Obama as Charlie Sheen
Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
I believe it was the late Joe Sobran who once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, I'm a Republican!"
In the comment thread of a recent post, after I had suggested the reform of abolishing the Department of Education, and burning all the buildings down, file cabinets and all, someone mentioned that 20 years of Republican presidents had neglected to undertake this most reasonable and modest reform. And yet, the jab went, people have been exhorted from this very web site to vote Republican.
The reason such taunts have weight behind them is that Republicans have, by and large, done an appalling job of being the loyal opposition. With regard to the Department of Education example, I think it would be fair to say that Reagan was the last Republican president who even wanted to get rid of that thing -- kind of like David with Joab.
But the issue is not whether you vote Republican or not. The issue is whether you trust Republicans. If we do that, then we are a bigger fool than we look.
It is not as though God is making us choose between evils, with us trying to figure out which one is the lesser. Voting Republican is not a venial sin, with a vote for the Democrats being a steaming hot mortal one. The issue on all these things is why and how. Trusting the Democrats is certainly a mortal sin. Trusting the Republicans is a venial one . . . but a sin nonetheless. Christians really ought to knock it off. But trusting perfectionistic third party candidates is obviously the Pathway of Light, upon which, if you walk, no political temptations whatever can befall you. Right? Well, suit yourself, friend. If you never enrol in the class, then nobody ever gets to grade your papers.
At the same time, the coordinates of my convictions do place me a bit out of the mainstream. I do sympathize with the sentiment that says, "If God had wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates." But just as we get the representatives we deserve, so also we get the candidates we deserve. We are not mis-represented. We are not under-represented. We are represented well.
My hope and prayer is that this representation will at some point in the near future signal a turn which can only be described as a political repentance. Repentance means a change of mind, a different direction entirely -- and not just the same old disobedience, only slower. A man in an adulterous relationship, who only sees his mistress once a week now, cannot call his tapering off repentance. A man getting drunk every other weekend cannot think of this as a repentant lifestyle because it is nothing like it used to be back in college. If sin were the city pool, it does not ultimately matter if you are only up to your ankles in the kiddie pool, or doing cannonballs off the high dive.
When it comes to spending, the Republicans are grannies who get into the sherry cabinet way more than they ought to, and Obama is Charlie Sheen. Such comparisons do not redound to anybody's glory, but they do affect what we might decide to do about it. The grannies have an admitted problem, but we do not need to take them off to rehab on a stretcher. Like we do with some people.
The first 2012 presidential nomination contest is just a year away now. Anticipating the churn this will cause among the faithful, not to mention the angst among hipster Christians, I decided that I needed to read through both of Sarah Palin's books -- Going Rogue and America by Heart -- a project I am currently enjoying. Some time in the near future, I will review here what I have discovered, and this review will be, as they say over at Fox, fair and balanced. But however balanced it is, at some point in those proceedings, everyone who has been prepped by means of the coolshame will feel their forehead begin to get hot.
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