In a historic presidential election like none we have seen in the past century white working class Americans(both men and women) propelled Donald Trump to victory.
For decades the white working class voting block had been successfully divided by Democrats and Republicans so it was often ignored as a voting block. Instead politicians pandered to other voting blocks.
On the Republican side fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and libertarians were courted as their primary base. On the Democratic side blacks, hispanics, the LGBTQ community, teachers unions and workers unions were courted.
But Donald Trump saw something no one else did. A way to create a new coalition made up of people from the various voting blocks that both Republicans and Democrats were courting.
He saw the working class American voting block as a block of voters that had been ignored since Ronald Reagan was president. The Democrats were tapping into only a part of this block in courting working class union workers. Donald Trump saw that there was a vastly larger block if he targeted both union and and non-union working class Americans as one large group.
“Race, as is often the case, played a major role in the election. For much of the election, commentators, particularly in the dominant Eastern media, seemed to be openly celebrating what CNN heralded as “the decline of the white voter.” The “new America,” they suggested, would be a coalition of minorities, educated workers and millennials.”
But Donald Trump knew that in order to win he could not win with whites alone as he would never get 100% of the white vote. So Trump targeted the black community and he actually did increase by a small margin the number of blacks voting Republican. Even for those blacks who did not vote for Trump – he planted enough seeds of doubt about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party that for many blacks if they did not vote for Trump, they stayed home.
He made a great deal of promises to help the black community and if he carries through on even half these pledges he will likely grow the number of black voters voting Republican in the next election.
He also peeled off a few millennials as well and in doing so he cut into the new democratic coalition “of minorities, educated workers and millennials” while at the same time cutting into a traditional democratic strong hold – union workers.
In doing all this Donald Trump took states that had not been taken since Ronald Reagan took them in the 1980s. He did not hide this strategy but proclaimed that he would expand the Republican base in this way all through the primaries.
And make no mistake this election was about a lot more than getting more people to vote for Republicans than Democrats. It was about changing the way Americans think.
Donald Trump basically asked Americans these questions:
Would you rather have a job and be able to earn your own way than receiving a government check for doing nothing but breathing?
Do you want your government to protect your country not only from military and terrorist threats but also from economic threats?
Do you want your government to stop it’s policy of unchecked and unregulated immigration?
Many voters answered a resounding YES to all three of these questions. For millions of voters this election was not about Republicans and Democrats but instead it was about these very important policy questions that affect lives of every day Americans.
But the sad fact of American politics is that except for whites, all the other races in our country seem to vote pretty monolithically for the socialist and globalist policies of the Democratic party. If Donald Trump is to succeed in protecting the American people and our economy and return us to a lasting prosperity and freedom he will have to find a way to break up the monolithic voting patterns of these other racial groups.
With all this being said I am very excited at this historic opportunity. Since George H. W. Bush in 1989 we have had an unending string of moderate Republican Presidents or Presidential candidates. Both George W. Bush and his father, as well as Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney were all moderates. They did not want to make vast sweeping changes in the government or our policies. All of them were soft on immigration and all of them were globalists and free traders.
Now we finally have a President who will stand up to the entrenched bureaucracy in D.C. in a way that perhaps no President in our history ever has. We finally have a President that will return to the historic position of Presidents from a century ago who believed that the government needs to protect the people not only militarily, but also economically.
After decades of deregulating our immigration rules and the utter failure to enforce our nation’s immigration laws we finally have a President who will bring law and order not only to our cities but also to our borders.
He will appoint Judges to Supreme Court and other Federal courts who will upload the founders original intent. Hopefully we finally have a President who will protect the religious freedom of our people from the onslaught of secularism.
Rather than continuing the values that have lead to the weakening of our culture ,economy and military hopefully Donald Trump will return us to the original values that made this country great.
But in the end Donald Trump is just a man, an instrument that God has allowed to come to power. Ultimately as believers our hope must continue to be in God.
Biblical Gender Roles 
AnnaMS,
I am rethinking this last statement I made to you:
There are some slight variations and differences but I want to give it some more thought and get back to you – this has to do with custody of the children defaulting to the father.
Looking forward to your upcoming thoughts! From what you’ve said so far, the entire point of an incentive here would be that the mother would not lose contact with the children if she remains married to her husband and is a good wife. If her husband can just remove them from her anyway because property rights, than the entire incentive is lost. If he can’t do that (or at least if you’re not willing to advocate for that), than his ownership of his child is like his ownership of his wife’s unconceived egg…all bark and no bite. I’m not gonna lie, that is one sentence I did not see myself ever uttering (or typing lol).
@AnnaMS,
The farmer was the one that provided the seed. Sperm is seed.
The Bible clearly teaches that a married women becomes the property of her husband when she marries.
Bee, farmers put seeds in the ground by themselves and they sprout. Unless you think sperm can produce a child by itself, I highly recommend you drop this analogy. Sperm and tomato seeds don’t serve the same purpose. Tomatoes(even ripe ones!) and children don’t serve the same purpose. Neither has anything to do with understanding or misunderstanding spousal ownership.
AnnaMS,
Incentive is one result of God’s design, not the purpose of God’s design of marriage and the corresponding ownership of a man over his wife and children.
So we start with the Biblical principle that in marriage by design the man owns his wife and children. But no ownership over human property whether it be a wife, a child or a slave is absolute. There is also one special case in Scripture where a man does NOT own his wife and children and I will talk about that later in this comment.
Ownership can be forfeited by certain sinful behaviors which is why God told masters that they must free their slaves for physical abuse and he told husbands they must free their wives for failure to provide food, clothing or for sexual denial.
But the next question is what about the children? The children who like the wife had more rights than slaves would have the right to be freed from their father if he physically abused them(including failing to give them food and clothing). So it would follow that naturally in the case of failure to provide food and clothing or for physical abuse the ownership of the husband over his wife and children would could be forfeited and the mother could leave with them.
But then we have the case of a man sexually denying his wife and this goes to Alex’s question on this point. While this would give his wife the option to be freed from her husband’s ownership it would not grant her custody of the children if he is not failing to provide and not abusing them. So she would be faced with the choice of staying in the face of her husband’s sinful sexual denial so she could stay with her children or else she could leave without her children and seek another husband that would not sexually deny her.
The choice to leave without one’s children is actually demonstrated in an interesting part of the Scriptures. While in most cases a man owns his wife and children there is one exception where he does not.
Exodus 21:2-5 (KJV)
So here in this account we see part of God’s prescription for how to handle human property. A Hebrew male could only be temporarily owned by a fellow Hebrew for no more than 6 years whether he was sold by his parents as a child or he sold himself.
He may have come in married and with children and sold himself to work off some debt. During this period he retained ownership of his wife and children and after 6 years he left with his wife and children that he brought with him. But if he came as a single man and his master gave him one his other servants as a wife and he had children with her the master retained ownership over that woman and any children that the couple produced. After the six years the man was free to go but he could not take his wife and their children if his master had given him the woman. She would stay with the master.
But the man did not have to exercise his right to be freed, but could instead choose to stay and permanently be owned by his master along with his wife and children.
So yes a wife has the right to be freed of her husband’s ownership if he sexually denies her, but sinful sexual denial toward her does not forfeit his ownership rights over his children.
In summary – the only way I can see Biblically speaking that a woman can leave her husband and get custody of her children is if he physically abuses them, or fails to provide food and clothing to them. Otherwise if she chooses to divorce any other reasons than these(even sexual denial) then she is choosing to leave without her children because his property rights over the children remain intact.
There is absolutely no doubt that for both a man and a woman their children are a powerful force for bringing them closer together in their marriage and KEEPING them together in their marriage.
For a man he has a powerful incentive to take whatever job he can find and work hard to make sure he provides the basic needs of life of food and clothing for his children. He also has a powerful incentive to check his anger and his temper so that he never abuses the wife and children that God has called him to love. If he fails to do these things his wife may very well exercise her right to be freed from him and take her children out of this dangerous situation as well.
For a woman she has a powerful incentive to remain sexually faithful to her husband both by never sexually denying her husband and by not committing adultery against him. If she does either of these things she could forfeit her access to her children if her husband chooses to exercise his right to divorce her. She also has a powerful incentive to not leave her husband even when he is acts in many other sinful ways other than physical abuse and failure to provide. If she leaves she leaves without her children.
So that is the clarification of my position for both you and Alex.
I still don’t understand the point you are trying to make about a husband’s ownership over children being “all bark and no bite” – perhaps you can clarify that.
I don’t think that custody needs to be an all or nothing arrangement. There is nothing in the Bible that doesn’t allow for children to be with their mother one week and their dad the next. Even if we go with your idea of human property, it doesn’t conflict. A man can have ownership of his children and still have them spend time with their mother. Today’s society still differentiates between legal and physical custody.
By “all bark and no bite”, I was referring to your argument about incentives. You say a woman has an incentive to remain as a good wife so as not to lose contact with her children. However, if her husband could randomly choose to hide the kids away somewhere else by claiming his ownership, the entire incentive is removed and she can lose her children either way. This essentially reduces her to a wet nurse and the children to pawns of mind games, which might be a hint that we’re on the wrong track.
On the other hand, you might argue that the husband is not allowed to act that way but therefore his ownership ceases to primary as his wife clearly has some custody claims as well.
AnnaMS,
Your Statement:
Yes a man could still allow his children to spend with their mother after divorce – they are his property it is his decision. But in this case he would have to measure the influence of the mother on the children as well as make clear to her that if she contradicted any of his parenting decisions she would not see them again. But the point is – he does not have to from a Biblical ownership perspective.
Now I will address your “all bark and no bite” argument. I will go back to the example of the indentured servant in Scripture. If an indentured servant’s master gave him one of his other female servants as a wife the Scriptures are clear that ownership of that woman as well as any children they produced would remain with the master.
But just because the master owns this woman still – that does not give him the right to pass this woman around to multiple servants and himself at the same time. He can’t say – she is your wife this week, another servant’s wife next week, mine the third week and then you get her the 4th week of the month as your wife. A woman can only be one man’s wife at a time.
If that servant chose to leave at the end of his six years leaving his wife whom his master gave him then his master could then give that woman to another of his servants or he could take her as a wife himself.
So the master while retaining full ownership of this man’s wife and the children they had did not have the right to randomly take this man’s wife. The only way this man would loose his wife is if he choose to leave his master.
However it is interesting to point out that a master, as well as father could at any time sell children that were their property. The master did not need the permission of his male servant to whom he had given a wife, nor did a father need the permission of the children’s mother to sell one or all of her children.
But just because a master could not hand one his servant girls around to multiple men to be wives to them all does not give any of those men custody rights or property rights over her and her children. He still retains full property rights over them. However, as I have said many times on this blog – just because someone owns human property does not mean there are no limitations on what they can do with that property.
So no I don’t think God means for men to play mind games with their wives by randomly taking away and bringing back their children. I don’t think taking away a woman’s children should be used as form of discipline unless she seemed to mistreating the children or being physically abusive toward them. In this case a husband would be justified in sending them away temporarily to see if his wife would learn not to mistreat them and then he would bring them back and give her another chance.
But the fact that a husband should not play mind games by randomly taking away a woman’s children without cause does not give her any type of custody or property rights to those children. It is simply him treating his human property – his wife right in the same way a master with and indentured servant should not play mind games with him by taking away and bringing back again his wife to him.
But make no mistake – just as a master’s ownership over his servants was exclusive unless he did something to forfeit that ownership – so too a husband’s ownership over his children is exclusive unless he does something to forfeit that(by abusing them or failing to provide for them). And again human ownership comes with God given responsibilities – you cannot treat your human property anyway you want. There are limitations, there are rules.
It is true that fathers could hire out their children to indentured servitude, but that’s not the same thing as slavery (minor issue there). I also wasn’t talking about passing around one’s wife, although of course I will agree that that is wrong. Ultimately, under your argument, the only recourse a woman has to her husband not randomly removing the children from her is “well he shouldn’t so hopefully he won’t”. That’s quite a powerful incentive for running away while pregnant. 🙂
I still do think you are misapplying your property argument even in Israelite culture, but ultimately there is nothing in the Bible that forces modern Christians to live that way. We don’t do animal sacrifices (at least not legally) and plenty of other things that were cultural staples back then. A man is clearly the head of his family but that doesn’t reduce his wife to a wet nurse at his whim.
You seem to be using the distinction between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws to defend your position. However, you aren’t clearly showing how you distinguish between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws. For instance, previously you have used the argument that dietary laws are civil laws that were rescinded in the NT and connected this to laws concerning the stoning of adulterers and homosexuals, arguing that these are also civil laws, to show that they need not be followed. However, laws concerning stoning are not clearly rescinded in the NT. Now you seem to be arguing that OT property laws are not rescinded in the NT and therefore still apply. However, in many cases these seem to fit into the category of civil law rather than moral law, and thus it isn’t clear why we should assume that they continue into the NT. You haven’t made clear how you distinguish between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws (admittedly there is no scholarly or ecclesiastical consensus on how to distinguish between these categories), and thus you seem to be arbitrarily assigning the category of ‘moral law’ to those OT laws that you like and want to affirm and assigning the category of ‘civil law’ to those OT laws that you do not want to or believe that you can live out in order to reject them. I would appreciate it if you would clearly explain why you understand laws X, Y, and Z as moral laws and laws A, B, and C as civil laws if that is part of your human property/ownership defense.
AnnaMS,
Your Statement:
Those are some good questions. I have defended my position in pieces over various comments but I really do need a dedicated article the that subject of how to distinguish moral law from the OT which continues in the NT age and which laws have passed away. I am finishing up an article on marital unity and after I get that out(hopefully within the next couple days) I will start on an article addressing your questions here.