The typical response in the US to disappointing election results is some variant of ‘There’s always next time.’  Yet some trends are turning that into a deceptive hope.

First is the continued ability of a minority of blue urban counties to dominate State-wide elections.

In Kentucky, Gov. Beshear was re-elected with about 52% of the total votes but with only about 23% of the total counties (winning 28 out of 120).

In Ohio, Issue 1, adding pro-abortion language to the Ohio constitution, won with about 57% of the total votes but with only about 28% of the total counties (25 out of 88).  Issue 2, legalizing marijuana, also won with 57% of the total votes but again without even a majority of the counties assenting (45% – 40 out of 88 approved).

Until States give the rural red counties/parishes a greater share of political power, the black widows’ nests that big cities have become will continue to cast their long, poisonous shadow over State-wide elections.  The easiest solution is to tie State-wide elections to total counties won instead of total raw votes received:  A candidate, constitutional amendment, etc., would only be valid if passed in a majority or supermajority of counties.

The second trend is the increasing liberalism of voters regarding social/cultural issues like drugs and abortion.  A large part of the problem is the concept of rights.  Issue 1 contains language such as this:

1. Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on:
2. contraception;
3. fertility treatment;
4. continuing one’s own pregnancy;
5. miscarriage care; and
6. abortion.

This language of rights is one of the moral conundrums the US must confront.  It really cannot be gainsaid that we have deified the individual human will here in the States.  There are still a good many churches around, but when pastors, priests, bishops, etc., start making demands of their parishioners that impose even the slightest bit on a man’s or woman’s freedom, the latter hit the road in search of a church that affirms them in whatever habits or beliefs that they don’t wish part with, or they simply stop going altogether.  In doing so, we have in large part exchanged the petition to the Heavenly Father ‘Thy will be done’ in the Lord’s Prayer for the satanist Aleister Crowley’s dictum ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’

The Crowleyan worship of our own individual wills necessarily ramifies, because of the absence of the constraints of Christianity, into things like abortion, recreational drug use, changing one’s gender, redefining marriage, and so on.

If there is to be any major change in the current trajectory of society, we will have to broaden our focus from the self-centered will of the individual to include the essential and unchangeable traditions of our Christian forefathers.  Regarding abortion in particular, there is a long line of saints, church canons, etc., that mark any abortion as wrong:

“You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” (Didache, Teachings of the Apostles)

“Nor could God have known man in the womb unless he were a whole man […] Was it, then, a dead body at that stage? Surely it was not, for ‘God is the God of the living and not the dead.’” (Tertullian, 3rd century)

“Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not.” (Canon II, The First Canonical Epistle of Our Holy Father Basil)

“Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born.” (Letter of Barnabas, 19)

More in that vein is available here.

Some of that change in direction is beyond the scope of government, but some of it is not.  To prevent misunderstandings about rights and to safeguard the Christian traditions of our forefathers, bright markers can and must be added to our constitutions/organic laws (local, State, federal), something to this effect – that as the goal of each person is a loving union with the Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, no legislation, ballot initiative, executive order, judicial opinion, etc., that is in opposition to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures shall have any effect.

If Christians are squeamish about adding that kind of clear language, then they should quit the field now and yield the culture war to the woke Left.  Without it, the Leftists will continue to encounter only minor opposition to using the apparatus of the government and its laws to implement their program of ‘reform.’

A string of electoral defeats for conservatives does not necessarily mean life in the 50 States has entered an irreversible phase of decline.  A look through history shows that regeneration sometimes comes about quickly and unexpectedly.  However, things are not looking overly rosy these days in the US; a recovery cannot be assumed or taken for granted.  We will make such a thing much more likely here in the South and in the other cultural regions of the US by strengthening the Christian elements that remain through some overdue changes to the electoral system and to our constitutions.