Election Fraud Is Not New
Election fraud is not new to American politics. In Passage of Power, LBJ biographer Robert Caro describes how the Democratic political machine in Texas delivered the state for Kennedy-Johnson in 1960. As you read, you will see many of the same tactics at work in 1960 that are at work today: slowing the counting, mysterious ballots appearing out of nowhere, little accountability, strong party bosses in control. There's nothing new under the sun.
From the Passage of Power, Chapter 5: The "LBJ Special":
In the Valley border counties, the results were even more dramatic. For decades, as I wrote in Means of Ascent, the results reported from the “ethnic” towns had little to do with the preferences of the Mexican-Americans. The overwhelming majority of their votes had been cast at the orders of the Anglo-Saxon border dictators called patrones or jefes, orders often enforced by armed pistoleros who herded Mexican-Americans to the polls, told them how to vote, and then accompanied them into the voting cubbyholes to make sure the instructions were followed—if indeed the votes had been actually “cast” at all; in some of the Mexican-American areas, the local border dictators, in Texas political parlance, didn’t “vote ’em,” but rather just “counted ’em.” In those areas, most of the voters didn’t even go to the polls: the jefes’ men would, as one observer put it, simply “go around to the Mexicans’ homes. Get the numbers of their (poll tax) receipts. Tell them not to go to the polls. Just write in a hundred numbers, and cast the hundred votes yourself,” or, after the polls closed, would simply take the tally sheets and add to the recorded total whatever number was needed to give their favored candidate the margin he desired. “You get down on the border, and it didn’t matter how people (the Mexican-Americans) felt,” Ed Clark would explain. “The leaders did it all. They could vote ’em or count ’em, either one.”
Between 1948 and 1960, little had changed. In the latter election as in the former, George Parr counted them for Lyndon Johnson. The first sign was the pace of the counting. By the evening of election day, several hours after polls had closed, veteran reporters had noticed what one called the “slow-motion count of votes” in Duval—they knew what that meant; that the Duke was holding back a final tally until he saw whether the race was close, so that if it was, he could give his allies the votes they needed. At midnight, only one of Duval’s ten precincts had reported a final tally. Then, finally, came the count itself. The Duke controlled not only Duval County but Starr County as well as a personal fiefdom. Duval voted for Kennedy-Johnson by a margin of 3,803 to 808, Starr by 4,051 to 284. In a petition for a recount filed with the state canvassing board three days after the election, Republicans charged that pistols were carried by “election judges and others in Duval County so that voters were intimidated and coerced.”
Then there was Jim Wells County, or to be precise, the county’s Precinct Thirteen: “Box 13,” the precinct, already legendary in Texas political history, that in 1948 had provided the decisive margin for Lyndon Johnson by giving him two hundred new votes—the votes that were cast in alphabetical order and all in the same handwriting six days after the polls had closed. The Mexican-American reform movement had taken control of most of Jim Wells from Parr, but not the thirteenth precinct, the poorest Mexican district in the county seat of Alice. In 1960, that box gave Lyndon Johnson’s ticket a margin of 1,144 to 45, or twenty-five to one, so the ticket came out of the heart of the Duke’s Rio Grande domain with more than 88 percent of the vote—and a plurality of more than 7,800 votes.
The results were almost as lopsided in the counties controlled by Parr’s allies, who followed his lead. In Webb County, it was 10,059 to 1,802, more than five to one; in Jim Hogg County, 1,255 to 244, more than five to one; in Brooks, 1,934 to 540, almost four to one. The nine counties controlled by Parr and his allies reported a total of 37,063 votes to the Texas Election Bureau. Almost 30,000 of them—29,377, or 79 percent—were for Kennedy-Johnson. The Democratic ticket therefore came out of those counties with a plurality of 21,691.
Source: Caro, Robert A.. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
My Response to John Piper
John Piper wrote an article providing insight into his perspective on the current political climate. While I agree with his initial premise that Christians error when they justify the sins of one party's personality in order to condemn the sins of the other party's policies, I disagree with his overall conclusion.
Piper places the sins of personality on a balance scale against the sins of policy and concludes that in God's eyes, both are sinful and wrong, and that one does not outweigh the other. He states, "it is baffling and presumptuous to assume that pro-abortion policies kill more people than a culture-saturating, pro-self pride."
I agree with his initial premise: sin is sin in God's eyes, and one sin does not justify another. I respectfully disagree, however, with his conclusion.
In his argument, Piper commits a logical fallacy. He boils down today's complex political discussion into an either/or statement: you either tolerate the sin of personality found in Donald Trump or you condemn the policies of the Democrats and Joe Biden.
He appears to place everyone together into one of these camps.
Piper states, "Therefore, Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers (who are also baffled!) when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person. The church is paying dearly, and will continue to pay, for our communicating this falsehood year after year. The justifications for ranking the destructive effects of persons below the destructive effects of policies ring hollow."
He then concludes that the proper perspective for Christians and pastors is to prepare to suffer for the cause of Christ. "Imagine that America collapses. First anarchy, then tyranny — from the right or the left. Imagine that religious freedom is gone. What remains for Christians is fines, prison, exile, and martyrdom."
To pastors, he asks, have you prepared your congregation for this outcome? Piper states, "Have you shown them that they are 'sojourners and exiles' (1 Peter 2:11), and that their 'citizenship is in heaven,' from which they 'await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ' (Philippians 3:20)? Do they feel in their bones that 'to live is Christ, and to die is gain' (Philippians 1:21)?"
Will pastors and Christians not conclude from this article that we should simply disengage from the political dialog? Should we not conclude that to engage we must openly tolerate the sins of personality found in Donald Trump in order to condemn the policies of death in which the Democrat party platform is founded upon?
I respectfully disagree with this conclusion.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself in a similar dilemma. He could resist the policies of National Socialism, or he could stay quiet. In his magnum opus, Ethics, Bonhoeffer argued that Christians do not live in a separate, insulated sphere from all earthly relationships. That in a real sense, we are "Dual Citizens" of both our earthly existence and our heavenly destination.
Bonhoeffer argued that our existence is defined by our bond to fellow human beings and to God, and that the outcome of this interwoven bond is what Bonhoeffer described as "vicarious representation or responsibility."
This concept is first illustrated by the Lord Jesus Christ who, as God, took on the nature and form of a human being in order to vicariously represent us in death and to atone for our sins on the cross. Jesus stood in our place and bore the wrath of God upon Himself.
Bonhoeffer then argues that we, too, as Christians are called to a life of vicarious representation and responsibility as we stand for those who are unable to stand for themselves.
When I stand in opposition to the policies of abortion advocated for by the Democrats and Biden/Harris ticket, I am doing so on behalf of the unborn who cannot advocate for themselves. As a Christian and a pastor, I am a vicarious representative for them, and this is my responsibility to do so.
When I stand in opposition to the policies of childhood transgender surgery and hormone treatments advocated for by the Democrats and Biden/Harris ticket, I am doing so on behalf of small children who are unable to advocate for themselves. As a Christian and a pastor, I am a vicarious representative for them, and this is my responsibility to do so.
In his article, Piper does not accept a vicarious responsibility. He sees two contradicting narratives (sins of personality vs. sins of policy) and concludes his only option is to embrace one or the other, a proposition he cannot accept, so he taps out. That is wrong.
Please hear me: I am not condoning the sins of personality Piper describes, but I do not accept his argument that this is an either/or proposition for the Christian. I believe we have a vicarious responsibility to be a voice and a vote for those who cannot or those who are unable to have a voice.
Legacy Journalists Become Agents of Disinformation
One thing about the Trump presidency—it has torn the mask off of the demonic zeitgeist that possesses the leftist elites in this country.
We used to talk about media bias, but during the Trump presidency we have witnessed outright propaganda not unlike you would see from Chinese or Russian state-owned media. It is impossible to accuse someone of simple bias when they are repeatedly sharing easily proven false information. This is propaganda and ideologically-driven misinformation.
As Bari Weiss noted in her open resignation letter to the New York Times, journalistic integrity has been sacrificed at the altar of propaganda. There are no journalists left at the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, or any of the legacy media entities. Those who dare question the approved party line are publicly shamed and discredited.
These media entities openly point to each other when they “Fact Check” any narrative that contradicts the party line. NBC News will point to “an anonymous source” referenced in a New York Times article as proof that a narrative they disagree with is “wrong.”
The reality is, the legacy media in the United States is all owned by large entertainment companies. They are no longer independent news organizations. Disney, which owns ABC, for example, is more concerned about its market share in China than it is in performing real journalism. Disney cannot afford to have ABC News publish a story that counters a narrative China may find offensive or that the corporate oligarchy might disagree with. Financially, there is no advantage for Disney to permit ABC News to have an independent voice. So, instead, we get a lot of anti-Trump disinformation (party line) and links to stories about Britney Spears’ latest bikini instagram post (click bait).
Where can you find real journalism? It is out there, but you have to search for it. I go to sites like Real Clear Politics because they provide an aggregate of top news stories from a variety of sources. I also visit AllSides.com because they provide headline stories and then show you how media organizations from Left, Center, and Right are covering the story. I also scan British and Australian news organizations because they will provide insights to US News you will not find in American Media.
I also read some of the legacy media organizations (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) simply because you can often discern what is a real story by observing how they are propagandizing a story and what they are NOT saying.
As Pontius Pilate is fond of saying, “truth...what is truth?”
Truthful Liars
George Orwell describes reality today in his novel 1984:
To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word DOUBLETHINK it is necessary to exercise DOUBLETHINK. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of DOUBLETHINK that the Party has been able — and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years — to arrest the course of history.
The Democrats & School Choice
Question for those voting for Biden/Harris: Do you support school choice? If you do, why does the Democrat party not, and how can you vote for a party that refuses to address a key question in the discussion on racial inequality?
Studies show a key contributor to African-American generational poverty is a lack of access to quality education. Most urban public schools that serve large African-American communities have a failing record of graduating young black students who are prepared for college/university or for a working career that leads to a middle-class life.
School choice should be at the top of the list for both Democrats and Republicans interested in addressing racial inequality. Yet, like many things in the USA, what makes common sense and is backed up by solid statistical evidence, does not fit a political narrative.
Public schools have enjoyed a 50-plus year run of trying to effectively educate American children. They have failed.
Isn’t it time to give school choice a real opportunity to make a difference? Give parents a choice to decide where to spend their education dollars. Start first in urban communities with large minority populations and documented failure of the public schools in that community to graduate students.
While this issue is gaining national attention in the presidential campaign, the real decision-making authority lies with our state legislature. When voting for your Iowa representatives, ask them if they support school choice. Let Iowa lead the way in bringing school choice to our families and give the next generation of Iowans the opportunity to forge a better path built on a quality education.