F. X. Turk · @Frank_Turk
7th Jun 2016 from TwitLonger
Jezebel vs Sennacherib: the lesser of two evils?
OK, there's something else worth discussing about the election cycle which I'm going to toss out here, and it's about the argument regarding "the lesser of two evils."
I have had quite a history with people who, for example, cannot adopt an incrementalist view of defeating abortion in our nation. For them (and for their sake I am leaving them as nameless), to adopt the position that it is better to make all abortions after 20 weeks illegal for now than it is to do nothing (read: to demand all abortions be illegal, or pass no new laws) is not the lesser of two evils: it is just evil, and it is some sort of moral attrition to say otherwise. This of course overlooks the fact that making abortion illegal at any point means all abortions after that mark will no longer be performed, and lives will be saved -- which means that one outcome is legitimately less evil than the other. An act which saves any lives is less evil than a competing act which saves none, especially when we are talking about children in the womb.
It is such as case as that which the argument "the lesser of two evils" is made for: in one case we can do some good and in the other we cannot.
That brings us to the current status of the US Presidential election, and while nothing is written in stone yet, it seems to be the serial adulterer and con-man against the feckless serial grifter/autocrat. That choice is pretty different than saying, "well, I can save some, or save none." That choice is more like saying, "we can sell some body parts or we can sell all body parts, but some body parts are going to be sold."
There is no lesser of two evils in this choice. Both choices have zero redeeming value; both have zero upside. On the one side, Jezebel wants us to sacrifice our children and worship foreign gods; on the other, Sennacherib is standing outside the gate shouting at us that God cannot save us but he can rather keep the God's promises in the place of God to make us great. Both are transparently liars and enemies. There's no lesser evil.
That's the difference which everyone should understand: there's a distinction between two sorts of bad outcomes where one has some upside and then two sorts of evil where there are no positive outcomes.