"You can't fight evil with evil"

July 17, 2012 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

As Alan Keyes wrote the other day, you cannot fight evil with evil.

If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor:

A Choice Between Satan and Beelzebub (FR thread)

Brief excerpt:

I grieve deeply as I contemplate the fact that millions of Americans are letting themselves be caught in this diabolical snare. As I tried to point out in 2008, the lesser of evils is still evil. No matter how such an election turns out, people content to choose between Satan and Beelzebub have made clear their willingness to let things go to hell. Moreover, the nature of their choice is so clear to them that they practically boast of the passionate hatred that impels them to it. With this practical boast they become the willing, proud accomplices of the very evil they profess to hate.

I’m morally certain this is why Christ admonished his disciples to make striving for God’s perfection the standard for their actions, rather than their hatred of evil. He thought it better to fail reaching for this standard than succeed by abandoning one’s life to the devil’s dominion. He thought it better to fail in the world’s eyes while commending one’s spirit to God (as he does on the cross) than succeed by casting one’s lot with God’s adversary.

--Alan Keyes

WND link

A man who for over 30 years of his adult life by his own admission justified the wholesale slaughter of innocent and helpless human life is purely evil and can and did justify anything. Many times.

Romney's entire political life has been a mis-adventure into godless liberal/progressive evil. There can be no denying that he has during his tenure either advocated for or personally enacted nearly the entire godless liberal/progressive agenda. He has succeeded where the Democrats have failed and he has shown them the way. His record of evil leftist doings, rationalizing, justifying, flip-flopping and mealy-mouthed parsing and spinning (lying) precedes him and tells the tale of the man. He has no foundation. No core principles. No Christian values. No moral compass. If ever a man was a godless liberal in the GOP, he is Myth Romney.

If the Republican conservatives in office or in leadership positions or in the so-called conservative media would simply stop rooting for this evil bastard and commit to the TRUTH and stand tall for Life and Liberty now and at the convention, we could chuck this liberal bastard onto the ash heap of history and run a pro-life, pro-liberty, pro-small government conservative Republican that we can all be proud to support over the Marxist usurper. And we would WIN in a Reaganesque landslide!!

Perversely, Romney is just about the only Republican who may actually lose to Obama. Hell, even McCain beat Romney.

Taking the right path is not easy and not popular at this time, but it's the only path.

May we stand on God's side while attempting to save our Republic!!

[GunRunner]

Well, "your guy" Obama means the death of modern America, so maybe you should just take the pain pill like he recommended.

Romney is simply a tool to defeat Obama and to start repealing his agenda. If he doesn't play along he won't get a second term.

But another 4 years of Obama is not something I can stomach.

[D-fendr]

The question is : WHAT is the replacement,” and not “ - - - who is the replacement?”

You cannot run a description as a candidate.

Of course it has to be someone a majority of conservatives agree on - and who wants the job. We were unable to find that during the primary.

DeMint said he doesn't want it. I like West, others don't. Others have their own preference. Mine is Newt.

[DJ MacWoW]

Obamacare is not Romneycare.

Right. Romneycare is worse as it went farther than Obamacare.

RomneyCare Provides Funds For Abortions. ObamaCare Does Not May 15, 2011

Florida AG Pam Bondi lets the cat out of the bag regarding Romney's National Healthcare plans

She goes on to say that Romney wants all states to impose similar laws (including mandates) and that she is all for it.

Romney’s Big Healthcare Lie

Romney was never able to answer why the same market intervention and distortions – mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid – which form the bedrock of Obamacare , supposedly worked so well in Massachusetts. The reason he couldn’t answer the question is because Romneycare was a complete failure

-----------------------------------------------------------

Romney did not ban guns in Massachusetts.

He banned "assault" weapons. They're guns. Where is it in the Constitution that he can do that?

[EternalVigilance]

Once more we witness a vivid display of the primary danger of Mitt Romney and Romney Republicanism: The conversion of erstwhile “conservatives” into defenders of the worst, most damaging aspects of liberalism. It’s very sad.

[precisionshootist]

Ok, hot shot. Did you vote for Bush? Are you a registered republican? Are you registered to vote? If so, you are probably already being counted as a likely voter.

It's called turn out. And if our side (or the side that I'm on anyway) does not turn out at the polls, Obama WILL win.

You were asking how you not voting helps Obama win. It does not matter if you add one vote to the competition or you subtract one from your side. If the margin is one vote you lose either way.

[Jim Robinson]

A. Conservative.

[EternalVigilance]

Romney is simply a tool

Wrong. You're the tool for Romney. Wake up.

[JRandomFreeper]

Say what you like, but I won't be berated into voting for a pro-abortion, anti-gun, socialized medicine, big-government liberal.

/johnny

[Darksheare]

“Didn’t something like this happen in Mass.? Romney opened up ownership to things like rifles and pistols by appeasing the police unions about semi-autos?”

Yes, he opened a huge can of worms.
Mass already had onerous gun laws.
He made them much worse.

Kinda like NY and their hatred for “Black Guns”.
Imagine slating rifles for banning based solely off what color the powder coat is?
At least Bloomberg’s brainiacism in the city {sitty? where they all sit?} hasn’t oozed out yet, but it will.

Semi-autos are rather fun items to use, my light duty .22 is semi-auto.
Good for woodchucks and rabid possum.
Banned in Mass.

[Darksheare]

Yes.

Heck, I’ve seen some commentary about how Conservatives are bad because we don’t like certain liberal planks.
“If you’d only allow this little thing or that little thing..”

Reminds me of a certain Father of Lies speaking to a young chick in a garden, “You will not surely die..”

[Biggirl]

Sadly, it may take an all-out revolt in the event that Obama is reelected. I predict it will come, mark my words.

[EternalVigilance]

He banned "assault" weapons. They're guns. Where is it in the Constitution that he can do that?

Nowhere that I can find.

"A well regulated Militia, being NECESSARY to the security of a free State, the RIGHT of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT be infringed."

These folks seem to miss the point that Romney banned the exact sort of weaponry that the British went out to Lexington and Concord to try and confiscate.

Somehow I don't think ANY of the founding generation would be amused.

[precisionshootist]

"1.)You begin, literally, with a baldly unsupported (and unsupportable) assumption: that any given political party does, or even can, somehow peremptorily "own" a vote, prior to its being cast. "

You are really ignorant on election politics. You would be shocked at how much detail the parties have on voters. They not only know how many potential votes but they know EXACTLY where those votes are located and the totals for each location. They also generally know before the first vote is cast if they have won or lost. Ever hear a candidate speak of "internal polling" after the election has been lost, and that they knew they were fatally behind in and election that was "too close to call". You would be shocked at their accuracy.

So just blather on how you won't be helping Obama if you sit the election out. Sleep well with your choice either way while you are still free to do so.

[INVAR]

Demonstrate: How my NOT casting a vote for Mittens increases Obama's vote total from 1,000,000 to any other positive or negative integer, anywhere along the numerical scale.

Unfortunately, it appears the ABO crowd has borrowed how the Left looks at and understands wealth creation in this country; a finite pie. They've assigned it to the voting process in the country and determined this November is also a finite pie.

Meaning, if you vote for one, you magically take away a vote from the other. Of course the ABO bunch takes the concept to a greater height of absurdity and declares that if you DON'T vote Romney, you automatically HAND the vote over to Obama, and in addition to that, ANY vote cast for any other except Romney, does the same.

The illogic being, "If you do not vote for Romney, even if you sit home or vote for someone else - you are voting FOR Obama".

It's a nice desperate fear tactic, preached by panicked and unprincipled cowardly fraidy cats, or ideologues who were always in the corner for Romney and were never going to vote for anyone but Romney anyway.

One more thing, this whole "ABO" is a fraudulent acronym. Those espousing it are really not 'Anybody But Obama'. They are RIO's: 'Romney Instead of Obama' and they are as vehement about it as the rabid Obama drones are about their savior.

I oppose with all my being, the insipid notion that we must accept a dictatorship or monarchy by empowering the Executive with the idea that one king is better than another. Our nation was built from the bottom on up. It has to be redeemed in the same manner.

Voting to fix the problem from the Top on down, betrays the very idea of a Republic and free people. Even if you are willing to lie to yourself and insist it is only for the purpose to stop Obama. As if Obama's self-made crown had any legitimacy. So they instead are willing to trade kings, kings that the kingmakers choose for the serfs.

We suffer Obama because a majority of the country WANTED Obama and accepted the incremental dive into Socialism over the last 5 decades.

The church has lost the culture, and in-kind the culture has discarded both God and liberty. It's what made Obama possible. This all is just the sum of the equation. Fixing the sum requires we change the equation itself - and that is not going to happen when the church has sat on it's hands while it lost this culture and became nothing but a flavorless tepid social club.

Secularism + Wickedness + Envy + Self + Dependence = Obama

Erasing Obama as the sum and replacing it with Romney doesn't change the equation that added up to Obama.

This people select or tolerate the leaders that comport with their values.

[aruanan]

A man who for over 30 years of his adult life by his own admission justified the wholesale slaughter of innocent and helpless human life is purely evil and can and did justify anything. Many times.

Perversely, Romney is just about the only Republican who may actually lose to Obama. Hell, even McCain beat Romney.

Taking the right path is not easy and not popular at this time, but it's the only path.

And, perversely, some who call themselves conservatives are going to help increase the possibility that Romney loses to Obama, the president who has launched the most intense and sustained attack on the Constitutional and economic infrastructure of the United States, the president who favors partial birth abortion, who opposes the infants born alive laws, who is actually doing an end-run around Congress by imposing by edict what he can't get through legislation on any number of issues, all the while praising themselves for allegedly doing the moral thing, the "right" thing out of fear what Romney could do if elected as opposed to what OBAMA IS ACTUALLY NOW DOING.

Your calculus of evil is leaving out an important factor, a third "evil" factor. If Romney is "evil" and Obama is "evil," and a win by an evil guy with a potential evil outcome on the national stage is prevented by the win by an evil guy with an actual ongoing evil effect on both the nation and the world and that win occurs because he got more votes than the other guy, then those who could foil the actual evil by voting for his opponent representing a possible, as-yet-unrealized, and perhaps never-to-be realized evil, who choose not to do so, are choosing instead, whatever else they may want to call it, to do something that will enable the ongoing evil to continue unabated.

A choice to leave evil in place out of fear of an evil that could, though not necessarily, replace it, is that third factor of evil.

The Apostle Paul talked about the perversity of those who say, "Hey, since God is turning my evil deed toward something good, let's do evil so good will result." He didn't go on to talk about those who say, "Hey, let's deliberately refrain from doing something to restrain an ongoing evil because it could result in an outcome that may be evil which means we would be voting for evil so we'll call refraining from that, by doing nothing or deliberating choosing something that has no possible counter-effect, good," because that's a level of perversity basically beyond both imagination and sanity. But even though we don't do evil so good may result, we can, like God, turn something "evil" toward a good end. Preventing Obama from being reelected is good. Enabling him to be reelected is evil. Whatever goes toward the latter end is, therefore, more evil than the former.

The situation as being currently expressed in the "never Romney, even it it results in Obama's reelection" seen here is the level of moral development of someone who would say, if a psychotic axe-wielding murder breaks into his house in pursuit of a victim who had taken refuge there and asks where the victim is hiding, "I will tell him where the refugee is because to do otherwise would be lying and lying is wrong and I have to remain pure before God by not breaking His holy commandment against lying!"

Obama is that axe-wielding murderer.

Edmund Burke said that evil triumphs because good men stand by and do nothing. Those who have the vote but don't use it to defeat Obama by voting for the only one who has a real chance* to defeat the ongoing evil of Obama are choosing to let an actual, demonstrable, ongoing evil prevail out of fear of enabling a potential evil.

*Outside of a fantasy more grandiose than any proffered by leftists except, perhaps, by Lyndon Larouche, the fantasy that, "Hey, if we all just vote for someone other than Obama, even though we didn't manage to get him selected through the primary contests in 50 states, oh, someone who isn't evil but Goode, then everything will turn out okay! But, hey, even though no third party has won a presidential election in, uh, well, ever, this could be the time! To try for anything else is simply evil." That choice, to go for something that has never had any demonstrable possibility of occurring, with the much greater likelihood of leaving in place something that has never before posed such an immediate and ongoing threat from within to our way of life, is a choice that is a much greater evil than voting against Obama by voting for his Republican Party opposition and making adjustments in later, upcoming elections.

[EternalVigilance]

The biggest danger of Romney Republicanism is that it leads to just that sort of unprincipled, immoral and illogical contortionism.

[JRandomFreeper]

even though no third party has won a presidential election in, uh, well, ever,

The republican party WAS the 3rd party when it was just Whigs and Democrats.

I look forward to the republican party going the way of the Whig party.

/johnny

[EternalVigilance]

The Apostle Paul talked about the perversity of those who say, "Hey, since God is turning my evil deed toward something good, let's do evil so good will result." He didn't go on to talk about those who say, "Hey, let's deliberately refrain from doing something to restrain an ongoing evil because it could result in an outcome that may be evil which means we would be voting for evil so we'll call refraining from that, by doing nothing or deliberating choosing something that has no possible counter-effect, good," because that's a level of perversity basically beyond both imagination and sanity. But even though we don't do evil so good may result, we can, like God, turn something "evil" toward a good end. Preventing Obama from being reelected is good. Enabling him to be reelected is evil. Whatever goes toward the latter end is, therefore, more evil than the former.

This is one of the most perverse things I've ever read on FR. Prototypical Romney Republican sophistry.

[EternalVigilance]

George Washington had a very different way of looking at the world and at circumstance than Romney Republicans, thank God.

"If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God."

-- George Washington

[Colonel_Flagg]

"Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:"

"Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.

"Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

"And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

"From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report.

"For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it." -- Isaiah 28:15-20

Translation: making a deal with the devil is always a bad idea. The enemy's horses are always going to be faster. You wrote:

"But even though we don't do evil so good may result, we can, like God, turn something "evil" toward a good end."

God allows evil, to draw us to Him. He doesn't encourage it and He certainly doesn't compromise with it.