Alan Keyes: A choice between two socialists, or the cross
Alan Keyes received the following email:
Dr. Keyes,
I admire and promote you. These messages at this time are not prudent. Although I agree with your thoughts, I fear another non-vote (by ten million Republicans) for the Republican nominee as the very same as when RINO John McCain ran. This is one of the factors that left us with Mr. Obama. Please consider this and stifle your admirable passion until AFTER the election, unless your very intent is to do Romney in.
Here are some choice excerpts from his response:
Thank you for your words and counsel. I disagree on only one point. The issue is not what gave us Obama, but what gave us the choice between Obama and people like McCain and Romney, who are like him in all too many ways. . . .
The same forces that put Obama in place have now engineered a choice in the 2012 election intended to force voters to side either with a socialist Democrat who wants to impose socialism on the nation or a socialist Republican who has already imposed socialism on his home state of Massachusetts. To say that voters who refuse to support either are somehow responsible for electing one or the other is like saying that people who refuse to submit to the demands of terrorists are somehow responsible for killing the people the terrorists subsequently murder. The guarantee of successful terrorism that results from that perverse logic places everyone’s life in greater danger.
I am responsible to God first and above all. . . . It may be prudent, in every worldly sense, for me to keep silent. But when I stand before almighty God to answer for my share of responsibility for the (supposedly lesser) moral evils attributable to Romney’s successful bid for power, how prudent will it seem that I avoided the world’s scorn by deserving the condemnation of God, who made and governs the universe this world is part of?
. . . Forces larger than both of us have engineered the situation in which those who oppose Obama supposedly “have no choice” but to support his all too similar opponent. But where there is no choice, there is no election, only a powerful fabrication intended to force good people to betray all that they profess to believe.
I guess I would fall prey to those larger forces, and their powerful fabrication, if I did not believe that the greatest force of all is the self-evident truth of God’s superintending power. “Quid est veritas” (What is truth?) Pilate asked, before the election Jesus lost. “I am the way, and the truth and the life” was Jesus’ answer, to the disciple who questioned His way. Judged by the world’s prudence, Jesus was lacking, for he was crucified. Judged by God’s wisdom, Jesus was prudent, for his way is the way of the elect in the only election that matters.
. . . When faced with a crossroads of evil, human judgment makes out only one way or the other. But by the grace of God, we may choose the way of the Cross, which stands above either. Therein lies the imprudent, certain, only way to truth and life and victory.