By David Hegg
It’s time we hit the pause button and take stock of what is going on around us. I remind you this is an opinion column, which you are welcome to digest, dissect and rebut. All I ask is you put emotion in the cupboard and restrict yourself to provable facts that are reasonably and logically put together as the foundation of your assertions.
Let me present an example of unreasonable assertions that have taken on the guise of truth in our society. One of our former presidents said requiring proof of citizenship would “make it harder to vote and disenfranchise millions of Americans.” This is false and manipulative. We should question what he meant by “Americans.” Can a person be American if they are not a citizen of the U.S.? Isn’t it true that it should be hard to vote if you are not a citizen?
I recently went to Costco, and guess what? They wouldn’t let me shop until I showed my membership card proving I was a member of the club. On a recent Southwest flight, I not only had to buy a ticket and hit the check-in button to procure a seat, but I also had to have a QR code on my phone ready for the flight attendant guarding the door to board the plane. I wonder if some of our elected officials would see such security as disenfranchising Americans who want to fly to Seattle!
But the question that plagues me is why would an elected official fight for the right of non-citizens to vote in our federal elections? To put it more simply, what are some in power willing to sacrifice to maintain their power?
It seems crystal clear that many today are willing to sacrifice the integrity of our elections to maintain, and even gain increased political leverage. The only reason anyone would allow non-citizens to vote is if they could reasonably believe that those non-citizens would vote in favor of the party that made it possible for them to vote in the first place.
The idea of sacrificing integrity to gain some semblance of sovereignty is blatantly selfish. I would even call it malicious in that hurting those you have pledged to serve, to serve your own interests, is both the highest form of hypocrisy and the meanest form of duplicity. Further, it is akin to the statute in Judaism that forbids a person to “boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” Three times in the Old Testament, human cruelty is forbidden in the same way that it would be cruel to cook a lamb in the very milk its mother produced to preserve its life.
How does this map onto the current debate regarding proof of citizenship? In this way. Those elected officials who seek political benefit by adding non-citizens to voter rolls are actually boiling our democracy in the very milk – one citizen, one vote – that is the essential, life-giving source of our republic. The foundational truth that our governance is “of the people, by the people, and for the people” can only remain useful if the word “people” is confined to legitimate, legally recognized citizens of the United States of America.
Why is it a monstrous thing in some minds that requiring evidence that a person is a member of the club and has a ticket to ride is somehow making it too hard to buy a TV, fly to Sacramento, or cast a vote for those desiring to govern our lives?
Our former president goes out of his way to express incredulity at such a prospect! I bring this up to show you how many are attempting to reshape reality through language. Notice he assumes all who want to vote should be allowed to do so easily, without guardians at the door. He throws in the sympathy scene by suggesting we see in our minds millions of sad, disenfranchised people sobbing real tears because the bullies at the door are not letting them come in to play in the voting booths.
We, the great majority of right-thinking citizens, must wake up and smell the rot swarming in our society. In a very real way, the “woke” folk are determined to keep us asleep when we need to open our eyes and say we’re not going to put up with this nonsense anymore. We’re not going to accept that it is more loving to allow non-citizens to vote when our first love must be for the welfare of our great nation. We’re not going to accept men masquerading as women on the athletic field and certainly not in the locker room. We’re not going to accept excuses for fraudulent governance or attempts to divide us along ethnic, wealth, or other discriminatory lines. We’re not going to fall for the ideology that pushes faith, virtue, honesty, and love of neighbor to the margin and clear off the page.
And we’re certainly not going to stay home on election day, thinking our votes won’t make a difference. What we are going to do is think clearly, act nobly, love purely, and care deeply as a people committed to the ideals that have made America the greatest country in the history of the world.
Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking” appears Sundays.
