OPINION:
In his classic work “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis writes: “We are in enemy-occupied territory. … Christianity is the story of how the rightful king … is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
Lewis went on to remind us that the foot soldiers who had preceded us in this war were “the Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire,” as well as “the great men who built up the Middle Ages, and the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade.” All these, wrote Lewis, “left their mark on Earth.”
Lewis’ wartime analogy was apt not only for his time but also for ours. As a man who personally experienced both world wars, he understood three important things. First, evil exists. Second, Christians are obligated to go to war against this evil. Third, war is an ugly business that involves imperfect strategies, compromises and great losses for even greater gains.
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Like Lewis, Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Franklin D. Roosevelt understood this. They all knew that thousands would die on the beaches of Normandy, but they also understood that this compromise with “evil” had to be made for the sake of the greater good.
They realized that purity of pacifism would only damn millions to the tyranny of the Third Reich. They knew that incrementalism and kowtowing to those who refused to choose between the “lesser of two evils” would end in the blood of countless people on their hands.
They recognized that refusing to choose was itself an evil choice.
The millions of conservative evangelicals and Catholics who refused to get their hands dirty in the elections Tuesday are the poster children of this point. Their choice to avoid the polls and opt for “the lesser” — on the assumption that it was evil — was sanctimonious and laden with moral confusion.
How, for example, is protecting babies from the butchery of Planned Parenthood and young boys and girls from sexual indoctrination evil? How is it evil to defend a woman’s right to her own bathroom, locker room, shower and sports? How is it evil to stop Iran from acquiring the means to do exactly what its regime has promised repeatedly: kill us all and wipe Western civilization off the map?
Tell me again how standing in the way of all this evil is evil.
I will say it a different way. If you are a conservative of any denominational stripe, do you believe it is OK to let drag queens groom boys and girls in your schools or public libraries? Are you just fine with the abortion industry celebrating the deaths of our youngest children? Are you cool with trans dudes mocking women by literally “blackfacing” them in exaggerated costume, makeup and other garb?
There is more. How about our national sovereignty? Are you all good with abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and letting into our country millions who have no desire to assimilate into American culture or swear allegiance to our flag? Is trafficking tens of thousands of boys and girls across our borders for sex OK with you? Are you fine with letting Shariah supplant our free republic’s Constitution?
If you are willing to sit back while all this is happening and smugly quote lines such as “Of two moral evils, we must choose neither,” then you clearly do not understand Football 101. Running the ball up the middle for a 4-yard gain and a 3-yard loss is the way to move forward and ultimately win the game.
If you stood on the sidelines on Election Day — or worse, just sat in the stands and watched — simply because you did not get everything you wanted from MAGA or because you had to pay a few extra bucks for gas and groceries, you might want to consider that your moral high ground is little more than the thin ice of political smugness.
My goodness, if William Wilberforce had had your “political purity,” Britain and the United States would still be trading slaves.
Therein is my key point. Wilberforce’s efforts to end the slave trade, rather than all of slavery itself, were by definition an example of the incrementalism that ultimately wins the war. Sometimes — dare I say, all of the time — you do not get everything that you want.
To win the culture wars, we will always have to vote for some very imperfect people and even some imperfect policies for the sake of overall incremental gain.
We are at war, people, and war is ugly. Victories are incremental and involve calculation and compromise. The Roman Empire was not converted, Western civilization was not established and slavery was not abolished by smug perfectionists refusing to pick up arms.
Disengagement is synonymous with defeat, and Tuesday proved it. Refusing to choose between the lesser of two evils is evil.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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