How to Prepare to Vote
I generally stay out of politics in my writing because I am commissioned by the Lord to write what He gives me and I am seldom led into political issues in my writing. With the upcoming election, the Lord wants me to share the process that will take some of the complications out of voting.
For many years I taught U.S. and AP U.S. history at the middle and high school levels. Since a teacher should remain neutral in matters of politics and religion, I kept my personal beliefs to myself and sought to help my students to have an open mind as we researched the issues. Often they would ask me about my own beliefs and how I was going to vote and I would tell them that I would let them how I voted the day after election day. Then I would remind them to think for themselves.
When it came time to vote on election day I would have the class vote for the person and issues on the ballot and we would tally the votes up to see what the class decided about the candidates and the issues. Then, in each class, we would have a great discussion on the results. The next day I would tell them how I voted. Before doing so I would ask the class how many thought I voted for the Republican candidate and the same for the Democrat candidate. Usually, the hand count would be about 50/50 which showed that I had not influenced their vote but had taught them to think for themselves on the candidates and the issues. My goal was to teach them how to think not what to think.
Full disclosure: I am a Constitutional conservative and follower of Christ,who believes firmly in freedom of speech and the absolute necessity of of being a seeker of truth. As with my teaching approach, I emphasize how to think not what to think all the while letting you know the basis upon which I come to my conclusions.
First of all you must settle what you believe and why you believe it. If you don’t know what you believe about the basic ideas of the election you need to do some research and settle it once and for all. Too many people vote out of feelings or emotion rather than researching so that they can understand the issues and vote accordingly. There are basically only two world views that govern our thinking: the atheist world view and the God world view. One view believes that the universe came out of nothing and so there are no absolute morals or ideas that should govern our actions. The other view believes that God created all things and has planted within us a sense of morality and desire to know the truth (Rom 1:19, 20).
Here are some issues facing our country in this election:
abortion, immigration, the economy, government spending, foreign war involvement, family, school choice, gender issues, racism, the rise of China and Russia, Israel and antisemitism, NATO
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea of what we are faced with in this election. Do you know how you stand on the subject of abortion and why? If you function in the atheist worldview, to you the unborn baby is just a mass of cells and we can do with it as we please. If we believe in a Creator then we have an inner sense that the unborn is a living human being growing in the womb of the mother and to kill it is murder, taking an innocent life. A conservative would probably be in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe vs Wade and send the issue of abortion to the states in keeping with Amendment Ten of the Constitution.
Do you know how you stand on the issue of family? The atheist worldview tends to de-emphasize family because it allows you to think and act as you please. After all, there is no absolute truth and you can believe what you want and act as you please. This leads to a lack of love and nurturing that produces a family from marriage and having children.
It leads to an environment in which students are taught that gender is a spectrum where male and female identities are being replaced with the idea that gender identity and biological sex are not the same. It leads to bullying by those granted license by the schools. It leads to situations where young ladies must share a bathroom or locker room with male students. We warned that such nonsense was coming when the Bible and prayer were removed from our schools by erroneous court decisions. When you reject the source of morality you end up with no morality.
This brings up the subject of school choice. Do you believe that we should give our children over to the government schools every day or should our taxes go toward schools that are not governed by the rules and practices of the government? If you come from a godless world view you think the government schools are doing just fine, especially in keeping spiritual principles of religion separate from schools. The God point of view would tend toward the parents having the right to teach their children apart from government influence.
This leads to the argument for school choice. Parents are paying taxes that go toward the schools so why should there not be choices for the parents such as charter schools where a voucher could be used to obtain an education for their children? Businesses, families, neighborhoods, retired teachers, and others could establish schools and receive the vouchers with a commitment to teach the children who come their way. The money, then, would go to the parents and the students instead of to schools under the control of the teachers’ unions. I wrote about this extensively in my book Education Revolution which is available online. Of course, the teachers’ unions oppose this because they would lose power and money.
I could go on with all of the issues but I think you get my point. Our nation is being influenced by these competing world views — one allowing you to base how you vote on your personal feelings, propaganda, driven by secular values and the other moving you toward seeking the absolute truth knowing that God’s values trump the values of the world. If there is no absolute truth then your mind is the fact checker and the highest source of truth. In other words, you make yourself your own god. If there is absolute truth then you must turn to God in seeking the truth about every issue.
I know I have oversimplified this process. I did so on purpose. You need to know what you believe and why you believe it. Many people including many of our representatives in Congress vote along political lines instead of lines of reason based on research.
So, in researching most issues you will have to wade through many liberal sites because the media is dominated by the Left. Most, if not all, fact-checking sites lean to the left and will give a skewed viewpoint while linking with sites that agree. As one example here is a site that gives the other side of the story with plenty of evidence that illegal voting is rampant. Be patient in your research as you will have to muddle through extensive propaganda in this age of fake news.
The best sources for how candidates and parties stand on the issues are their websites. For example here are the websites of the two major parties: Democrats and Republicans. Look for specific solutions on the issues not generalized concepts devoid of practical actions.
Regarding your research, you should be aware that almost all internet sites, and other media will tend to favor the position of the political left. On the left are The Atlantic, Democracy Now, Daily Beast, Huff Post, The Intercept, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, New York Times, The Nation, Slate Vox, Bloomberg, CBS CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, Politico, ProPublica, Washington Post, Yahoo News, and many others.
On the right we have The American Conservative, American Spectator, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox News, The Federalist, National Review, New York Post, Newsmax, OAN and a few others.
Also, you have various freelance content makers and bloggers such as Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and others. I include all of this to help you realize that most news outlets have a bias one way or the other. Some sites try to remain centrist such as Forbes, RealClearPolitics, The Hill, Newsweek and The Christian Science Monitor. Do your own research but beware.
I could say more but the real work is up to you. Do you want to just vote by your gut feelings or do you want to spend the time to get at the truth? Go to direct sources as much as you can such as the issues discussed on the platforms of the candidates and parties.
The main thing is to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s — vote!
How to Prepare to Vote
I generally stay out of politics in my writing because I am commissioned by the Lord to write what He gives me and I am seldom led into political issues in my writing. With the upcoming election I believe the Lord wants me to share the process that will take some of the complications out of voting.
For many years I taught U.S. and AP U.S. history at the middle and high school levels. Since a teacher should remain neutral in matters of politics and religion, I kept my personal beliefs to myself and sought to help my students to have an open mind as we researched the issues. Often they would ask me about my own beliefs and how I was going to vote and I would tell them that I would let them how I voted the day after election day. Then I would remind them to think for themselves.
When it came time to vote on election day I would have the class vote for the person and issues on the ballot and we would tally the votes up to see what the class decided about the candidates and the issues. Then, in each class, we would have a great discussion on the results. The next day I would tell them how I voted. Before doing so I would ask the class how many thought I voted for the Republican candidate and the same for the Democrat candidate. Usually the hand count would be about 50/50 which showed that I had not influenced their vote but had taught them to think for themselves on the candidates and the issues. My goal was to teach them how to think not what to think.
Full disclosure: I am a Constitutional conservative and follower of Christ,who believes firmly in freedom of speech and the absolute necessity of of being a seeker of truth. As with my teaching approach, I emphasize how to think not what to think all the while letting you know the basis upon which I come to my conclusions.
First of all you must settle what you believe and why you believe it. If you don’t know what you believe about the basic ideas of the election you need to do some research and settle it once and for all. Too many people vote out of feelings or emotion rather than doing the research so that they can understand the issues and vote accordingly. There are basically only two world views that govern our thinking: the atheist world view and the God world view. One view believes that the universe came out of nothing and so there are no absolute morals or ideas that should govern our actions. The other view believes that God created all things and has planted within us a sense of morality and desire to know truth (Rom 1:19, 20).
Here are some issues facing our country in this election:
abortion, immigration, the economy, government spending, foreign war involvement, family, school choice, gender issues, racism, the rise of China and Russia, Israel and antisemitism, NATO
Of course this is not an exhausted list but it gives you an idea what we are faced with in this election. Do you know how you stand on the subject of abortion and why? If you function in the atheist worldview, to you the unborn baby is just a mass of cells and we can do with it as we please. If we believe in a Creator then we have an inner sense that the unborn is a living human being growing in the womb of the mother and to kill it is murder, taking an innocent life. A conservative would probably be in favor of the Supreme Court decision to overrule Roe vs Wade and send the issue of abortion to the states in keeping with Amendment Ten of the Constitution.
Do you know how you stand on the issue of family? The atheist world view tends to de-emphasize family because it allows you to think and act as you please because there is no absolute truth and you can believe what you want and act as you please. This leads to lack of love and nurturing that produces a family from marriage and having children.
It leads to an environment in which students are taught that gender is a spectrum where male and female identities are being replaced with the idea that gender identity and biological sex are not the same. It leads to bullying by those granted license by the schools. It leads to situations where young ladies must share a bathroom or locker room with male students. We warned that such nonsense was coming when the Bible and prayer were removed from our schools by erroneous court decisions. When you reject the source of morality you end up with no morality.
This brings up the subject of school choice. Do you believe that we should give our children over to the government schools every day or should our taxes go toward schools that are not governed by the rules and practices of the government? If you come from a godless world view you think the government schools are doing just fine especially in keeping spiritual principles of religion separate from schools. The God point of view would tend toward the parents having the right to teach their children apart from government influence.
This leads to the argument for school choice. Parents are paying taxes that go toward the schools so why should there not be choices for the parents such as charter schools where a voucher could be used to obtain an education for their children. Businesses, families, neighborhoods, retired teachers and others could establish schools and receive the vouchers with a commitment to teach the children who come their way. The money, then, would go to the parents and the students instead of to schools under the control of the teachers’ unions. I wrote about this extensively in my book Education Revolution which is available online. Of course the teachers’ unions oppose this because they would lose power and money.
I could go on with all of the issues but I think you get my point. Our nation is being influenced by these competing world views — one allowing you to base how you vote on your personal feelings, propaganda, driven by secular values and the other moving you toward seeking the absolute truth knowing that God’s values trump the values of the world. If there is no absolute truth then your mind is the fact checker and the highest source of truth. In other words, you make yourself your own god. If there is absolute truth then you must turn to God in seeking the truth about every issue.
I know I have over simplified this process. I did so on purpose. You need to know what you believe and why you believe it. Many people including many of our representatives in Congress vote along political lines instead of lines of reason based on research.
So, you need to know how to research an issue. As a great example, In a recent vote of the House a bill was voted on that would prohibit individuals from voting in a federal election unless they proved proof of citizenship. Non-citizens would be taken off of official state eligible lists. The vote passed 221–198 vote. That means that 198 Democrats voted against a bill that would prevent voting abuse.
Now if you check 90% of the media sites that reported on this bill you will hear two arguments: 1) non-citizen voting is already illegal and 2) there is little evidence of illegal voting in the past so the bill is unnecessary. If you read media reports on this vote you will get a very skewed result as the sites will use links to progressive sites that agree with their notion that illegal voting is almost unheard of. They will label any argument opposed to this conclusion as a conspiracy,
So, in researching most issues you will have to wade through many liberal sites because the media is dominated by the Left. Most, if not all, fact-checking sites lean to the left and will give a skewed viewpoint while linking with sites that agree. As one example here is a site that gives the other side of the story with plenty of evidence that illegal voting is rampant. Be patient in your research as you will have to muddle through extensive propaganda in this age of fake news.
The best sources for how candidates and parties stand on the issues are their personal websites. For example here are the websites of the two major parties: Democrats and Republlcans. Look for specific solutions on the issues not generalized concepts devoid of practical actions.
Regarding your research, you should be aware that almost all internet sites, and other media will tend to favor the position of the political left. On the left are The Atlantic, Democracy Now, Daily Beast, Huff Post, The Intercept, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, New York Times, The Nation, Slate Vox, Bloomberg, CBS CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, Politico, ProPublica, Washington Post, Yahoo News, and many others.
On the right we have The American Conservative, American Spectator, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox News, THe Federalist, National Review, New York Post, Newsmax, OAN and a few others.
Also you have various freelance content makers and bloggers such as Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and others. I include all of this to help you realize that most news outlets have a bias one way or the other. Some sites try to remain centrist such as Forbes, RealClearPolitics, The Hill, Newsweek and The Christian Science Monitor. Do your own research but beware.
I could say more but the real work is up to you. Do you want to just vote by your gut feelings or do you want to spend the time to get at the truth? Go to direct sources as much as you can such as the issues discussed on the platforms of the candidates and parties.
The main thing is to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s — vote!
