Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Prager #NeverTrump, NR, Sin

#NeverTrump Wrong: Beat Hillary Clinton | National Review:

The fact that NR published this column is the MOST important point here. True conservatives believe in diversity of thought, and the center of the #NeverTrump movement being willing to publish a strong dissenting voice is far more than what we commonly see from the left. Actions speak louder than words.

My BIGGEST concern with #NeverTrump is just that -- I see the tendencies of anger and ostracization of disagreeing voices from both Trump and #NeverTrump. I'm less concerned about the Trump people -- they never said they supported him "because he was a Republican", or even  "because they are conservatives", but rather only because he was Trump. The #NeverTrumpers however like to hold up their conservative principles at bit like Scribes and Pharisees -- allowing diversity of thought is supposed one of those principles, and it is GREAT to see this action from NR.

I deeply respect Dennis Prager, and I agree with his decision to vote for Trump as the best chance of defeating Hillary. I do not agree with the core of his logic as to why, for religious reasons.
... Because circumstances almost always determine what is moral — even for religious people such as myself who believe in moral absolutes. That’s why dropping atom bombs on Japan was moral. The circumstances — ending a war that would take millions of more lives — made moral what under other circumstances would be immoral.
We don't have the power to declare "circumstances almost always determine what is moral". God has that power -- and in the Old Testament, he declares genocide moral in some cases and not others, and since he is sovereign, that is his declaration to make. From this point in history, we can understand that genocide has the result of removing a portion of the gene pool, knowledge the founders of abortion clearly had as they intended to remove "undesirables", knowledge we have forgotten as we abort millions, have smaller families, and focus on things like gay "marriage". God doesn't extend the power of situational morality to us -- however, we die when we don't propagate our race / culture.

Prager is Jewish, so the issue of Grace and forgiveness is less clear than it is for a Christian. Man has free will -- apparently he always did, since he chose evil in the garden. Free will means that we sometimes overtly choose to sin and sometimes sin when we believe that we made "the right situational choice".

Certainly we make choices based on context, but at least Christians need not declare mass murder to be "situationally moral" to bomb Hiroshima.  Would you purposely allow one person to die to save 10? How about a million to save a billion? These are questions beyond human moral reasoning, thus killing is declared to be sin. (We aren't going into capitol punishment, self defense, police/military today ...) Sometimes we trust God to forgive us if we choose poorly.

Overt on purpose sin is always an issue -- but unfortunately it is way too common for all, but typically along the lines of "I yelled at the SOB in line again", "I took the Lord's name in vain again" .... etc, rather than "I killed 200K people with an A-bomb".

I think the quality of some of the names on the #NeverTrump list has spooked Dennis a bit. All those names put their pants on one leg at a time, and my guess is that when NR came up with the whole deal, they ASSUMED that they would prevent the nomination of Trump. They guessed wrong and now their character prevents their change of mind -- my guess is that many of them will do what is right in the voting booth and vote for Trump.

Voting for Trump should NOT be compared with bombing Hiroshima or even becoming a Nazi mistress in order to save Jewish lives. (I'm surprised that Dennis followed that road) It is more akin to attending a funeral that might be good for you in business and one for some old lady from your church that you "feel you should attend". I say let the old lady rest in peace without guilt.

Besides, voting for the fascist with opposition is at least as good as Prager's 9 reasons ;-) Nothing like a little hubris on a nice day that I'm struggling to get a Chinese camera configured!

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