Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Growing up devoutly Roman Catholic, I lit many a votive candle while praying in church on especially urgent matters. My maternal grandmother often visited St. Anthony’s Church in the Bronx to say special prayers, or to attend daily Mass.
She taught me how to leave a coin for charity, take and light a taper, and ignite the votive candle. We would then offer our prayers, with the light of our special candles as an earnest of our intense hope and trust in God. This was always an intimate moment, blanketed in reverent silence. It was a particularly moving ritual; one that my current Reformed Christian self misses.
To me, votive candles represent bringing specific hopes and concerns before God for His divine consideration. While God does not grant all prayers, a faithful believer trusts that God’s will (even when bafflingly mysterious) is for the best.
Voting is much like the lighting of votives. It is an act of secular faith. The citizen is bringing his or her hopes and concerns to bear in choosing between variant champions, ideologies, and priorities. Just as God’s will is the final word in prayer, the voting majority decides whether our concerns will be honored or thwarted.
Every election reshapes the nation, state, and locality. Every decision illustrates the popular will of the moment. Each time we walk into the ballot box, we birth one future at the cost of countless others.
No citizen should vote in ignorance. No vote should be cast randomly any more than a firearm’s trigger ought to be activated without the shooter knowing where the bullet will travel downrange. If a citizen fails in the civic duty of becoming informed, then that citizen should stay home lest they unintentionally grant power to tyrants, demagogues, or criminals.
In October 2026, we face conspicuously different options.
If you agree that the United States of America is problematical, that our colonizer nation needs to return land and make reparations to its victims, that the free market crushes humanity under a callous heel, that censorship protects the vulnerable from scary opinions, and that every single issue can best be understood through the lenses of White Guilt and identity politics, then by all means vote Democrat. While individual Democrats purport to buck their party leaders in service to common sense, the Party’s will shall always prevail over the dissents of maverick Democrats. Today, a voter really votes for the Party more than the candidate.
Republicans are all-too-often cowards without the backbone to fight for genuinely Constitutional and Conservative limits on the intrusiveness of government. Feckless “moderates” have often frustrated the hopes of MAGA Conservatives. Even President Trump makes errors and chooses unpopular policies that seem to diverge from campaign promises.
However, at least Trump and Republicans are trying to restrain the demon government from consuming every personal choice and responsibility in its insatiable hunger to legalistically control everything and everyone. Imperfect avatars of citizen hopes that they may be, Trump’s Republicans are on the right side of history.
Fallible we are, but we love America, see our Republic as the best hope for mankind, believe that freedom means meritocracy, support free markets and free speech, and insist that diversity of thought is the most crucial kind of diversity.
If you want the perpetuation of individual liberty instead of the expansion of the Welfare State, vote Conservative and Republican this Election Day!
