Is Voting for Donald Trump a Morally Good Choice?by Alex Chediak
August 1, 2016
Dr. Wayne Grudem just published a thoughtful essay entitled Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice. For those unaware, Dr. Grudem is a professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, and the author of many excellent books, including Politics - According to the Bible. I was intrigued by Dr. Grudem’s essay because for several decades I’ve appreciated his sober-minded analysis on a wide variety of issues. Moreover, earlier in this election cycle Dr. Grudem endorsed Senator Marco Rubio, whom I also supported.
Grudem argues not that Trump is the lesser of two evils but “a good candidate with flaws.” Grudem points to Trump’s vast wealth as evidence of his business savvy, and the equal treatment that minorities and women have received in Trump’s commercial enterprises as an indication that Trump is not a bigot or misogynist. But I think Dr. Grudem’s depiction contains two significant omissions.
Is Trump a “Good Candidate with Flaws”?
1. There are many reports of regular Americans—contractors, small business owners—being stiffed by Trump. These “little people” didn’t have the legal resources to fight. The Edward J. Friel Company collapsed after 1984 when Trump refused to make an $83,600 payment for cabinet work at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Think, too, of what happened in the now-defunct Trump University. Or the many instances when Trump pursued eminent domain for his private benefit (rather than the public good). Or of Trump rejecting over 94 percent of Americans who applied to work at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach—where Trump pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers. When pressed about this, Trump retreats to the notion that “American workers won’t take these jobs.”
CARTOONS | Jerry Holbert
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Trump’s pattern seems to be the pursuit of money, power, and fame even if other Americans are damaged in the process.
2. Trump has directly profited from the debasement of women. Trump was the first to put a strip club in a casino in 2013, the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Trump was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show, where the two men regularly objectified women in the most degrading of ways. When we combine this record with Trump’s boasts of marital unfaithfulness and (more recently) his grotesque remarks about Megyn Kelly and the looks of Carly Fiorina and Heidi Cruz, it’s hard to argue that accusations of misogyny are unjustified. If we factor in Trump’s disparaging broad-brush remarks about Mexican immigrants and his mocking imitation of a disabled journalist, we don’t have a picture of a man who “joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves” (as Trump claimed in his RNC Convention speech). Instead, we see the picture of a fundamentally arrogant, selfish, and greedy man, who will do or say anything to beat his rivals. This is a man who glories in a kind of self-exaltation that most of us would find shameful.
Read the rest here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/alexchediak/2016/08/01/is-voting-for-donald-trump-a-morally-good-choice-n2200717
