Third Parties, the Electoral College and the Constitution

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As sure as there is a sunrise, presidential elections stir up chatter in two predictable areas: the electoral college and a third party. This year is no different. Typically, liberals want to dump the electoral college, while libertarians want to have a third-party choice. 

Third-party talk is mostly heard before a presidential election. It is the natural consequence of a dissatisfaction with the uneasy coalitions that make up the two dominating parties. Who could disagree? The primary season is famous for weeding out the noblest and most principled candidates from each party and leaving us with an unsavory choice between two political animals.

Challenges to the electoral college, on the other hand, are heard mostly after an election. The margin of victory in electoral votes is usually wider than the margin of the popular vote, and five times it has even been reversed. Why not just go with the popular vote and scrap the electoral college? So the logic goes.

Governing is the art of building consensus around clearly defined choices. In order for it to work, you need both things: a clearly defined choice and a coalition that supports one side over the other. Remember the last time you and a dozen friends wanted to watch a movie? You probably had more than a dozen suggestions to choose from. How do you do that? 

Do you start by having a vote? Not usually, especially if nine friends suggested nine different movies from the Marvel Comics series, while the other three wanted to watch “Gone with the Wind.” Do you see the problem? To base your decision on which movie gets the most votes will probably mean that nine people who are in the mood for an action flick will have to endure three hours in the antebellum South. 

Take this problem and multiply it by 10 million and you can see the challenges of choosing anything on a national scale. If you have six candidates to choose from, and five of them think very much alike, chances are the first vote will always favor the one who is most different from the other five — even if most people agree with the five. The majority mindset will be split five ways while the minority will back one candidate.

There are two ways to solve this problem. Either you can have a whole series of votes to narrow it down to a choice between two, or you can have a way to decide which of the five best represents that point of view, and then take vote between two. 

In America, we use the second method. The narrowing down process is called the “Primaries.” It is designed to prepare the field for a single Red or Blue vote. It does not work as well when it narrows the field to three shades of red and two shades of blue. For that, the first method would be better.

But the first method works well only if you are all in the same room. It becomes impractical when you’re scattered across five time zones. In that case, the only way to make it practical is to select representatives who can all fit in the same room and complete the narrowing process. We call this the parliamentary system.

This is the way that many other countries rule themselves. Instead of the people having a direct say in the choosing of their leader, they choose representatives from numerous different parties who can all fit in the same place called, Parliament. These members of Parliament (MPs) then begin to parlay. They discuss and dicker and make deals until one candidate for Prime Minister has assembled a coalition of different parties large enough to be elected.

If America wanted to go with a third-party system, we could do it, but it would require changing the Constitution. While our two-party system is not written in the constitution, it is the natural result of it. America has not always had Democrats and Republicans. Parties have come and gone. But there have always been two dominant ones at any given moment. This is a direct result of our constitutional right to have a direct vote in presidential elections.

Well, almost a direct vote. Each state has a direct vote to elect electors. But it is actually the 538 electors who gather in a single place and elect a president. Here is where libertarian longings for a third party meet the liberal desires to scrap the electoral college. Both ideas would require amending the Constitution. 

We could certainly choose to do that. But it’s not going to be accomplished by complaining. Someone needs to introduce a bill to amend the constitution and seriously carry it through the states. Until this happens, politicians and talking heads who criticize the electoral college are only grandstanding.

We should also remember this: Were it not for the electoral college, the United States of America would not exist. We would still have states, like Europe has a patchwork of countries, but they would not be united under one constitution.

It was especially the less populated, rural states who understood from the start that if we elected the president by a straight popular vote, they would always be overpowered by the highly populated urban areas. So during the constitutional convention, Alexander Hamilton championed the electoral college as a way to give agriculture and natural resources its due. Without this provision in the constitution, they were prepared to walk away from the United States and make plans of their own.

Wyomingites especially ought to appreciate the electoral college. With it, your voice has three times more say in presidential elections than people in highly urbanized states. This still does not make Wyoming a hot stop on the presidential campaign trail, but at least it means that presidents must acknowledge the contributions we and other rural states make to the Union and take care that their regulatory agencies do not run roughshod over states’ rights.

Government is a series of compromises and delicate balancing acts. While tweaks and improvements are always possible, it is never a good idea to make rapid and major changes without first understanding the history and implications of what is being changed. Our Constitution is a masterpiece of fine-tuning and careful thought. On that we can all agree.

A Love Story: Barronelle and Robert Ingersoll

Today, as I write, Barronelle Stutzman is standing before the Washington State Supreme Court. Her crime? Loving a man. Don’t get me wrong. This is not an erotic or romantic story. The man she loves is not a suitor or a lover, he is a customer.

Barronelle owns a flower shop in Richland, Washington. She worked in, and later managed, her mother’s business. In 1996, she bought it and made it her own. She doesn’t just sell flowers or pre-packaged arrangements. Any cashier could do that. She creates art. Her arrangements don’t come out of a book; they come out of her soul.

Some people go to a flower shop because they lack imagination. Others, because they are filled with it. Robert Ingersoll was one of these. He saw the harmony and unity, the balance and proportion of her art. He could be surprised by a focal point or a line and be delighted by a texture or hue. He understood her and her art.

He would come at anniversaries, on Mother’s Days, for birthdays and for parties. He would thoughtfully select a vase, then hand it to her saying, “Do your thing.“

She then poured out her heart for him into those vases. “He was particularly fond of unusual and creative arrangements,” she said. “His requests for arrangements always challenged me to do my best work.”

For nearly 10 years, he was a regular customer spending thousands of dollars on dozens of arrangements. Rob appreciated her self-expression and the passion that went into her creations. Barronelle was inspired by his discriminating taste and rose to the challenge.

Their mutual love of flowers brought them together, but their love for each other grew out of their love of growing things. She talked about how her faith filled every aspect of her life and her art. He talked about his life and his relationship with Curt Freed. And they talked about flowers.

It was a beautiful friendship. An artist and a patron. They were unsullied by the angry agendas of our world. They were, of course, aware of their vast differences in worldview. She knew that he identified as a homosexual and that Curt Freed was his partner. He knew that she was a Christian from the Southern Baptist tradition who believed homosexuality to be sin. But they were able to connect over flowers.

Then the day came, as it comes in all friendships. A day when worldviews collide. Maybe your girlfriend asks you to go to a different church. Maybe your best friend wants you to help hide an affair. Maybe a close colleague asks you to attend an anti-Trump vigil, or participate in the annual Life Chain.

In the friendship of Barronelle and Rob, it was about a wedding. She learned a few hours ahead of time that he was going to ask her. And she agonized about it as any friend naturally would. As a business owner, you can guess how strongly she wanted the business. As a friend, you know how reluctant to deny a heartfelt wish. As a Christian she sincerely believed that endorsing his same-sex marriage would actually hurt her friend.

Through tears and hand-holding, gentle words and sorrowful regrets, she explained that she could not grant this request. “Could not,” is the language of a heart captive to something higher than yourself. It is the farthest thing from “will not.” Their conversation ended with a hug and hope. Tests of friendship can either end them or lift them to a higher level. Time would tell.

But unlike other challenges to friendship, the power of government has intruded into this one. You can’t be hauled to court for declining to condone an affair. But you can for this. Washington enacted a Law Against Discrimination (WLAD). Barronelle was told that she had violated it.

Whether she has or hasn’t the Washington State Supreme Court will decide. And whether the Washington law passes constitutional muster, the US Supreme Court could decide. But I am interested in their friendship.

The whole point of law is to help people live in harmony — not monotone. The whole point of discrimination law is to see to it that all people are treated with dignity. What about Rob and Barronelle? Has WLAD helped them? Is Rob being treated with more dignity as a result of it? Is Barronelle? The answers to these questions are obvious. Rob has not entered her shop since that day. The harmony is gone. Has his dignity been increased? Barronelle not only lost a friend, but feels her dignity and livelihood attacked in open court.

What saddens me the most is that their friendship is broken. It would be sad enough if Rob took such great offense to her words that he broke off the friendship without trying to talk it through and work it out. Heaven knows that happens all too often with each of us. But what saddens me even more is the thought that he was encouraged to break off the friendship by WLAD itself.

Did the ACLU convince him that it was worth losing a friend in order to help others? Did the Attorney General convince him that he needed to sue Barronelle in order to advance the dignity of others? Who knows. Whatever went on behind the scenes, Rob no longer talks to Barronelle, and the only thing that changed was the application of WLAD.

The state of Washington didn’t even contemplate that a denial of same-sex marriage was a violation of WLAD when it was debated and passed. After all, same-sex marriage remained illegal in Washington for three years after WLAD was on the books. Nor was it that Mr. Ingersoll finally learned the truth about his florist’s beliefs, or that Barronelle suddenly became a bigot after 10 years of friendship.

Consider also the millions of Americans watching this case unfold. Had Barronelle not treated her customer with care and love in the first place, he would never have asked her for this gift and she would be off the hook. What do we expect other shop-owners and artists to learn from this?

Hide your affection. Treat everyone monotonously the same. Leave your personal expression at home. Sell your goods without thought for your customers. And above all, hide your religion. This is not a recipe for love, dignity and unity. It is a recipe for impersonal relationships, distrust and loneliness. Not only has Washington’s Law Against Discrimination been at the center of destroying one friendship, it will also make friendships and love more difficult across the board.

In Shakespeare’s famous play, the feuding Montagues and Capulets destroyed both the love and the lives of Romeo and Juliet. Now that play has come to life. When the government weighs in on love and friendships, lovers and friends are crushed under it. We see it in the case of Barronelle and Rob, and we can predict the prevention of countless other friendships in its wake.

Unless the Washington Supreme Court overturns the lower court, a 72-year-old woman will not only lose her business of nearly 40 years; she will also lose her house and retirement savings. For in an unprecedented move, the ACLU and Attorney General have sued not only her business, but her person for attorney fees estimated at over a million dollars.

Some would be angry and embittered. One could hardly blame Barronelle if she were. But she’s not! Blogger Monica Bonewitz-Boyer privately talked to her. Here’s how she describes the conversation: “I then asked her how I could pray. Do you know what she said? She said, ‘Pray for Rob. He needs Jesus.’ She didn’t ask for me to pray for a win in court. She didn’t ask me to pray that she wouldn’t lose her home and business … She said, ‘Pray for Rob.’”

The love story continues, no thanks to WLAD. The love continues because one person guided by her worldview refuses to hate. More than that, she refuses to retreat into an impersonal and uncaring tolerance. Some label this as hate and bigotry. I appreciate it as the art of love.

Further Resources:
The Federalist: Why Refusing to Design Gay Wedding Flowers Was Barronelle Stutzman's Act of Love
Alliance Defending Freedom, State of Washington / Robert Ingersoll v. Arlene's Flowers

Thinking about advance directives

Twenty-one years ago my wife and I had been in a hospital rejoicing in the birth of my son. Recently, we were there with him again. But this time he had just been flown to a Salt Lake City emergency room in a medivac chopper. He had multiple fractures and bleeding on the brain. And on his 21st birthday — nearly to the very hour — we were staring at a form that asked: “Do you have a living will, or an advance directive?”

Since that summer day, I have a heightened awareness of this question. I see it everywhere. Twenty years ago I don’t remember hearing it. But now you can hardly have any encounter with the health care system without encountering this question. It is on every admission form for hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices — even some dentists!

What has happened to bring this about? And what should we think about it? 

While living wills are not a new thing (they were first proposed in 1969), they have become increasingly talked about. It was the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990 that first required health care institutions to promote and support them. They started appearing on admittance forms shortly afterwards. What better way to raise people’s awareness than by putting a question before them every time they went to the hospital?

More recently, the Affordable Care Act of 2008 began to pay physicians to counsel their patients in the intricacies of advance directives. This dangerous practice raised the specter that the very people who might financially benefit from your death would be in a position to encourage it.

Thankfully, that particular provision of the ACA was voided in July of 2015. But before you could blink, new rules were created that effectively did the same thing. All of these federal rules, coupled with sophisticated and well-funded public relations campaigns have succeeded in making living wills, advance directives, and DNRs household words.

With the passage of Colorado’s suicide law last Tuesday (Prop. 106), I thought it would be a good time to ask and answer a few questions.

• Are we required to have an advance directive?

No. You are not required to set up either a living will or an advance directive. But while the question is simple and the answer is definite, learning this fact took a good amount of time and persistence. 

There is such a public push to encourage advance directives, that the actual law is obscured and reduced to fine print. When I Googled the question: “Do I need an advance directive?” I was led to the website for Patients’ Rights Council. This seemed like a great source to find out my rights as a patient. But on the site, I could not find any reference to the law. Instead, at the top of the page I found this question asked and answered three separate times with the an unqualified “yes.” Further down the page, they even told me it was “absolutely essential.”

If I’m going to take their word for it, I had better execute an advance directive right away. No wonder people are confused. More than once I have had people come to me with an advance directive form they got at the doctor’s office. The questions on the form are worded in suggestive ways that leave them bewildered. They seem forced to make choices without all the necessary information. 

Since these forms are part of a dizzying stack of papers to read, sign and initial, many people are convinced that they have to fill it out and hand it in as a condition of their treatment.

But this is not the case. While any number of official-sounding organizations might say otherwise, the actual Federal Law says that a health care provider cannot “condition the provision of care or otherwise discriminate against an individual based on whether or not the individual has executed an advance directive” (42USC1395cc). It seems the Patients’ Rights Council is more interested in advocating their opinion than they are about informing you of your actual rights. But, are they right in their opinion?

• Is it a good idea to have an advance directive?

That depends on what you mean. Advance directives cover a wide variety of issues including Power of Attorney, treatment options, DNRs, and organ donation. Some of these issues you will want to settle in advance. Others you will want to settle only when all the facts are in. Let’s look at some of these.

Durable power of attorney

This is the first and the most straight-forward of advance directives. When you are incapacitated and unable to make medical choices for yourself, who would you want to make them? Every state already has laws in place that answer this question in a variety of situations. These laws are necessary so that doctors and emergency medical technicians have legal protections when time is of the essence and the situation is fluid and confusing.

While the state already has a way of determining who will speak for you, you should look at Wyoming law for yourself to see if it matches your wishes. There are a couple of reasons that you might want to override it. For one, the law may designate a person to speak for you against your own wishes. This is easily corrected by designating durable power of attorney. 

Other times the law might require agreement among multiple family members who see things differently. If they argue for too long, treatment options may be lost simply because of the delay. Specifying for yourself a single person to have durable power of attorney can give the doctors legal authority to get quicker decisions.

Treatment options

When people think about advance directives, they are usually thinking about these. People tend to have an irrational fear of being kept alive on machines for an infinite length of time. But it is never a good idea to make decisions out of fear — much less pre-emptive decisions. Besides, there is no medical treatment that can keep you alive indefinitely.

Questions about whether or not to receive a breathing tube, a feeding tube, an I.V. or a jillion other treatment options can never be adequately answered without knowing the whole picture. How many of us know people whose lives were saved by such medical wonders so that they lived for decades afterwards? Would our world be better if these people had died?

There will, of course, be situations when such treatments are no longer useful for restoring health. In such sad situations, a person with the durable power of attorney can affect their removal. But if you direct in advance that certain treatments cannot be used, you may tie the hands of your loved ones from ordering some care that is perfectly reasonable and hopeful for your full recovery.

Do not resuscitate

This advance directive is known by the initials DNR. We are often tempted to specify this ahead of time in order to prevent our family from incurring medical costs, or being forced to make difficult decisions for us. However, there are problems with this advance directive.

For one, it often cannot be followed. For instance, if you experience a medical problem at home and somebody calls an ambulance, the EMTs are bound by law to stabilize the patient and transport you to the hospital. In effect, any DNR that may be on the record is voided once you pick up the phone.

A second problem is like that above. How can you preemptively exclude resuscitation before you know the exact circumstances? Not only does our health go up and down rapidly, but the state of treatment options is constantly changing. What is a hopeless situation today, may not be tomorrow. Only a loved one consulting with the doctors and medical technicians can have enough of the picture to make an informed decision.

It is a good thing that we are all thinking more about advance directives. Careful consideration of these issues helps us be more clear on what is truly good and right and loving for all human beings. I only wish that the pressure was dialed back a bit.

One of the main reasons that advance directives are being promoted is that health care costs would be reduced. But you have no duty to die in order to save money. Nor do you have any legal obligation to hurry up and make an ill-advised decision.

Your life is precious. Don’t sell yourself short. While we have an infinite number of ways of taking life and shortening life, we have no way to create it. That is purely a gift, a gift to you and a gift to all of us around you. Knowing this is the best advance directive of all.

A worldview to help you face tomorrow

Whew! It’s over. The end of a long, stressful, cantankerous election season.

Today, while you are reading this, all America is going to the polls to decide our officers for the next two to six years. Even without knowing the outcome, we can be thankful that the campaign season is over.

Election cycles take a lot out of us. They are hard on our health — blood pressure, sleep patterns, stress levels, etc. They are hard on relationships with family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances. They are hard on our faith. They entice us to justify things that are obviously wrong. They turn our eyes from permanent matters to the temporary. They force us to choose between terribly flawed sinners (like ourselves), then tempt us to trust them as our saviors. They promise unbounded hope for the future only to dash it to pieces every. single. time.

I’m glad it’s over. But no matter what the outcome, tomorrow we will wake up to learn of winners and losers up and down the ballot. From the school board to the president, roughly half of us will be disappointed by the results, and half pleased. We will go mingle with our co-workers, check in on social media, make preparations to have Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends who voted for the other side.

What shall we say about these things? Is there anything true and solid that can make us feel better about the state of the world, less frantic about the disaster that we fear, more charitable toward the other side of the aisle? Yes, absolutely. In fact there are four things that encourage me. I would like to share them with you.

God is in control.

Whatever happens today is happening because God wants it to. He may want it as blessing, He may want it as chastisement. He may want it in consequence of our standing against Him, or He may want it in consequence of standing with Him. But the overriding truth is that He wants it. That is comforting.

We don’t have to understand the reasons for God’s wanting something in order to have peace. It is enough to know that He does. And even though I do not pretend to speak for other religions, I suspect that this comfort is found in most of them. I hear it expressed in the Latin, “Deo volente.” I hear it from Islam in the word, “Inshallah.” I, myself, pray it and believe it in the words, “Thy will be done.”

I honestly feel sorry for anyone who does not believe this certainty. I can only imagine how overwhelmed, frantic and hopeless they can feel when things don’t go their way. But for those who already believe in the King of kings, Lord of lords — and the President of presidents — tomorrow morning will be just as glorious and hopeful as today, no matter what we think should have happened.

Evil exists only as an attack on the good.

I know that sounds like a pretty depressing thought in what hopes to be an upbeat article. But, really, it’s not. It is a hugely important thought because it undergirds two basic truths about the condition of our world.

First, it means that the evil we see around us is not part of the natural state of the universe. It’s not here by design. It is an intrusion, an alien, an unnatural enemy. To strive against it tooth and claw is not wrong but necessary. And to hope for a world where it no longer exists is not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy, but a hearkening back to an earlier reality, and a realistic expectation of its return.

The second way that the acknowledgement of evil helps is this: it means that the people who are doing evil things are not in and of themselves evil. The devil is evil by nature, but the people and things that he uses to attack the good are themselves redeemable. They are being used, hijacked — perhaps even willingly for the moment. But nobody is hopeless, nobody is intrinsically evil, nobody is beyond rescue.

It is only with a solid and clear understanding of evil as an external and illegitimate attack on goodness that we can both fight against it, and at the same time love the person who is caught in its net. This is more than bland tolerance, this is actually love.

Politics brings this difference to the foreground. For those who cannot grasp the real existence of evil, politics means pretending some people to be angels and others to be demons. But for those who have a realistic understanding of evil, people around you remain lovable together with all their flaws, warts, and bad ideas.

Winning looks more like crucifixion.

Of all the points I am making here, this is the most explicitly Christian. But I hope the non-Christian reader will indulge me anyway. After all, this is also the stuff of every good fairytale, myth and story that was ever told. Our heroes are not strong men who do with brute force what everyone expects them to be able to do. No. The heroes that speak to our deepest humanity are weak in appearance, unlikely to win, are always thrashed nearly to death before unexpectedly snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat.

Whether we are talking Spiderman, Superman or Ironman, or Hercules, Thor or Horace, all heroes follow the same pattern. It is the pattern of Jesus who accomplished His most mighty victory by hanging bloody, weak and defeated on the cross. Take this to heart and you will never be depressed and downcast no matter what happens in this world. When you believe that God’s victories always take the appearance of defeat, defeat itself becomes your hope of victory! How strange, but how incredibly comforting.

The ultimate victory is won.

This fourth point brings them all together. That God is in control, that evil is an intruder that must be resisted, that victory in the resistance looks exactly like defeat, all comes together in this. For those who believe the ultimate victory is certain, they simply are not bothered by the temporary setbacks and looming threats of the near future.

We have our marching orders. We get to play our part. But if the victory is already and ultimately won, the pressure is off. The victory does not depend on our performance. Our performance only reflects which side of the battle we are on. So fight against evil as you must. Love and rescue your neighbor as you can. But do it all with a free and happy heart. Because what really matters rests firmly in hands far more capable and sure-handed than your own.

Liberty and Justice for All

Sins and crimes are different animals.

Sins are committed against your God. Crimes are against the state. Sins are a matter of religion. Crimes are a matter of law. Religion is about ultimate truths. Law is about our common perception of truth. Sins are denounced in churches, while crimes are prosecuted in courtrooms. If we want to keep from becoming a theocracy, we need to recognize that distinction.

But distinction is one thing, and separation is another. While we can and must distinguish between religion and law, it is also clear that our common perception of truths (laws) are grounded in each person’s understanding of the ultimate truth (religion).

“Americans United for the Separation of Church and State” and such groups are on an irrational witch hunt to stamp out any and every religious influence in public life. This quixotic crusade is simply un-American. What they fail to see is that their own perception of the ultimate truth is itself a religion. And it is the only religion that they do not want to stamp out from public life.

Sadly, many Americans seem to have forgotten that religious freedom is for everyone. Each and every person who ever existed had some personal perception of ultimate truth. Each person has a religion. We all make everyday decisions based on our understanding of ultimate reality. Worldview matters, and worldview is religion.

In early American life, the overwhelming majority of people held some form of Christianity as their ultimate worldview. As a result, religion in public policy was largely a debate between different Christian denominations. As time has gone on, more and more adherents of non-Christian religions make up our citizenry. To add to the confusion, some historically Christian denominations have even adopted non-Christian worldviews as their own.

There is another twist as well. It is not necessary for something to have a recognizably religious name for it to be a religion. Atheism is a religion. Not only does it contain the word “god” (theos) in its very name, it has its own set of untested and untestable beliefs about ultimate reality. There are many different denominations of atheism, each with slightly different views of reality.

We could even assign names to these atheist denominations: Marxism, Leninism, Secular Humanism, Darwinism, Neil DeGrass-Tysonism, etc. The names are not important. What is important — extremely important — is to be quit of the irrational conceit that certain views and perceptions about God and ultimate reality are religions while others are not.

It is this false assertion that is poisoning our public conversation today. It is poisonous because it strips us the ability to wrestle with these differences under the constitutional system that was designed to allow a free discussion of ultimate reality. Instead, certain worldviews are excluded from the public discussion, while other religions are established by the government itself.

Let’s get back to basics. Our founding fathers recognized two things. First, they recognized that public laws are not merely arbitrary rules desired by the majority (mob rule). Rather, laws are rooted in the very nature of things. Second, they knew that because of our sinful natures and human limitations, people will always differ on their understanding of the ultimate nature of things.

Based on these two facts, they built a constitution that allows citizens of the United States to pass laws which are rooted in religion without establishing any one religion or lack of religion as the religion of the state. This is a distinction without a separation. 

That’s why the American project is eloquently etched on every coin in your pocket. There you will find three defining slogans: “In God We Trust” is the foundation, “Liberty” is the means and “e pluribus unum“ (out of many, one) is the goal. These are literally the coin of American government. In simple words, they summarize the aspirations of every American.

Today we are being tested like never before. The multiplication of denominations, the widening of their beliefs, and the addition of non-Christian religions have all made America’s project to be more challenging than it was 200 years ago. But this is the genius of America. Even before today’s great challenges were contemplated, the framers of the United States Constitution provided us with the tools to rise to these challenges. 

They provided us with Federalism, a separation and clear enumeration of the powers of the individual states vs. the powers of the federal government. They provided us with the separation of powers at the federal level into legislative, judicial and executive branches. 

While our Constition separates numerous powers in order to dilute their potency and preserve our freedoms, they conscientiously refused to separate church and state. They recognized the distinction but encouraged religions to participate in the public discussion.

Today there is a push to abandon the Federalism and separated powers of the U.S. Constitution and try to meet these challenges by excluding certain religions and religious views from competing in the market of ideas. This will end badly. The loss of liberty for one group will never stop at just one group. If religious liberty is for everyone — even those who consider themselves non-religious — taking it from one religion will take it from all.

There is a better way. Let us all — devout Catholic, Evangelical, skeptic or atheist — acknowledge and own our own religion as what it is. Then let us meet one another in the public square, in the coffee shop and over the back fence, to seek common ground in our perceptions of the ultimate truth. 

Along the way, in an honest quest for the ultimate truth, we will both increase unity and sharpen our perceptions. By the grace of God, you could even find the Truth who sets you free, “with liberty and justice for all.”

How Others See Our Choices

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial
Foundation Dinner in New York City. Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The whole world is watching us.

Over the last month, I have logged tens of thousands of miles, visiting three continents. From the steamy poverty of Sierra Leone to the pubs and castles of Ireland, there is one thing that tied all the people together. Nearly every conversation I had began by someone asking, “So, what do you think of Trump and Hillary?”

This question occurred with such regularity that it soon evoked spontaneous laughter. It was comical to me that people as diverse as a tipsy Irishman, Lady Dunsany (originally from Columbia) and an African preacher from the bush should all be fixated on American politics.

At first, it made me wonder if these people have nothing better to do with their time than watch a dog and pony show taking place a half a world away. Has the American presidency become something akin to the royalty of the British Empire? Do they watch us like we watched the soap opera of Charles and Lady Di?

Actually, no. In time, I learned that their interest is not idle entertainment. It was the Irishman who drove home the reality: we are talking about the leader of the free world.

I have heard this phrase for decades, but I had never heard it through the mouth of a non-American. The simple reality is that America is the world’s greatest super-power, and the only one with freedom at its very foundation. As America goes, so goes the rest of the world. And as America’s freedom goes, so goes that of the entire free world.

What has dawned on me over the last month is that the President of the United States of America is, for better or for worse, the world’s president. American hegemony is so powerful and so influential that American politics and culture have a direct impact upon the politics and culture of countries scattered around the globe. The people that I met on my travels know this well — even if you have never thought about it.

All this reminded me of a startling realization that I had back in graduate school. I can remember the very lecture when it happened. We were studying the politics of the Roman Empire at the time of the first Christians. It blew my mind when I learned that the average man on the street had absolutely no say about the people and the way he would be governed.

His leaders were chosen for him by politics and wars, treaties and betrayals far above his paygrade. A Roman citizen at the time of Christ could go his entire life without ever casting a vote. But no matter how far he might be from having any control over the politics of Rome, the politicians of Rome had a great deal of control over him. Other people and other factors chose his rulers, but he was not unaffected by it.

For a Christian in the first century, an emperor like Nero could dip you in tar and light you on fire, or an emperor like Nerva could stop the persecutions and roll back corruption. Either way, you had no say whatsoever about which it would be. It suddenly dawns on me that this is very similar to the way much of the world looks on American politics. They are affected by both the good and the bad of our choices.

They watch from afar as we select leaders who will affect them in ways we cannot fathom. They are more than curious. They are concerned.

If you have ever tossed up your hands in frustration and said, “My vote doesn’t matter anyway,” you might want to think about the billions of people around the world for whom that is really true. Your vote may be only one in a hundred million, but it is still that. Pastor Lansana, the preacher from the bush, and Lady Dunsany of Ireland don’t even have that.

Think about that as you go to the polls in November. People around the world are depending on the American voter. What we do here will most certainly affect billions of people beyond our shores. Not only does your vote truly matter for you, it matters for people you have never met, in places you have never visited.

While you are thinking about these things, think about something else as well. The relationship between American politics and people around the globe is not the only place where other people’s actions affect innocent lives profoundly. This is, in fact, the constant reality of the entire human condition.

None of us are islands. Our personal choices do not affect only us. They affect everybody around us in ways that we may never understand. We live in community. That means there are no such things as private sins or inconsequential choices. Every decision you make has a ripple effect upon the entire world.

What parents do in private affect their children. What families do behind closed doors, affect the whole community. What countries do within their own borders have an impact on those beyond the border. Life is made up of a thousand choices between good and evil, right and wrong. And those choices matter to people that you never even knew existed.

Perhaps there is a silver lining to this strange campaign season. Perhaps in the flawed charactors of Clinton and Trump we can be roused into remembering these basic truths. Character counts. Virtue matters.

Remembering these things, perhaps we will also stop obsessing with the flaws of others and start looking more honestly at ourselves. Anxiety comes with the feeling that nothing you do matters to the world around you. By that same thought, virtue fades.But confidence and humanity are restored when you know that even your most miniscule and private battle to do the right and shun the wrong has a greater impact on the world than you will ever know.

You matter. Your choices matter. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Hope After Rape Conception

HopeAfterRapeConception.org

“I was adopted nearly from birth. At 18, I learned that I was conceived out of a brutal rape at knife-point by a serial rapist. Like most people, I’d never considered that abortion applied to my life, but once I received this information, all of a sudden I realized that, not only does it apply to my life, but it has to do with my very existence. It was as if I could hear the echoes of all those people who, with the most sympathetic of tones, would say, ‘Well, except in cases of rape… ,’ or who would rather fervently exclaim in disgust: ‘Especially in cases of rape!’

“All these people are out there who don’t even know me, but are standing in judgment of my life, so quick to dismiss it just because of how I was conceived. I felt like I was now going to have to justify my own existence, that I would have to prove myself to the world that I shouldn’t have been aborted and that I was worthy of living. I also remember feeling like garbage because of people who would say that my life was like garbage — that I was disposable.”

These are the words of Mrs. Rebecca Kiessling, who recently spoke in Rock Springs to a crowd of over 300. She is a nationally-known speaker and a co-founder of HopeAfterRapeConception.org, an organization focused on supporting women who have conceived as a result of rape and advocating legislation to protect them.

It’s not hard to understand why. When your very existence hangs in the balance, a person tends to become focused and passionate. 

Rebecca’s story is not unique. Congress found that rape-related pregnancy occurs approximately once for every 20 rapes. That translates to over 32,000 people per year conceived as a result of rape. For these women and for the children they carry, how we support them speaks volumes about how we value them as human beings. 

If they take it personally, we all should. Once we consider these women and children as innocent victims, we cannot help but care about them as persons. It is only so long as they remain abstract statistics that society can turn a blind eye to their plight.

Many people assume that these 32,000 women would want only to abort the children conceived in rape. But, perhaps surprisingly, that is not the case. Congress found that nearly 75 percent of these women carry the children to term. Studies also suggest that an even higher number would like to do so if we would only support them better.

Rape is a terrible thing. It is violence against a woman’s person at the very core of her womanhood. Nobody with a heart would want any woman to suffer one iota more from rape than she has already suffered. On that we can all agree. 

Before she even considers the status of the child, she must also ask if she herself will suffer more by giving birth, or by undergoing an abortion? The woman faced with this terrible choice should not be denied the facts. Real data and real answers are critical. She needs good advice and she needs it now. But where are such answers to be found? 

To date, there is only one clinical study that has reached out to real women who faced a rape pregnancy and listened to their stories. The Elliot Institute in Illinois has conducted a follow-up survey of women who were impregnated by rape or incest. The results of their study help to explain why so many women choose to carry the child to term.

They found that no victim of rape who carried her child to term regretted her choice. But many of those women who underwent an abortion felt additional trauma. Especially in the instance of incest, these findings are important. Incest is a particularly evil form of rape. It is often ongoing, and enabled by secrecy and family power structures. Women who suffer from it are further victimized by the secrecy surrounding it.

When it results in pregnancy, she is afforded the opportunity of breaking the unbearable silence. For this reason, it is rarely the victim of incest who wants an abortion, but the perpetrator. By it he can deny the consequence of his actions and continue the power dynamics of silence. He can also use the specter of a prolonged custody battle intimidate her into aborting.

For the sake of our sisters who suffer in silence, we should not perpetuate the silence. Our laws can and should be structured to give her a real choice and to strip her tormentor of the tools of power he uses to perpetuate the abuse. 

This is not a political issue. No matter how you feel about Roe v. Wade, we should all want the victims of rape to have every available remedy for their situation. If Wyoming would enact laws which support the victims of rape and incest, we would be helping both the children so conceived, and the women who are victims of this powerless situation.

For this reason alone, it would be beneficial to change our laws. Current Wyoming law allows a rapist to sue for custody rights in order to avoid paying child support. For the victim of rape or incest this is a horrifying reality. Oftentimes against her own desires, she will opt for abortion in order to prevent the intolerable situation of dealing with her rapist for the rest of her life.

Many states have already passed laws to prevent this situation. It is high time that Wyoming joined them. The Rape Survivor Child Custody Act (H.R. 1257), was signed into federal law in June 2015. It offers just the kind of help that Wyoming women need. 

Introduced by a broad coalition of legislators, ranging from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., to Mimi Walters, R-Calif., this legislation encourages states to address this problem. It offers federal money for combatting violence against women to states that pass legislation to protect the victims of rape and incest from perpetrators who would later sue for custody of the child. 

Let’s build a coalition beginning in Evanston to change Wyoming law and give both women and children a chance. Join me in encouraging your representative and senator to sponsor Wyoming’s own version of the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. Together we can make a real difference.

If you, or someone you love, have conceived as a result of rape, there is hope and help available. Contact Rebecca Kiessling at HopeAfterRapeConception.org. Not only will you receive sound support and help, you will also have the opportunity to help others. Nothing is more empowering than that.