“Sedition: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.” Wikipedia’s definition is more comprehensive:
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or resistance against, established authority.
Charging members of our government with sedition is serious business, but some of what’s been said lately borders on sedition. Consider that some members of Congress are threatening to impeach Pres. Trump if he nominates someone to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg. To make such a threat when the President has the constitutional authority and obligation to fill a vacant seat smacks of sedition.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer threatened the following:
Let me be clear: If Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year. Nothing is off the table.
“Nothing is off the table?” That could mean anything.
Nancy Pelosi said something similar. When asked about options to stop Pres. Trump and the Republicans on making a nomination before the November election, Pelosi replied: “We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now, but the fact is we have a big challenge in our country.”
“Arrows”? Arrows can do a lot of damage.
She also claimed that she and her Democrat colleagues in political crime could impeach Pres. Trump every day for any reason.
Private citizens also can be tried for sedition. Consider the following from former CNN host Reza Aslan who tweeted: “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire f***ing thing down.”
Political commentator Laura Bassett, who writes for GQ Magazine and The Washington Post, said: “If McConnell jams someone through, which he will, there will be riots.”
Author Aaron Gouveia similarly blasted McConnell’s statement, saying: “F–k no. Burn it all down.”
A member of Wisconsin’s ethics commission, Scott Ross, ordered Democrat Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, to “burn it all down” if he couldn’t stop McConnell. “F—–g A, Ed. If you can’t shut it down, burn it down,” he said.
Don Lemon discussed that radical change was needed. What approach did he take? Voting? Peaceful protests? Lemon said, “We’re going to have to blow up the entire system.”
The choice in November is stark, and yet there are a lot of Republicans, Evangelicals, and just ordinary Christians who claim that Biden is a better choice than Trump. As I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, they are shortsighted and border on insanity.
The policies of the two parties are more disparate today than they have ever been. There is no compromise with the Democrats. John Kasich claims that a Biden presidency will help to unify the nation. Really? In what way? The above comments are prima facie evidence that with Democrats in power there won’t be any unity unless you mean a forced unity like we find in Cuba and North Korea.
Some Evangelical leaders still don’t get it. Consider the following:
Notable author and pastor Timothy Keller has denounced the idea that a Christian must vote for Donald Trump or must vote for Joe Biden, citing a “liberty of conscience.”
In a series of posts to Twitter last week that has sparked debate, Keller discussed how Christians should approach conscience and political involvement.
“The Bible binds my conscience to care for the poor, but it does not tell me the best practical way to do it,” he tweeted. “Any particular strategy (high taxes and government services vs low taxes and private charity) may be good and wise …”
“[It] may even be somewhat inferred from other things the Bible teaches, but they are not directly commanded and therefore we cannot insist that all Christians, as a matter of conscience, follow one or the other.”
A political party that supports abortion on demand, recognizes same-sex marriage, and believes that men can self-identify as women and women as men is a party that Christians cannot support. The conscience is not always dependable. The Bible mentions people having a “seared conscience”:
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.
Paul is describing people who have a seared conscious for denying things that are good. If a person can have a seared conscience for prohibiting things that God has created as good, then it’s reasonable to argue that a person can have a seared conscience for approving things that God condemns.
The leadership of the Democrat Party opposes Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit as a SCOTUS nominee because she opposes premarital and extramarital sex, abortion, and homosexuality. Of course, if Christians believe that these practices can be supported by an appeal to the Bible, then I understand their support for the Democrat Party; therefore, by definition they have their consciences seared.
One would think that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi who claim to be faithful Catholics would be first in line to support her nomination.
So, I am not persuaded by Tim Keller’s “conscience” argument. The conscience is no substitute for God’s objective moral law.