Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is normally a paid subscription feature with a preview before the paywall, but today’s is free. Please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with an occasional “Off The Shelf” feature about books, a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from smoky Southern California! Pasadena is a lovely little suburb of Los Angeles, and I suppose if I’ve got to go to LA, it could be a lot worse. Regardless, I did walk out of LAX with John Mayer’s “In Your Atmosphere” in my earphones because the opening lyric is brilliant and captures the mood: I don’t think I’m gonna go to LA anymore. Oh, don’t get me wrong. California is beautiful, an absolute gem of a state. It’s just that it has millions and millions of people and cars and traffic and a terribly overbearing government that won’t let me have, much less carry, my pistol. Just not my style, but I don’t mind visiting for a few days. Especially when I get to see some of my very best friends in the world.
So, the bait-and-switch is at last revealed. Donald Trump demands loyalty above all else, but has no reciprocal obligation—to anyone, any institution, any movement, any coalition. He will throw anyone under the bus if he feels like it. And now the question is finally put directly to all of Donald Trump’s ardent evangelical, pro-life supporters. What are you going to do now? The man is now no different from the legions of Democrat politicians you swore you would never vote for over the past five decades. He’s now said he’ll veto federal pro-life legislation, and supports a ballot amendment in Florida that overturns the six-week ban and enshrines conception to live-birth abortions. He promises that his administration will be “great” for “reproductive rights.” And yesterday he announced that under his leadership your tax dollars will fund IVF treatments. Maybe he’ll even sue the nuns to make it happen! That would be a nice touch. “We need more babies!” he says, not noticing the sheer lunacy of the comment right on the heels of committing himself to the cause of killing babies.
John Stonestreet nailed it when he observed that we now have a Pro-Abortion party and a Pro-Choice party. And still—and still—pro-lifers who have bound themselves to the man will continue to rationalize. Some of us warned all the way back in 2016 that this man is a corrupting force, and nowhere is that corruption more manifest than in the spectacle of pro-lifers continuing to support and carry water for a man who betrays their paramount principle. I will say it bluntly: if you can rationalize this, there is nothing you will not rationalize. There is no principle you will not abandon. You are rudderless and at the mercy of a fool, a blind man leading the blind straight over a cliff. You are the cheapest and shabbiest of cheap dates. Am I shaming you? I suppose I am. You can despise me for it, but it doesn’t change the fact. You should blush. But this is tough love that includes redemption. You can stop. You can thank God for all the ways he providentially used Donald Trump (e.g., Dobbs), and then say “Enough is enough.” No more. Finis.
Cast your votes, en masse, for somebody other than the two pro-abortion candidates on the ballot. Trump thinks so lowly of you, is so condescendingly arrogant and contemptuous of you, that he believes he can do whatever he wants—shoot a person on 5th Avenue or sanction an abortionist to kill a baby—with utter impunity. No consequences, ever. You have a chance to prove him wrong.
They bully you with fear. Fear of the other side. Fear that a quadrennial election loss is The End of All Things. They ply you with patent absurdities. They work overtime to make you forget who the Lord of heaven and earth is, to fog your brain into thinking he’s abandoned his throne and left us to the bitter mercies of capricious political forces. That if we do not go along with this—this!—something worse awaits. It’s all a lie. Fear is not a Christian virtue; the Lord is on his throne, and he rewards faithfulness and integrity.
Join me. Vote for good Senate candidates and let the chips fall where they may. If it means sending the Republican Party as it now exists into electoral oblivion, good riddance, as far as I am concerned.
Some have suggested supporting the American Solidarity Party, which is the only semi-viable pro-life party left. I went to their website to check them out and they simply lost me with the whole “workers of the world unite” stuff. Okay, to be fair it isn’t outright Marxism, but their economics are terrible. Anti-market, big government redistributionism. They’re essentially just what pro-life Democrats were when they existed, and I never would have voted for them either, had I ever had the chance. I think we can do better than “Socially conservative, fiscally liberal.” If I were to have my way, social conservatives would give such an excruciating lashing at the ballot box this November that the GOP comes begging, hat in hand, promising to restore what the party always stood for before it was corrupted by the con man from Queens.
I am just in wait-and-see mode as far as political loyalties go. There is a political realignment happening right before our eyes and it will take some time to see what emerges out of this chaos. I would like to believe that a major political party cannot betray a core constituency with such arrogance and impunity. That’s probably naïveté, but that is what I am hoping and working for. I suppose that is why I write this stuff!
I’ll leave you with this gem this week. Greg Maddux was a Hall of Fame pitcher on a different level altogether. Listen to his catcher tell the quick story of how he purposely gave up a mammoth home run to Jeff Bagwell solely to set him up for a strikeout three months later! Just incredible.
An absolute gem.
If it were anyone other than Maddux, I would not—could not—believe that story.