No Excitement for 2016 Elections

November 2016 is a long way away, and several candidates have formally entered the fray. With such notables as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul testing the waters for the GOP and each offering what on paper seem substantial differences with the anointed Hillary Clinton of the Democrats the prospects for next year should be appealing. But the fact is that it's getting a lot harder to become excited about elections, and that's considering there are things which at one time would have made excitement easy.

Take for example Dr. Ben Carson. It's pretty obvious that many conservative media and social organs like him, and no doubt that he might well be a good right winger. He's surely outside of the Washington loop, which is supposed to make him all the more appealing. Yet it's quite easy to say the right things to an audience which you're trying to cater to. But can you actually translate that into good use of real power?

That's a very difficult thing to do. Outside of the political structure one can say whatever they want. Inside the structure, when there are hundreds of elected officials many of whom are working at cross purposes to you, and millions more bureaucrats who can effectively stymie your efforts, well, how effective can you be?

This is not to let politicians off the hook. When you pledge something you must do your best to make it work. Yet all too often the invariable compromises move you father away from your mark. And that's before the courts allow their various opinions of the non-elected to block your way too. It makes one wonder whether, as many libertarians assert, voting is worth it.

It is, but only because the alternative of long range tyranny is far worse. Sadly, that assertion really doesn't inspire the citizenry very much. That's no doubt in part because of the force everything to the middle thrust which defines American politics. Why get excited when you know the end result will most likely satisfy no one?

The Press, the Public, and Religion

The media is always after us, eh? The election of 2012 has come and gone, and it still harps on Republicans. Every dog indeed has its day it seems.

Today the lapdogs of the Democrats are after Marco Rubio, and the best guess as to why is that he is a leading candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016. And the reason it is attacking him today is somewhat religious. He hedged on the question of exactly how old the universe might be.

No one knows, says Senator Rubio. It's a mystery. The Huffington Post cites this as an example of the 'balancing act' the GOP must endure in keeping its religious and conservative base active and interested. The religious fundamentalists within the Republican Party believe certain things. One of those things, presumably, is that God created everything in 6 days.

his is a prime example of the press attempting to paint Republicans as neanderthals while knowing nothing of actual religion. Surely everyone these days knows that the universe is expanding from the big bang all those billions of years ago. Science, their god, has said so. Anyone who disagrees is simply uneducated.

Well, here's a great way to address that question. Sidestep it as unimportant.

The universe is what it is. Creation has unfolded the way the Almighty has intended for it to unfold. After that, don't worry about it. Do what you are called to do today and don't be overly concerned about the rest. It is what it is, and the how and why we arrived here does not matter.

God does what God wills. There's no point to allowing ourselves to be tied up with questions which do not matter. He may have created the world in six days, six instants, or over billions of years. It doesn't matter. We are here because He put us here, and precisely how we came to be here is not at all important. What is important is what we do with the time He has given us. It is high time that Republicans 'got' this, and pursued the truth which our God has called us to pursue.

Science is a very weak god, when you give it a moment of thought. So give it that moment, or perhaps not even that, and move on. Think eternally, and all those questions of exactly how arrived here will be seen in their precise and best perspective. After that, the rest will fall into place.