How Might Mennonites Have Inadvertently Contributed To Our Current Middle East Crisis?

Retirement mecca and home to 3-5000 Amish and Mennonites

Some years ago I raised the question of what might have happened if Mennonites in Florida would have simply stayed home on election day in November, 2000. Like most other Mennos, known to prefer presidential candidates they feel are less likely to support abortion, their votes alone were almost surely enough to decide the race.

The disputed margin in Florida, as you may remember, was just over 500, and resulted in a candidate being chosen who was instrumental in ordering the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq following 911. By that very narrow margin, and in a case decided by the Supreme Court, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore and won the presidency.

Personally, I think George Bush was, and is, a decent and admirable person, and have no illusions about his opponent being the ideal candidate or as becoming the model president. But looking back, most of us, including George Bush himself, see the above invasions as having had serious unintended consequences, and as having directly contributed to the rise of ISIS and to the level of crisis we are currently experiencing in the Middle East.

You may of course dismiss all this as pure speculation on my part, and to even argue that had the presidential race been decided differently, the outcomes would likely have been the same, or even worse, both as to how the U.S. would have used its military power and how it would have addressed other important issues like climate change, for example.

Yet I find it an intriguing "what if" question, as I outline in my previous blog:
 https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-handful-of-florida-mennonites.html

Meanwhile, what affect, if any, did the 2000 election have on abortion rates in this country? As you can see from the graph below, the rate of recorded, legal abortions, while still far too high, has thankfully shown a steady decline over the past decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

And for reasons that have little or nothing to do with who occupies the White House.

"I urge that petitions, prayers, requests, and thanksgivings be offered to God for all people; for rulers and all others who are in authority, that we may live quiet and peaceful lives with all reverence toward God and with proper conduct."

I Timothy 2:1-2