VOTE THE PLATFORM OR SHUT UP
My Pap ended the most heated political argument our family ever had with four words. "Who'd you vote for?"
My Pap was a lot of things. Stubborn. Proud. Army veteran. The kind of man who said what he meant and meant every word of it. I was lucky enough to be there when he took his last breath, and I would give anything to hear his voice one more time.
He and my dad got into it one day over politics. It got heated the way it always does in our family. Then Pap went quiet for a second, looked my dad dead in the eye, and asked, calm as a Sunday morning, who he voted for.
My dad admitted he hadn't voted.
Pap didn't yell. Didn't lecture. He said, "You chose not to have a voice for your country. You have no say in this conversation." And that was the end of it. My dad never forgot that. Neither did I.
I have been thinking about Pap a lot lately, because I keep running into two kinds of people this election season. The first kind will not vote at all and will spend November through 2028 complaining on X at 11pm. Pap already handled them. The second kind is harder to spot, because he means well.
THE FRIEND WHO SHOWED UP SEVEN MONTHS LATE
I have a friend who is evaluating every candidate on his ballot to figure out which one is the most BIBLICAL. Noble instinct. Wrong election.
Your window for deciding WHO represents you closed months ago. It was called the primary. That is the entire purpose of a primary: you fire the Republican you do not want and hire the one you do. If you skipped it, or you lost it, the job interview is over. You are now standing in the general election conducting a character audit on a hire that has already been made. That ship has sailed. It is somewhere past the horizon, waving.
We have a two-party system. I do not like it either, but my dislike has about the same effect on reality as my opinion about gravity, and I teach physics, so I would know. In November you are not voting for a man. You are voting for a PLATFORM, and that platform is going to vote whether your preferred candidate is a saint or a scoundrel.
So my friend wants a biblical standard. Good. Let us use one, and let us point it at the thing actually on the ballot.
THE RUBRIC IS ALREADY WRITTEN
Proverbs 6:16-19 (LSB): "There are six things which Yahweh hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers."
That is not my list. I am just the guy grading against it.
HAUGHTY EYES. They know better than parents how to raise children, better than doctors what treatment is acceptable, and better than teachers what kids need. I teach in a high-need district where most of my students qualify for free lunch. In all my years there, not one person from the left has asked me what is actually broken. They already KNOW. That unearned, top-down knowing is first on God's list, and I suspect it is first for a reason.
A LYING TONGUE AND A FALSE WITNESS. Democrats made the ACA subsidies TEMPORARY in the American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021. Zero Republican votes. They extended those temporary subsidies through 2025 in the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. Zero Republican votes. Then, when their own law expired on the date THEY wrote into it, they went on television and blamed Republicans. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (
@SenatorWarnock) has done this repeatedly, from a Senate seat, while pastoring the church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Exodus 20:16: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." That is the Ninth Commandment, and James 3:1 says those who teach "will incur a stricter judgment." He has staff. He can read a roll call.
Which is Jim Quinn's Sixth Law of Liberalism at work: FACTS ARE THE ENEMY OF LIBERALISM. The subsidy story dies the second someone opens the vote tally, so nobody on that side ever mentions the vote tally. The facts are not argued with. They are avoided, the way a vampire avoids a sunny afternoon.
HANDS THAT SHED INNOCENT BLOOD. What is next, a political party parking an abortion clinic outside its own national convention and announcing it like a food truck at the county fair... wait, I was just told they already did that. Chicago, 2024. Planned Parenthood ran a mobile clinic offering free medication abortions down the road from the DNC and publicized it. Psalm 139:13 (LSB): "For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb." Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." Luke 1:41 uses the Greek word brephos for unborn John leaping in Elizabeth's womb, the same word Luke 2:12 uses for newborn Jesus in the manger. Scripture makes no distinction. The platform makes it a convention amenity. Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." That woe has been sitting on that verse for 2,700 years and it has not expired.
A HEART THAT DEVISES WICKED PLANS. A welfare system built so that benefits shrink when a husband moves into the house. A government that made fathers a financial liability, and then acted shocked when fathers left. In 1965 roughly a quarter of Black children were born outside of marriage. Today it is around 70 percent. On January 10, 1963, Congressman Albert Herlong Jr. read 45 Communist Goals for America into the Congressional Record. Goal 40: "Discredit the family as an institution." Achieved, and then the rubble was blamed on racism. Quinn's Law Number 1 says liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent, and I cannot think of a cleaner lab result.
FEET THAT RUN RAPIDLY TO EVIL. Organized activists in Colorado helping a convicted child rapist dodge ICE. Protesters honking horns to obstruct the arrest of a child sex offender, then going home to post about protecting kids. DHS reporting assaults on ICE officers up roughly 1,000 percent while elected Democrats called those officers terrorists on television. Proverbs 1:16: "For their feet run to evil and they hasten to shed blood."
ONE WHO SPREADS STRIFE AMONG BROTHERS. Splitting the country by race, class, sex, income, and zip code, because a divided, frightened public never stops to ask Thomas Sowell's questions: compared to what, at what cost, and what hard evidence do you have? Strife is the product. Romans 16:17-18 warns about exactly those who "cause dissensions" and "by their smooth and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting."
Seven for seven. I did not grade on a curve.
THE HISTORY THEY TOOK OUT OF THE TEXTBOOK
I am a teacher, so this part is literally my job. Republicans pushed the 13th Amendment through the House while most Democrats voted no. Not a single Democrat in Congress voted for the 14th or 15th Amendments. Democrats wrote Jim Crow. Senator Robert Byrd, a former Klan recruiter and a Democrat until the day he died, filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for over fourteen hours. The method of control changed over the years. The party doing the controlling did not.
Goal 27 from that same 1963 list: "Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion." When a Reverend preaches government dependency from a pulpit that once preached repentance, you do not need a conspiracy. You just need to read the list and then read the news.
THE VERSES THEY WILL BRING TO THE REPLIES
"JUDGE NOT." Matthew 7:1, amputated from verse 5, which tells you to remove the plank from your own eye SO THAT you can see clearly to help your brother. The command is to judge accurately. And Matthew 7:16, eleven verses later: "You will know them by their fruits." Jesus handed us the diagnostic tool Himself.
"JESUS ATE WITH SINNERS." He did. He also told the woman caught in adultery, "go and sin no more" (John 8:11), and Matthew got up from the tax booth and left it for good. Association is not endorsement. That is a non sequitur wearing a church hat.
"JESUS CARED ABOUT THE POOR, SO VOTE DEMOCRAT." Finish John 6. He fed five thousand, the crowd tried to force Him to be their king, and He left for the mountain. When they tracked Him down for round two, He told them in John 6:26 they were only there because they "ate of the loaves and were filled." In Acts 3:6 Peter told a lame beggar, "I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you," and the man walked. Restoration, not a monthly deposit. 2 Thessalonians 3:10: "if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat either." Paul's word is WILLING. He made room for those who cannot. He made none for those who will not.
"BUT MY CANDIDATE ISN'T A CHRISTIAN." Now we are back to my friend.
GOD HAS NEVER NEEDED A CHRISTIAN IN THE BIG CHAIR
If God required His people to be governed only by believers, the Old Testament would be a very short book.
CYRUS, a Persian pagan, is called "His anointed" in Isaiah 45:1 and "My shepherd" in 44:28. In 45:4 God says, "I have called you by your name... though you have not known Me." Cyrus sent Israel home and funded the temple.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, the man who burned Jerusalem, is called "My servant" three separate times in Jeremiah (25:9, 27:6, 43:10).
PHARAOH is told in Exodus 9:16, "for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power."
ARTAXERXES wrote the letters that sent Nehemiah home with timber and safe passage (Nehemiah 2:7-8).
JOSEPH ran Egypt for a pagan king. DANIEL served Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus. That is four administrations and zero covenant believers, and Daniel 2:21 says it is God who "removes kings and establishes kings."
Then Paul writes Romans 13:1, "there is no authority except from God," while NERO is on the throne. Nero. The man who would later have him executed.
God has never required His people to be ruled by the righteous. He has required His people to be WISE.
I AM HIRING A VOTE
So here is my entire test for November: IS THIS PERSON GOING TO VOTE THE WAY I NEED HIM TO VOTE?
That is it. I am not marrying the man. I am not making him godfather to my kids. I could not care less if he is an atheist, and I would not trust him to watch my dog. I am hiring a vote. I hire the vote that protects the unborn, keeps the family intact, enforces the law, and tells the truth about what bills actually do. His personal theology is between him and his Maker. My ballot is between me and mine.
Pap would have understood that immediately. He never once asked who was the nicest guy on the ballot. He asked whether you showed up.
So show up. Vote the platform. The character audit was due in the spring, and if you skip November entirely, Pap has already told you where you stand in the conversation.
But what do I know. I am only a grandson who still hears his Pap asking "Who'd you vote for?" and a science teacher who reads the whole chapter instead of the verse that fits on a bumper sticker.
@TPUSA @TPAction @JoJoFromJerz @atrupar
#MAGA #Veterans #Trump