Nathaniel LeMaster's Blog

Here are the election results wrap up for the evening as of now before I go to bed.

President (electoral) votes: Obama:338 McCain: 155
Prop 8 hovering right around 53% for 47% against.

Thoughts.
I did not vote for McCain. This was a long a difficult struggle. In the end, I chose to vote for a candidate who has no real chance of winning, not so much to make a point, as because I can not in good conscience vote for either of the two major candidates. I voted for Alan Keyes, because he truly is pro-life in the true sense.

Let me explain this a little.
Obama is not really an option once you look into what he truly stands for, who he associates with and who he looks up to. He stands on a proposition to take the hard-earned money that I have worked to earn and “spread it around” to all those who do not care enough to go out and get a job and struggle through hard times to make it. America was built upon the idea that you get the results of your actions. If you are diligent, then you are rewarded for that. If you slack off, then you are rewarded for that. To spread it around is to discourage those that work hard from working, and to give even less reason to work to those who are lazy. Furthermore on the life issue, Obama has clearly demonstrated that he has no concern for the life of a human being and that he thinks that one should be able to kill another if the other person is “in the way”.

As for the Republican candidate, I was not very pleased with the choice of McCain, but until the last few weeks, I have been planning on voting for him. The introduction of Palin to the campaign, has I think, helped it in some ways, but has also seriously hurt it. I do not agree with McCain in everything, but the life issue, and the importance of understanding that our national security is not something to be messed with and that you don’t hold meetings with extremists dictators without conditions.
But for me, I was voting for McCain because the alternative is simply put, so distasteful that a vote for McCain would be a vote against Obama. Over the last few weeks though, I have been seriously thinking this over and came to the conclusion that I must vote for what I believe in, what ever the consequences. Even at the expense of an Obama presidency, I could not vote for McCain.

A quote that I heard recently has been ringing in my head: “Do what’s right, Come what may”. I do not believe in situational ethics. Right and wrong does not change with the situation. Yet, I came to realize that me voting for McCain would be compromising in some very critical areas and that would be totally inconsistent with what I have said in the past and what I believe. There are many issues that I have with McCain, far too many to go over right now, but let’s address a bit one. The sanctity of a human life. We all know that the McCain campaign has been run on a pro-life basis. But if you look at the actual facts, you see a very different story.

McCain has said that he believes that life starts at conception. That is good
However, he has also supported taking that conceived human being and killing them to use on research for stem cells. He also support killing that human if it is unwanted in the case of rape, or incest.
Basically, he opposes abortion in some cases, but in the true question of the morality of the matter, he has no problem with killing un-wanted persons if there is significant reason to not want them.

Another issue is Palin. Voting for McCain would also be voting for Pailn to be next in line to the commander in chief of our nation. Understand this. I am not sexist. However, I do believe, and I think that there is plenty of scientific evidence and real-life experience to suggest and to support, that men and women are different, physically and emotionally. We are built differently. There are some things that Men are good at and there is some things that Women are good at. The feminist movement, while there is definitely some good that has come from it, has also brought a lot of flawed thinking to the table. The primary major flaw, is that somehow, politically, or socially we can make Men and Women equal in every way. Certainly as individuals they are equal. “All Men [Men=humanity, men, women, colored, etc) are created equal”. However, as we know that certain athletes are better at certain things, Men are created to be Leaders, and Women are created to be an help unto their leaders (husbands?). This is a very supportable position, but I am not going to get into a big discussion about this right now, if you are interested in talking about this more later, we can. The essence of what I am trying to say is that to vote for a woman to be in leadership of this country, is to seriously compromise and to either ignore or to butcher the correct literal understanding of the scripture.

A vote for McCain would be a vote to slow the evil, not to stop it. It would STILL be voting for evil!

Back to that quote again. Do what right, come what may.
At the end of the day, what matters is not necessarily who wins, because ultimately God is in control. Rather, what matters is what did YOU do with your vote. Did you compromise hoping that voting for the “lesser” of the two evils would somehow slow down the moral decay in this country? Or did you vote without reservation, confident that you are doing what is right, and trusting God to do the rest?

I also recommend that you read this article by Alan Keys, it does a much better job of explaining what I have been thinking about over the last few weeks. The 2008 Election: A Winnowing Season

I apologize if this post is somewhat disjointed. It is very late, and I have a lot of different thoughts that are flying around in my head. In the coming days, I will be doing a number of different posts of some different issues and try to put into words some of thoughts and discussions that I have had in the preceding days and the arguments that led me to the decision that I made.