A couple of years ago, author and home schooler Ayun Halliday wrote an article about a child who rode the New York City subway costumed as Hieronymus Bosch's demonic bird.

The strangely dressed child was pretty much ignored by unflappable New Yorkers, who are used to seeing bizarrely costumed people.  A photo included in the piece shows a couple absorbed in one another and a man with his hands in his pockets gazing down the tracks.  They completely failed to take notice of the peculiar devil bird silently standing with them on the subway platform.  No one waiting for the subway car recognized Bosch's little demon.

In the supposedly thoroughly demythologized modernist era, the worldview that inspired Bosch's art is regarded as now discarded by truly enlightened people.  The art of Bosch, the literature of Dante, Milton, and Goethe, plus the works of theologians over two millennia are considered products of mere superstition.  For secularist moderns, the Devil and his minions are caricatures, a matter of laughter, a trendily chic way to hoist the Church with its own petard.  Who takes the demons seriously?

This in spite of the fact the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen the most hideous manifestations of the demonic, much of it accepted and even intensified by the disbelieving, the disengaged, and the "tolerant."  It is indisputable that the Bosch depictions of satanic tortures became reality in the death camps, where human victims endured the agonies of vivisection under the knife of Joseph Mengele; in Unit 731, where men and women were mere specimens for medical experiments; and within the USSR's gulags and detention centers, where dissidents diagnosed with "sluggish schizophrenia" had poison pumped into their veins to cure incorrect thinking.

Even now, right here in America, similar demonic tortures are openly endorsed and performed.  Some are overtly advocated, such as The Satanic Temple that recently raffled off an abortion and claimed abortion as a rite protected by freedom of religion.  But dismemberment of the unborn is seen by millions, including some in the churches of our land, as an absolute right.  The result is 61,000,000 unborn children dead.  In addition, the cult of death that is the "T" wing of the LGBTQ movement sees as a positive good the drugging and mutilation of children in order to make them faux replicas of the sex opposite of that they were born as.

In short, the gruesome record of the twentieth and now the twenty-first century is there for all to see, but skepticism about demonic influence still reigns among the academic, political, and literary cognoscenti, most of whom deny the existence of the Devil and demons and many of whom deny even the distinction between good and evil.

Perhaps skepticism reigns because the foundational force behind the demonic is not understood, even by Christians who should know better — Christians who actually are considering voting for the a political party openly embracing demonic practices.

In his work City of God, St. Augustine defines the demonic.  He wrote that devils are "called demons from a Greek word meaning knowledge; but it is a knowledge that is without charity."  That means that what human desire wishes and performs without a loving concern for others; that which is done without charity, without desire for promoting the good, true and beautiful; that which is in complete opposition to the loving character of God is demonic.  Humans without love of God and therefore without love for those created in God's image are responsible for ghastly evils — evils they most often call good.

In sum, where there is knowledge and skill employed without charity and compassion, there is the demonic.  There is mutilation of mind, body, and spirit in the name of improvement of the human race.  There is death of body and spirit presented as a good means to accomplish one's deepest desires and to achieve utopia.

John Milton noted in his epic poem Paradise Lost that Satan sought "by force or fraud ... to prosper."  Nothing about the demonic has changed.  It still operates by force and fraud.  It is fair to observe that the radicals who have trashed New York City and other metropolises were operating by sheer force with fraudulent purposes.   

What does all the above have to do with voting in the United States presidential election?  While the Republican Party can justifiably be accused of the sins of cowardice and lack of vision, it does not endorse abortion on demand throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy or foment violent riots in order to achieve fundamental transformation.

On the contrary, the pitilessness of the Satanic cult that raffles off an abortion in the name of religion is the same pitilessness that is written into the platform of the Democrat party.  It is Democrats who advocate abortion throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy and beyond, Democrats who advocate infanticide should any helpless babe actually survive the abortion procedure, Democrats who endorse the radical agenda of the LGBTQ movement, Democrats who are supine or even actively cooperative with the forces of violence.

Because of the radical wing of the Democratic Party, Bosch's little demonic bird has flown into the cities and fanned the fires of violence.  It has winged its flight into the heart of politics.  It has stolen into the churches, where it silences rival songsters and defecates on the sacraments.  It now hovers over every wedding to kill the joy, every funeral to stop the compassion, and every holiday to throw shade on happiness.

We are living during a time in which, as William Butler Yeats noted in his poem "The Second Coming":

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

The beast Yeats saw had "a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun" as it slouched toward Bethlehem to devour the Christ child.  The beast is devoid of charity, just as Augustine wrote; the beast devours all before it, just as Bosch depicts in his paintings of demons and just as St. John portrays in his vision of Revelation.

There are many, some even claiming to be Christians, who do not even see or hear the demon birds standing in the voting line.  Those devilish birds have chirped in the citizen's ears about the death of innocents as a positive "choice" and a human "right" for so long it has deafened many consciences.

But there is a clear choice all people who still have lively consciences.  Be it an openly Satanic cult or a political party, any entity that is openly embracing death as a human right and a positive good for the human race should and can be resisted. 

Tuesday, resistance to the demonic can be shown by voting "no" to the party committed to death and destruction.

[This article has been corrected to remove a reference to the Church of Satan. The Satanic Temple (TST) was the organization involved in the raffle.]

Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her the prize for excellence in systematic theology.  Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines, including American Thinker, which has published her essays since 2011.  She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.