Voting for A Bad Man: He’s Our Bad Man!
By Pastor Shane Lems - Posted at The Reformed Reader:
Published June 3, 2026
I am thoroughly enjoying this new book: Pandemic of Lunacy by J. Budziszewski. The subtitle gives more info: “How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.” It is very true that people believe and do crazy things. I suppose this is one effect of sin in the world, and it is nothing new. But the internet has stoked the fire of craziness. People believe crazy conspiracy theories and falsehoods like QAnon, politicians have body doubles, the government controls the weather, Hitler wasn’t that bad, and the Illuminati rule many governments, and so on. People also believe foolishness that abortion is not actually murder, that gender is fluid, that men can become pregnant, and that gender change surgeries are a legitimate choice for people. The list of craziness goes on and on. This craziness is found on the left and the right.J. Budziszewski addresses some of these issues in Pandemic of Lunacy. I’ll post more on this book later, but for now, I want to share a section from the chapter on the lunacy that we can attain the common good without virtue. I found it fascinating because it addresses the common discussion about voting for bad or immoral people. Here’s some food for thought!
He [James Madison] and the other Founders weren’t so naïve as to think voters would always vote virtuously. In fact, Madison warned against “the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried,” such as bribery. Though he knew that voters sometimes yielded to bribes, he thought they would also recognize and admire good character. Consequently, when nobody was bribing them, most voters would vote for the wisest and most virtuous candidates they could find. To keep corruption to a minimum, Madison relied on the expedient of making electoral districts so large that bribing everyone at once would be too expensive. Since the votes of the citizens would be ‘free,’ meaning uncorrupted, they would “be more likely to center in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.”
