Moral and practical reasons why ethical people should vote for candidates who are not deceitful
Who this post is for.
I have Christians particularly in
mind when I write, because I am troubled and perplexed by those Christians who support
obviously deceitful politicians.
Of course, many other groups with beliefs (theistic or atheistic) and with moral
principles may well find that the principles of this blogpost apply to their beliefs
too, and I welcome that.
So this
post is for people with morals. Dictators, benevolent or otherwise, look away
now.
Summary
If a politician typically tells
the truth, then they can at least be trusted; you may or may not agree with
their policies but you can be reasonably confident of what they will try to do.
If a politician habitually lies,
then I assume they are working for their own interests, not mine.
So, if
you read no further, my point is that if you believe in Truth – for example
because of a Christian belief - then I
do not see how you can support a candidate for whom Truth is unimportant, and I
feel you must look at the alternatives.
Is Deceit OK?
To take a strict definition of “deceitful”,
I want to focus on statements that are objectively untrue at the time that they
are spoken.
There are many examples of such
deceit; “I want to publish my tax returns”
was a dubious statement in 2016 by Trump, but “I want to publish my tax returns”
is an obviously deceitful statement when made in 2020 by Trump. It’s an example
of a statement that is impossible to believe if one takes account of history.
To go one step further, Trump
seeks re-election saying “"We'll have manufactured at least 100 million
vaccine doses before the end of the year, and likely much more than that,"
and . "Millions of doses will be available every month, and we expect to
have enough vaccines for every American by April."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/18/health/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-april-promise-bn/index.html
This is objectively untrue at
the time that it is said, because no scientist will support that this is in any
way possible. Conveniently the vaccine can not be demonstrated now but is apparently
a certainty for December. *
Trump’s habitual deceit is why I
would never vote for Trump, if I was in the USA.
Tory deceit is why I would never
vote for Boris Johnson or for a candidate in a Party led by Boris Johnson.
The position of the UK Tories on
deceit from 2019 is dramatically different from that in previous years. In an independent
survey 88% of Tory adverts early in December 2019 were found to be misleading.
The figure for Labour was zero per cent over the same period. That is not to
say that non-Tory parties are completely innocent; this was a sample. But the
Tory Party had become institutionally deceitful. They created a fake Twitter
account. They showed video footage of Keir Starmer being unable to answer a
question; that did not happen, they had sought to change history, and then
defended it by deceitfully claiming it was an “edit” to shorten the clip. And
some of these deceits were defended by the Tories, not by saying that the
statement was true, but that people outside the “metropolitan bubble” didn’t care.
Taking a really crucial example, Boris Johnson several times said that the EU
Deal he had signed involved no checks in the Irish Sea when it objectively did
involve conditions on such trade. We can understand how this matters when we
see that Johnson then felt the need to renege on that Withdrawal Agreement by
introducing the Internal Market Bill, breaking International Law. I have a
letter from the Department for Exiting the European Union in January 2020 declaring
that Government fully understood the implications for trade across the Irish
Sea, after I had written to my MP and the Guardian in December 2020 pointing
out the difficulties.
Archbishops of the Church of England
have rightly challenged this behaviour.
The Anglican church has publicly challenged the government’s
willingness to break international law over Brexit, with five archbishops from Great
Britain and Ireland joining together to condemn what could be a “disastrous
precedent”.
In
a rare step, the archbishops of Canterbury and York, plus their counterparts in
Scotland, Wales and Ireland, have written a joint letter warning that such a
step would have “enormous moral, as well as political and legal, consequences”…..
They added: “We believe this would create a disastrous
precedent. It is particularly disturbing for all of us who feel a sense of duty
and responsibility to the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement – that international
treaty on which peace and stability within and between the UK and Ireland
depends …”
“Oh what a
tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!”.
What did Jesus say? – guide for
Christians
Jesus said "I am the Way,
the Truth and the Life"
A non-Christian may advocate
that the means justifies the end, and might argue for Trumpian lying tactics on
that basis. Some voters say “Yes I know he’s a liar, but he’s OUR liar, he’s on
our side, and I love it when he lies to the other side and they deserve it” or
words to that effect. But this is not a position that I can understand a
Christian taking.
I propose that we should not believe
in deceiving the electorate - even if it was supposedly for their own good.
Jesus as a Leader believes and commended
Truth rather than deceit, and I expect the same is true for other figures that
people look to for moral leadership.
But what about the balance of
other factors?
Some people may say “well, this
is a point to Trump’s discredit, but I like what he says on other things”.
Can that balance out?
The trouble with this argument is
that if you can not trust what he says, you cannot rely on taking account of
what he says on other factors.
I cannot see how Christians can
support a deceitful politician, even if they like his/her stated position on
other matters.
Footnotes
1.
I wrote about this topic earlier this year, though
the examples relate to that time (e.g. drinking disinfectant)
https://viewdelta.blogspot.com/2020/04/can-christians-have-respect-for.html
2.
For the purposes of what I’ve written above, I have sought to write only on moral issues, and
not on political issues where alternative positions are possible morally. You can
be a Christian and believe in rejoining the EU or in not rejoining the EU; I
have blogged on two Christian perspectives regarding EU membership, and I personally
have a strong view on it, but I recognise that you can be a Christian and can
take the opposite view.
3.
As a side-issue or corollary, can Christian
leaders express views publicly on political issues where there is no particular
moral argument? I have two thoughts:
a. It
can be quite difficult to spot issues where there is no moral perspective.
Climate Change? Poverty? HS2 rail line? Austerity? Immigration? Regional
policy? So we may struggle to say “This is not a matter for church leaders to
speak about”
b. However,
when church leaders for example speak
about politics, they may be assumed to be giving a moral lead, to be expressing
the church’s view. If in fact they simply want to express a personal opinion
which they’re not claiming a moral rationale for (which is fair enough) then it
may be worth explaining that. In either case their stance may be questioned by people
who do not understand the position, but it’s important to understand whether the
leader is speaking as a church leader or
not.
_______________________
* EDIT (6 Jan 2021)
Vaccine development proceeded faster than many expected, so was Trump's statement on vaccines in the end true, even if accidentally?
No it wasn't.
Let's examine the facts
Trump accused the drug companies of keeping progress secret until after the Presidential election; my point in mentioning this is not to discuss his claim that they were being secretive , but simply to point out that the progress they were making was (he implies ) unknown to him.
What actually happened ? As of 29th December :
Dec. 29, 2020 -- The U.S. has distributed more than 11.4 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, and more than 2.1 million of those had been given to people as of Monday morning, according to the CDC.
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20201229/2-1-million-covid-vaccine-doses-given-in-us
I am taking 29th December progress as a good indicator of 31st December progress.
Admittedly the 11 million statistic is for distributed doses, but it seems unlikely that 100 million had been manufactured at that point. 200 million had been ordered, with expected manufacture by June 2021, which would mean 100 million US Citizens would have been vaccinated by then - about half of the American adult population. 200 million doses in 7 months might mean a capability to manufacture 30 million per month; I have not found a specific statistic for manufacturing capacity and will amend this blog if anyone has a good reference for that information. This suggests that the "April" claim should be adjusted to, say "December 2021".
So the claim was factually way ahead of what will actually be achieved. It was also way ahead of what anyone believed could be achieved when the claim was made.
There may be more extreme examples of deceits, but this is one of the two that I used for Trump and I stand by it.
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