Everybody is being implored to get out and vote. We also hear appeals that this year’s November 5 election is the most important election in America’s history. Let us be clear why that statement is true and why every citizen needs to vote.

People forget that America is matchless in all human history. Prior to the birth of America with its founding documents -- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- it was the state that determined the subjects’ rights. And those rights could change at the whim of whoever wielded government power. The world lived in shades of darkness, until the light came through America.

There were times and places in human history when there were nation states of cultural achievement, such as in Periclean Athens, in the Florence of the Medicis, and in England of Elizabeth and Shakespeare. But none were founded the way America was. The United States is the only country in the entire history of mankind that was specifically founded on ideas and principles, rather than blood lineage, language, common culture, and the spoils of war and conquest.

And those founding ideas came out of the Bible and reformed Christianity, making America the first country that codified in its governing documents the belief that all people are created equal in value and that they have God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Because these rights are sacred and unalienable, they cannot be infringed upon or taken away by the state.

When this is fully grasped, it becomes more understandable why the Democrat Party removed reference to ‘God’ from their party platform some twelve years ago when Obama was running for a second term. Removing God from the party platform erases the precept that citizens and the unborn have God-given rights and it shifts the locus of legitimacy back to the governing elites and away from the people.

In addition to an appreciation of the rights and freedoms that God intended for the American people, the Founding Fathers -- who were almost all professing Christians -- understood that man’s fallen nature was intractable and would lead to political corruption. Thus, they recognized the need for government to have extensive checks and balances to mitigate abuse of power. This too, was another significant contribution by America to countries worldwide seeking solutions to inevitable corruption in government.

George Washington was prescient about how corruption could undermine the constitutional order of America, particularly when political parties are involved. He specifically addressed this in his 1796 Farewell Address, when he said: 

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.

Many feel that the November 5 election should rightly be a referendum on corruption and misuse of power, specifically the Biden-Harris abuse of power that may be unparalleled in America’s long history. Consider:

• The exposure of massive corruption and compromise of the Biden family -- during and after the time Joe Biden served as vice president -- including tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments, and notably from entities with connections to America’s number one enemy, the CCP.
• The adoption of an open border policy that enabled as many as 20 million illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. during the four-year Biden-Harris term, overwhelming our health and education welfare system, escalating the risk of terrorist attack on our soil, and increasing the likelihood of massive election irregularity.
• The two-tiered justice system on display in the political prosecution of Donald Trump, the arrest and imprisonment of J6 protestors -- many of whom committed no crime -- and the instigation of open season lawfare and jail sentences on most everyone on Trump’s team from his first term.
• The demoralization of the military starting with the mandatory imposition of DEI throughout the armed forces that preceded the disastrous hasty retreat from Afghanistan in August of 2021, leaving thirteen American soldiers dead and abandoning some $85 billion of state-of-the-art military equipment.                                                                                                             
• The halting of the Keystone Pipeline and curtailing oil and gas development on public lands -- both of which contributed to the increase in the price of energy and all consumer goods.
• The  out-of-control deficit spending, money-printing and borrowing, pushes the U.S. ever closer to insolvency and the demise of the dollar, while having the immediate effect of spurring inflation in energy and food prices -- with the greatest burden on the poor and lower class, many of whom now find the essentials of everyday living unaffordable.

The Democrat party that claims they are the party defending democracy has repeatedly shown an affinity for violence and riots. Two-term Democrat president Barack Obama dealt with some seven major confrontations based on race, class, and partisanship -- from violence following the death Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in 2012 to riots that were triggered by alleged police treatment of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland in April 2015.

The Democrats’ political use of violence did not end with Trump’s election in 2016. Democrat operatives torched various parts of Washington, D.C. during the inauguration in January 2017. And in 2020 during the initial stages of Covid-19, triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Democrat activists together with their allies in BLM and Antifa, inflicted several billion dollars of property damage and destruction on numerous major cities in America.

In this environment of fear, Democrat activists and lawyers exploited the opportunity to change many of the swing states’ voting rules, protocols, and procedures, expanding absentee voting, allowing for the use ballot drop boxes and extending the deadlines for counting ballots -- all directed at rigging the vote.

We will surely face voting irregularities in this year’s national election, but America is a remarkable and unique country in which the people now better understand that they are sovereign and must change the course of their nation. It may be that God allowed all the chaos of the last four years to happen to wake up and educate the American people. Thus, as people became informed,  they cannot unsee and have no excuse for sitting out this election.

Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His timeless book, Rediscovering America, has been a #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org

Image: Gage Skidmore