The election looms ever closer, and I’m realizing that I need to make a decision who I’m going to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. For those of you not paying attention, my available choices follow:

• George W. Bush – Republican
• John Kerry – Democrat
• Ralph Nader – Independent
• Michael Peroutka – Constitution
• Michael Badnarik – Libertarian

Of course, Bush and Kerry are the candidates from the two major parties, and I’m not so deluded as to believe that one of them will not walk away the winner. However, unless some major revelation appears, I’m not able to vote for either of the major parties.

We’ll get Kerry out of the way first. I can’t vote for a man who is fundamentally anti-Christian in the way he thinks. He has no respect for the unborn, and believes that the civil government is the primary fixer of every social ill. In his mind, sin problems are caused by “mental illness”… and the solution is not repentance but therapy. He views the Constitution as a “living document” and would nominate federal judges who believed the same. While he may “look presidential”, his record over the last 20 years in the senate do not lead me to believe that he has the leadership qualities necessary for a good president.

Bush, on the other hand, is not much better. Sure, he claims he’s a Christian, and oftentimes, he even sounds like a Christian. But, then again, oftentimes it seems that he doesn’t understand Christianity and it’s unique status amongst religions. While President Bush oftentimes refers to the God of the Bible, it is more often that I hear him confess the divinity of democracy, as in “vox populi vox dei“. Like or it not, it is impossible to deny that Bush’s actions evidence his belief in the gospel of democracy, not the gospel of the Bible. It is democracy, not Christ, that will save the Iraqi people. There is no God but democracy, and George W. Bush is her prophet. Since our president has erected poles to the goddess, Democracy, I have trouble supporting this president’s idolatry.

Nader is not even an option… he’s worse than Kerry.

So, that leaves us with Badnarik or Peroutka. Right now, I’m not sure. I like Libertarians a lot. I like the Constitution Party, too, except for their propensity to equate the Constitution with the Bible. The Constitution is great, but unlike the Bible, it has flaws. If I could just see one person in the Constitution Party find fault with the Constitution on Biblical principles, it would remove some of my unease.

I’ll let you all know what I decide. But I’ll leave you with this choice quote from one of the articles on the American Conservative‘s website endorsing John Kerry.

But neoconservatism now encompasses much more than Israel-obsessed intellectuals and policy insiders. The Bush foreign policy also surfs on deep currents within the Christian Right, some of which see unqualified support of Israel as part of a godly plan to bring about Armageddon and the future kingdom of Christ. These two strands of Jewish and Christian extremism build on one another in the Bush presidency—and President Bush has given not the slightest indication he would restrain either in a second term. With Colin Powell’s departure from the State Department looming, Bush is more than ever the “neoconian candidate.” The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.

I love it.