, even though by rejecting it we annihilate ourselves. In this respect, the elitist faction party sham offers no choice for the existence of Americans as a free people, because it offers no choice but to abandon respect for God-endowed right – including the unalienable rights of life and liberty – on which our existence as a nation presently still depends.
Beyond that God-determined choice, all the fuss and bother about the phantom choice between a self-idolizing libertine and his self-willed opponent (and vice-versa) is much ado about nothing. Either way, our life exclusively depends on rejecting their Godless dictates, and pursuing God's justice as Christ preached and exampled it to all who have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to love Him. In adopting the original Constitution of the United States, the people of the United States showed their disposition to be, as President John Adams said, "a moral and a religious people." Adams warned that the U.S. Constitution was "wholly inadequate to the government of any other." He predicted that:
In their different ways, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump epitomize this elitist rejection of our common good. Though they compete for the office in our government that is, above all, required to care for the common good, they wage political battle in terms that utterly neglect that responsibility. Instead, they seek to foment and exacerbate every rift amongst us – consistently appealing to nothing but fear, vengefulness, and angry, self-serving passion. Their conduct degrades the character of our people in precisely the way guaranteed to produce the misery Adams foresaw. No wonder there is rioting in our streets, punctuated by malevolent attacks calculated to terrorize our everyday life.
These so-called leaders have utterly abandoned the truth such founders as John Adams took to heart. The American people are called to be the harbingers of true self-government for all humanity. If they are to fulfill that destiny, their primal and defining preoccupation is to pursue the happiness that comes of respecting God's intention for human nature. They must therefore inculcate and preserve the good character that pursuit requires.
Trump and Clinton tacitly agree in neglecting the importance of this goal, as evidenced by their tacit approval of the aggressive abuse of government power deployed to force us to abandon respect for the specific distinction naturally essential to the perpetuation of the human race. In this, they contradict the very substance of "the laws of nature and of Nature's God" as it appears in human beings. This denial deprives us of the claim of equal worth arising from our responsibility to do right, as God endows it, the claim we prove, fulfill, and justify when we choose to exercise the unalienable rights just government is framed to secure.
So the binary choice we face is not between Trump and Hillary, or the specious two-party system they serve. Our choice is between joining in the final destruction of our nation's character, or bearing witness against it, in whatever way the circumstances of our lives and citizenship properly allow.
As we stand together in the right, as God endows it, we may yet rediscover and advance the better alternative our nation's moral foes refuse to offer. If so, it will not be because, as Clinton asserts, we are stronger together; nor as Trump implies, because our chosen leader (fuehrer) alone can fix what ails us. It will be because we remembered that "God is our refuge and strength." It will be because "we will not fear though the earth gives way," but will "Trust in the LORD, and do good," rather than, by voting for evil, more or less, forsake the decisive victory our Lord has already won.
September 26, 2016
I often hear the argument that the 2016 election is a binary election, offering no choice but Trump or Clinton. If neither of the candidates represents you, this "binary" choice is no election at all. Yet representation is the defining practical goal of the U.S. Constitution. Turning voters into quantities that must go one way or another, according to the programming of an elitist clique that has abandoned America's common good, reduces human beings to irresponsible objects, doomed to follow the dictates of their master programmers. If we embrace this paradigm, we kill the decent liberty of our country. Of course, this is exactly the purpose of the elitist faction's partisan charade.
Yet there is a glimmer of truth in this binary error. The universe does, in fact, depend on a binary choice – God's choice for or against its very existence. By His act of creation, the free choice of His absolute will, He has chosen to liberate all Creation, determining His own being so that theirs may come to be. By His specific intention for our nature, we human beings are conscious of this utterly free and generous choice. We are called upon to reflect it, or not, in our own will.
Thus, the binary choice on which our existence depends is the choice to accept God's will for all existence, including our own, or to reject it, even though by rejecting it we annihilate ourselves. In this respect, the elitist faction party sham offers no choice for the existence of Americans as a free people, because it offers no choice but to abandon respect for God-endowed right – including the unalienable rights of life and liberty – on which our existence as a nation presently still depends.
Beyond that God-determined choice, all the fuss and bother about the phantom choice between a self-idolizing libertine and his self-willed opponent (and vice-versa) is much ado about nothing. Either way, our life exclusively depends on rejecting their Godless dictates, and pursuing God's justice as Christ preached and exampled it to all who have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to love Him. In adopting the original Constitution of the United States, the people of the United States showed their disposition to be, as President John Adams said, "a moral and a religious people." Adams warned that the U.S. Constitution was "wholly inadequate to the government of any other." He predicted that:
-
...should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign
nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance, and displays in
the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and
insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power
capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
In their different ways, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump epitomize this elitist rejection of our common good. Though they compete for the office in our government that is, above all, required to care for the common good, they wage political battle in terms that utterly neglect that responsibility. Instead, they seek to foment and exacerbate every rift amongst us – consistently appealing to nothing but fear, vengefulness, and angry, self-serving passion. Their conduct degrades the character of our people in precisely the way guaranteed to produce the misery Adams foresaw. No wonder there is rioting in our streets, punctuated by malevolent attacks calculated to terrorize our everyday life.
These so-called leaders have utterly abandoned the truth such founders as John Adams took to heart. The American people are called to be the harbingers of true self-government for all humanity. If they are to fulfill that destiny, their primal and defining preoccupation is to pursue the happiness that comes of respecting God's intention for human nature. They must therefore inculcate and preserve the good character that pursuit requires.
Trump and Clinton tacitly agree in neglecting the importance of this goal, as evidenced by their tacit approval of the aggressive abuse of government power deployed to force us to abandon respect for the specific distinction naturally essential to the perpetuation of the human race. In this, they contradict the very substance of "the laws of nature and of Nature's God" as it appears in human beings. This denial deprives us of the claim of equal worth arising from our responsibility to do right, as God endows it, the claim we prove, fulfill, and justify when we choose to exercise the unalienable rights just government is framed to secure.
So the binary choice we face is not between Trump and Hillary, or the specious two-party system they serve. Our choice is between joining in the final destruction of our nation's character, or bearing witness against it, in whatever way the circumstances of our lives and citizenship properly allow.
As we stand together in the right, as God endows it, we may yet rediscover and advance the better alternative our nation's moral foes refuse to offer. If so, it will not be because, as Clinton asserts, we are stronger together; nor as Trump implies, because our chosen leader (fuehrer) alone can fix what ails us. It will be because we remembered that "God is our refuge and strength." It will be because "we will not fear though the earth gives way," but will "Trust in the LORD, and do good," rather than, by voting for evil, more or less, forsake the decisive victory our Lord has already won.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
