Revisiting My Argument Against Voting for Trump

Why I still won't vote for Trump and why the Dissident Right is Wrong

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

In September of 2020, I was asked to write a piece for Public Discourse making the case against voting for Donald Trump. I did not make an argument for Biden, as I believe Biden’s enthusiastic support for abortion makes him manifestly unfit for office; he lacks the basic and necessary virtue of justice to rule. That was true in 2020, it’s even more true in 2024. Instead, in the article for Public Discourse, I made the case that Donald Trump is a distinct danger to social conservatism because his perpetual use of deception undermines our social fabric and our ability to make socially conservative policy arguments.

Nearly all politicians lie—Biden certainly is no exception, and many people will reply that it’s policies that matter, not character. But as I argue in the article,

As a matter of policy, President Trump’s administration treats truth as merely a function of power.

Deception can’t be separated out from his policies. It is how he does business.

And as a result of his lying, he has dramatically accelerated the epistemological crisis we are living under. No one trusts the media. No one trusts the experts. No one trust scientists. No one trust pastors. No one trusts anyone unless they echo what they want to hear. Everyone lives according to his or her own truth, spreading conspiracy theories with abandon. This is a recipe for cultural chaos, which is a fair description of the world we live in. Electing a president who glories in the shame of deception will only make matters worse. And it did. It made our media and experts less trustworthy. It invited everyone to stoop to his level. Of course, they had a choice. The media, democrats, and other republicans could have chosen to carefully, precisely, and accurately refute and refuse to accept the former president’s lies. But the handful of republicans who tried to were driven from the party. And the media either mimicked his lies or dabbled in conspiracy theories themselves. Democrats did the same. The idea of public truth which can be debated and examined is less certain today than when Trump became president. And it was already in bad shape then.

I consider myself a conservative because I believe in conserving the old truths, old wisdom, classic virtues. If conservatives cannot embody the old virtues, like justice and honesty, what good are they?

This is especially a problem for social conservatives, because our pro-life and pro-family policies are premised on a belief in objective truth:

Whichever principle entices you to vote for Trump, without truth that “principle” is only a personal preference imposed on others by force. It is not justice, for justice requires truth. It is not fairness, for fairness requires a standard. It is not liberty, because only the truth can set you free.

I encourage you to read the entire argument. I stand by it. But I do have a couple of additional concerns that have arisen largely during the Biden administration, concerns about the Dissident Right in particular.