Maple Leaf, graphite on paper. Copyright 1975 by Craig Gallaway. As a graduate student in my mid-twenties, studying art history and theology, I also studied the forms of nature as an artist. In all of this, I saw how careful observation continuously opens up new insights into the deeper order and structure of things. This “critical realist” insight is the bedrock of genuine science. It stands in opposition both to the hyper “objective” claims of Logical Positivism, as well as the reductive “subjective” claims of a great deal of post-modern thought. Things are neither as clear, nor as ambiguous as those false alternatives make them out to be. This is true also of political claims!

Some of our friends and family have seemed incredulous or even hurt at times that Deb and I could vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and then that we have come increasingly to defend Trump and his administration in the four years leading up to the current election of 2020. In 2008 and 2012, Deb and I voted for Barack Obama. We did so on the basis of the best information that we had at the time as to what Obama’s policy positions would be on issues like Christian marriage, abortion (there did not seem to be a clear legislative alternative on the Republican side), social issues (such as race and poverty), and economics (the Bush administration had fouled things up royally by 2008). So how or why have we come to reject the now clarified legacy of Barack Obama, and to defend Donald Trump’s availing goal to “make America great again”?

I think the turn began for us when we saw Barack Obama abandon his commitment to traditional Christian marriage, and embrace the wild and wide-open pan-sexual agenda of gay marriage and transgender activism. We had taken him at his word in 2008 that he believed in traditional marriage, and would protect that tradition, and that he would also protect the civil rights of people with same-sex attraction. But then, not long after his election to a second term, he told the country that an offhand conversation with his teenage daughter had completely upended his former convictions. Henceforward, he would become, along with his Attorney General Eric Holder, a flaming activist for all things LGBTQ. He would force transgender bathrooms and gyms on the nation, and he threatened to withhold federal funds from states that did not comply. We began to see a very different Barack Obama from the one who had traveled to Saddleback Community Church in California in 2008 to make his quasi-religious case for traditional marriage and the family. The grounds for his seismic ideological shift were not convincing.

And then, after Trump was elected in 2016 and began to serve in 2017, we began to see and take note of the horrendously biased treatment that Trump was receiving from the mainstream press, including the papers (New York Times, Washington Post) and the major mainstream news channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR), not to mention most of the cable news networks (MSNBC, CNN, etc.). What we saw week after week and month after month was a continuous stream of one-sided stories claiming to expose Donald Trump’s treasonous and chaotic behavior told by news anchors who clearly hated him, and drawing on sources that were nearly always either leaked anonymously or were former Obama officials. It did not take much critical acumen to recognize that something very partisan and rather clandestine was going on.

And so, we began to look more deeply into the background of the news sources themselves. We began to realize that the major news sources were engaged in their own kind of collusion with the previous administration and its continuing legacy of people in staff positions at a great variety of government agencies. We knew that some would say that we were succumbing to a “conspiracy theory” mentality; and yet something very much like an “administrative state” or a “deep state” was more and more evident just beneath the surface of this great ideological and media collusion against the Trump administration. And so it has proven to be.

Perhaps the most important thing to say about our change of heart is that it has also led to an ongoing and ever deeper investigation on our part into the issues that divide the political parties from each other, issues such as: the environment, immigration, economic policy (foreign and domestic), education, race relations, abortion, the role of the family, and the Bill of Rights, including religious freedom. Looking deeper into the credibility of the news sources also required looking into how these sources handle these issues. We have come more and more to realize that the positions taken up on the left are usually ill-founded as far as factual evidence is concerned, being based more on ideological bias and bald assertion; while Trump’s positions on the same issues are grounded more often in empirical evidence, real results rather than big promises, and on Constitutional principles of freedom and rule of law rather than the kind of governmental force that has become Obama’s true legacy on the Left.

As a result, Deb and I have changed parties as far as presidential politics is concerned. We want to conclude this explanation of our reasons for changing by listing ten political issues that seem pivotal to us (though not at all exhaustive). These are at least some of the policy issues and reasons why in 2020 we support Donald Trump and his administration for four more years, rather than Joe Biden and a return to the Obama style of Left-wing ideological mandates that now fuel the Democratic party. We’ll give these in what we deem a descending order of importance.

10.  The Environment – In order to protect our environment and deal with climate change, Trump advocates innovation in and through the private sector supported by government funding (cf., what he has done with the pharmaceutical companies during the pandemic). This is surely the tried and true path of history and experience (see Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works) as opposed to the Democratic method (such as that used by Gavin Newsome in California) of announcing a government mandate and setting a date for compliance. This also stands in clear opposition to the petulant hubris and overreach of the hyper-bureaucratic Environmental Protection Agency (15,000 employees, average salary $85,000) which has led to a continuous series of successful court cases challenging the enforcement of EPA rules (one size fits all) as though these were laws actually passed by a legislature.

9. The Pandemic – At one point about three months into the Trump administration’s pandemic response, Anthony Fauci defended the President’s team and its work, “I don’t know how anyone could have done more than we have done to fight this virus.” During that whole time period, the Trump team members were giving daily TV briefings regarding how they were engaging the private sector to make PPE, build ventilators, create new testing procedures, launch vaccine research, and stay in touch with every state to supply equipment, hospital space, and personnel as needed. All of this stands factually and empirically against Joe Biden’s vacuous and unfounded claims that Trump has had no plan and has done nothing to defeat the virus. Subsequently, Joe Biden hasn’t named anything that he would do that Trump and his team haven’t already done. The only thing literally that Joe Biden has done to defeat the virus since it began is to boast about how much better he would have done if only he had been president. And he hopes to get elected on the basis of that braggadocio.

8. Immigration – Trump is in favor of legal immigration which vets who comes into our country and for what purpose. His policy protects American sovereignty, law, and employment. The promotion of illegal immigration by the Democratic party, though it purports to be motivated by social justice or compassion, opens the way not only for crime but also raises unemployment among Americans seeking entry level jobs. As a result, the Left’s proposals actually lead to injustice and further poverty for American citizens, especially low-income minorities, hardly the stuff of real compassion or justice. (See Carol Swain, Debating Immigration.) This is not to mention the scurrilous and unfounded “concentration camp” rhetoric of A.O.C. and others like her concerning the border.

7. Foreign Trade – It is difficult to imagine Joe Biden or the members of his party taking on China with anything close to the business and economic acumen of Donald Trump and his team. Biden himself recognizes that Trump significantly improved NAFTA with the USMCA trade agreement. These kinds of negotiations will no doubt remain crucial in the days ahead as the world recovers from the pandemic and also adjusts to China’s takeover in Hong Kong. We are going to need serious negotiators on the US side, as well as a President whose own past business dealings do not compromise his ability to take a stand and push back.

6. The military – Since Ronald Reagan, the principle of peace through strength, rather than appeasement, has demonstrated wide success. Interestingly enough, the Obama-Biden nuclear treaty with Iran, based on appeasement, led to continuous terrorist activity in the Middle East. Trump’s use of sanctions and military strength has led, by contrast, to major breakthroughs between Israel and the Arab nations. As a nation, we are less involved in wars now than four years ago. There is now even a pathway to serious peace negotiations with Iran if Trump is re-elected.

5. Economics – Trump promotes the free market approach to business and innovation, which is based on individual initiative and has made the American economy a model around the world. (See again Matt Ridley’s, How Innovation Works.) Biden’s big government agenda for health care, the environment, education, and other sectors relies on the failed promise of all central government strategies known to history. No one, and no group of elite leaders (whether in Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, or elsewhere), has had the knowledge, wisdom, or virtue to be entrusted with that much power and responsibility. The failure of administrative states always involves the ignorance of the would-be revolutionary leaders. For example, Pol Pot in Cambodia “didn’t know” what was going on in his own death camps, where millions were put to death who couldn’t or wouldn’t be re-educated. This is why we have a Bill of Rights for the individual.

4. Education – Trump is finally taking on the widespread infection of “critical social theories” (race, gender, sexuality, etc.) in our whole educational system, from college and university, where it began, all the way down to elementary public school. Biden shows no awareness of the Marxist and therefore inherently divisive sources of this way of thinking. In addition, Trump is also willing to take on the teachers’ unions which have become self-serving in their resistance to the success of charter schools, especially in underprivileged communities. Biden will stand with the teachers’ unions, like Bill DeBlasio in New York City, because that is part of his power base; not because it is in the best interests of children. (See Thomas Sowell, Charter Schools and Their Enemies.)

3. Racial Politics – Trump’s economic policies have achieved far greater concrete results for minorities than was achieved in eight years by the Obama-Biden administration, or by Biden himself for forty years prior to that. Trump’s approach to law enforcement is also in agreement with the majority of black and Hispanic citizens who oppose the “defund the police” agenda of so-called “social justice” activists such as BLM. All of this resonates, moreover, with the social and moral insights of black elders and leaders such as Robert Woodson and Shelby Steele. The path to genuine economic and cultural uplift for underprivileged minorities is through the recovery of faith, family, and individual disciplines grounded in the freedoms of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Government programs for the last fifty years have only hardened the problems they promised to address, while creating a caste of virtue-signaling politicians. (See Shelby Steele’s new film, “What Killed Michael Brown?”)

2. Abortion – As a nation we have lived now for nearly fifty years ignoring the rights of unborn children in the name of protecting the rights of women. What would enlighten this darkness once and for all is the passage of a “Life Begins at Conception Act.” Trump has exceeded all of his predecessors in standing with the pro-life movement in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, and finding better solutions to the challenges of unplanned pregnancies. Biden, by contrast, has played the part of the religious hypocrite, declaring allegiance to the Catholic Church while advocating policies that would require religious orders to help fund abortion in direct opposition to their religious vows and conscience.

1. The Role of the Constitution – Our founding documents are, as Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, a “promissory note.” The Declaration of Independence points to the God-given and unalienable rights that belong to each and every citizen of the United States such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And our Constitution spells out in measured detail what these rights consist in: for example, the first five freedoms mentioned in the first amendment: freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition (protest). And yet, it has become clear, at least to Deb and me, that the Left-wing of our current cultural politics and its media mob is ready and willing to barter away these very rights and principles if it will purchase for them the power to control our government and people. Since at least Charlottesville, the Left has shown its readiness to suppress the freedom of speech and assembly for groups with whom they disagree. And then, in places like Portland and Seattle, the left has ignored if not condoned the use of violence by groups such as AntiFa and BLM, when such criminal activity can be camouflaged behind the ruse of “protest.” This is not to mention the role of cancel culture in social and mainstream media, nor the widespread abuse by the Left of the charges of racism and “white supremacy” to try to shame anyone who disagrees with their policy positions. This is the way to undermine our Constitution, not to uphold it.

Over against this, the Trump administration stands in solid agreement with the first principles of our Constitution, which protect the rights and freedoms of the individual to his or her opinions, speech, and so forth. This does not place Trump, or any of his supporters, in league with the wrong-headed opinions of anyone or any group (whether white supremacy, or Black Lives Matter, or the ideological hatred of the Left itself). What it does do is to hold up the most basic principles of our Constitutional and Republican Democracy, grounded as these are in the basic biblical narrative of our Judeo-Christian tradition of faith, which together form the best foundation that we have for moving forward together as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.

And that is why Deb and I have changed parties since 2008 and 2012 and are now quite freely and willingly supporting our flawed yet very human and hopeful President, Donald Trump.