Do You Hate Trump Enough to Let Hillary Win?

Someone asked this question today. I’m trying to take a day away from talking about “he who must not be elected”, but I cannot let this one pass because it targets my basic moral values and the values of all of us who will vote “none of the above” in November. It has nothing to do with “hate” toward the RNC’s orange-headed champion. It has to do with principle, something fewer and fewer people are even capable of understanding in this secular, got-to-have-it-all society we are busily creating. 

 

A moral decision not to support, endorse or vote for immoral leaders is not about winning or revenge or even anger that one did not get one’s way. It’s about the whole assumption built into the original question - that one should vote for one candidate because the other one is worse. I have studied Scripture diligently for some 45 years now and nowhere in my Bible does it say, "Thou shalt choose the lesser of two evils." That is, in effect, choosing between wrong and wrong based on degree of wrongness. It’s a false dichotomy. It’s like saying, “Which would you choose - a rattlesnake bite or a water moccasin bite?” Anyone with any brains would choose neither given the choice. And as Americans, our founding fathers did give us a choice. 

 

We are not forced to choose either/or. The founders knew what rigged systems were like. They had just risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor breaking free from such a rigged system. You dismiss refusing to vote for the Republican nominee as "hating" Trump because you assume we are mad because our guy didn’t win and we’re have a temper fit. That's not it at all. That's how Trump thinks. Winning to Trump supporters is everything - at least that has been the theme of their attacks on people like me. I'm told we have to win so we have to vote for Trump. Like the toadies of a thousand playground bullies, they go along to get along and to avoid being ostracized from the group.

But it is not true. We’re not having a tantrum. We’re making a principled and painful decision. Doing the right thing is everything to some people. I'm a Christian and I was brought up in Texas. We understand that sometimes you stand and fight even when you know you’re going to lose because it’s the right thing to do. We remember the Alamo as our finest hour.

As one Trumpette reminded me, the Texans lost at the Alamo. The comment was revealing, though. Winning to this guy was everything. That's the Trump theme song. He promises we will win so much we'll get sick of winning. Trump appeals to a culture raised on the idea that being a loser is the worst thing in the world. But there are things far worse than defeat lurking out there.

Davy Crockett goes down swingin'.

The young man who said we lost at the Alamo was wrong. We Texans didn't lose that famous battle. The men at the Alamo saved the Republic of Texas at that battle. Our young men gave their lives to buy time so that Sam Houston's army could bring their forces together to destroy the Mexican Army at San Jacinto. The "loss" at the Alamo was the key to victory at San Jacinto. We also remember that the men at Goliad surrendered to the inevitable and Santa Anna slaughtered them anyway. I expect that will happen to Trump's folks too once he has the reins of power.

 

Refusing to vote for evil people may not win us the election, but it might just win us something that is well worth having - our integrity and self-respect.

If America sells its soul for a pocket full of mumbles, at least some of us will have stood firm and though we may fall, Jesus is coming soon and His approval is all we seek and heaven is the only thing worth winning. I know Trump’s minions will never understand that, but they don’t have to. We answer to only one Master and it’s not Donald J. Trump.

© 2016 by Tom King

Telling the Truth While Lying - The Case Against Texas' Voter ID Law

Sherilynn Ifill

Well, the feds are suing the state of Texas for writing a law that says you have to show that you are who you say you are when voting.  The case, if you're a liberal, is compelling. Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund throws out a familiar liberal talking point on the subject.  "A Texas voter," she says, "Is more likely to be struck by lightning than to see someone attempt to vote fraudulently at the polls."

This argument is true in the strictest sense. It is also a lie in Truth's clothing. The key phrase here is "see someone attempt to vote fraudulently". 

1. First, you can't see dead people vote.
2. She never said you couldn't see someone "successfully" vote fraudulently.  If you did you would never know it was happening.  

So the chance that you would know someone voted fraudulently are slim unless someone caught them in the act doing it right in front of you.  The lightning stat is probably close to true. You are more likely to get hit by lightning than to actually see someone caught in the act of voting illegally. 

Which is sort of the point of the Texas Voter ID law. With the ID requirement, it will be rather easier to actually catch someone voting fraudulently.

Democrats - Protecting the voting rights of dead people since the 19th Century.

© 2013 by Tom King

What Can We Do About........?

The Secret of Getting the Grassroots Growing

(c) 2012 by Tom King

You hear it every day in places ranging from the supermarket checkout line to Facebook to the nightly news. What can we do about ___(insert public issue here)___?  Most of the time we just talk about stuff like this and never really do anything about it.  We hope the politicians will get the message when they see the polls, but we block our phone numbers to robocalls and refuse to do "surveys" which is where the pollsters get their information.

Well, I hate robocalls in the middle of supper as much as anybody, but I also would like to get my way in Washington, Austin or Olympia (or wherever my statehouse currently is). The thing is, if you care about an issue, you can do something about it.  I did and apparently what I did and the group I was leading at the time did, made a difference.  I actually spoke with the head of a committee who asked me what I'd done to get him all those phone calls, emails and letters. I think he believed I must have hired people to write all those individual letters because he got hundreds of letters, each individual and most handwritten. He got dozens of phone calls stretching over weeks.  As a result, he sent the bill we wanted voted on out of committee to the floor for a vote. He's a Democrat.  I'm a Republican. Our group was made up of people on both sides of the aisle. That's what a true grassroots movement looks like.

If you want something done about an issue you are interested in, be prepared to work.  You can't get a politician's attention by chaining yourself to a bus. The media loves that.  Politicians hate it. If you really want to get their attention at the state capitol or even in Washington it can be done.  Washington's a tougher row to hoe than the statehouse, but not as impossible as you might think.  It takes determination and focus, but anyone can do it and thanks to the miracle of the Internet, it isn't as expensive as it used to be.

Starting the Grassroots Growing

Step 1:  Gather a like-minded crowd of local voters. The reason conservatives like me like smaller, more local government is that it makes it easier for real people like me to get to them.  It's a lot easier for me to get a face to face with my state rep than with my Congressman.  And my senator in Washington?  Fuhgettaboutit!

Step 2: Establish communications.  Set up a weblog, a Ning website with a forum, a Facebook group or some way for people to meet and share in cyberspace. Don't leave out the technically illiterate.  Use the telephone and snail mail to engage these folk.  In a way, they are your group's most powerful allies.


Step 3: Create your message.  Do some public forums, attend meetings where folks are likely to be like minded.  If you want school vouchers for instance, here's how you create your message:

1. Hit the PTAs, haunt the soccer fields and Little League games.  Talk to everyone about vouchers. Hand out cards to people who agree with you and ask them if you can contact them to help you get a bill passed.  
2. Get the emails or phone numbers of people who "get it" and collect their contact information in a database. Send them a message immediately after you talk to them, thanking them for their input and letting them know about your website and any upcoming meetings, events or pertinent information. Handwritten notes are powerful, but even an email works.  
3. Create a 30 second "elevator speech" you and your trusty lieutenants can use so that you have a quick, clear description of what you want done and why it should be done.  That way, like a commercial, you repeat a coherent message and when people see something about vouchers in the news or someone brings it up in conversation, they remember what you said.
4. Find a bill or ask your local rep to start a bill through the legislature in favor of school vouchers.  It's likely some organized group already has that information and likely has a bill written.  Hook up with them, even if they aren't members of your favorite political party, if they share your belief about this one issue, find common ground with them.  Your efforts are far more powerful if they are bi-partisan. Remember every politician believes they win or lose by the moderate vote and they will confuse bi-partisanship with being a moderate. Don't confuse politicians, let them believe what they want about who you are.  Just make sure they know what you believe.
5. Create a model letter/phone speech.  At each point in the battle, you need to tell people what's happening and why they should contact their representatives.
6. Ask people to call and write about specific things at different points along the way. If the bill is stuck in committee, as people to call and write about getting it unstuck.  If there's a vote on the bill coming up, encourage your rep to be there for the vote and vote "yes".  If there's a public forum about the issue, call and write people and ask them to come.  Give people rides.  Old people have more time than busy parents, so they often will come along to support your issue if you'll give them a ride.  The personal contact is the key.  Ask people to do things. Remind them and then check up to see if they did it.
7. Let people know when you've succeeded.  In doing the work I did on the state funding formula for rural transit, we let people know when the bill reached each stage toward passage.  People sent letters thanking their representative for his work on the bill and we told everybody when it passed and followed up later to let them know what changes were made as a result of their work.

I spoke with the chairman of the committee that initiated the transportation bill we worked on.  He couldn't believe how many ordinary people had contacted him.  He asked what we'd done.  I told him we talked with each other and passed around his address.  It was a little more than that, but I didn't want to demystify the process.

"You know," he told me, "I've changed my vote based on no more than a dozen unscripted letters in the past."  The kind of letters and calls we dumped on him and the rest of his committee got our attention, because they weren't form letters and they weren't canned speeches, scared the heck out of him and got them to act."

The dirty little secret of politics is that politicians are afraid of ordinary voters.  If they think regular voters are hacked off enough to simply pick up a pen and write a letter or call their offices on their own, they sense votes shifting away from them and can change a vote overnight. They'll vote the way a campaign donor asks in most cases, but not against a groundswell of his voting consitituency.  It would be political suicide to do so.

What can you do?  Plenty.  Pick up the phone and call your representative or senator.  If it's a federal issue, call both your senators and your congressman.  Ask everyone who believes like you do.  Make you some cards to give people so you can contact them.  Keep a small pad to write down names and phone numbers and then nag people to write and call too.  Best thing you can do!

I'm just saying.

Tom King