Speaking in Youngstown, Ohio, Aug. 15, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed to champion immigration reform that would "screen out any who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles." (The Washington Post)

Speaking in Youngstown, Ohio, Aug. 15, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed to champion immigration reform that would "screen out any who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles." (The Washington Post)

It’s a classic social science experiment: Imagine you are walking along the train tracks when you spot a runaway train hurtling toward five unsuspecting track workers. Fortunately, there is a signal lever in front of you. If you pull it, you can divert the train to another track and save five people. Seems like an easy decision. Except for one problem: There is one unsuspecting worker on the other track. If you divert the train, you will be responsible for killing someone who would otherwise not be in danger.

What do you do? Do you kill the one to save the five?

A horrible choice, but before you answer, consider another wrinkle: The person on the other track is an immediate relative — your mom or dad or sister or brother. Do you pull the lever and kill your loved one to save five strangers?

Pull the lever, don’t pull the lever — there is no good outcome. For many conservatives trying to decide whether to pull the lever for Donald Trump, that pretty much sums up the choice in this election.

Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens recently made a compelling case against pulling the lever for Trump. Looking back on Trump’s attack on Gold Star mother Ghazala Khan, his dismissal of Sen. John McCain’s record as a POW, his mocking of a New York Times reporter’s physical disability and his questioning of an Indiana-born judge’s fitness to preside over a lawsuit against Trump University based on his Hispanic heritage, Stephens wrote, “His problem isn’t a lack of normal propriety but the absence of basic human decency. He is morally unfit for any office, high or low.”

Here's a look at what voters under 30 think about the 2016 presidential election, who they're leaning towards and how that compares to 2012. (Sarah Parnass,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)

The problem is that Hillary Clinton is also morally unfit for any office, high or low. She is, to quote the late, great William Safire, a “congenital liar” who misled the American people about Benghzai, made false statements about not sending or receiving classified information on her private email server and continues to falsely assert that FBI Director James Comey said she was truthful — a claim The Post’s fact checker gave “Four Pinocchios” and PolitiFact gave a “Pants on Fire” rating.

Add to her dishonesty the cloud of corruption that hovers over her. Just look at the $26.4 million in speaking fees from foreign governments and corporations that Hillary and Bill Clinton failed to disclose — in violation of the ethics agreement the Clinton Foundation signed with the Obama administration before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. Or the evidence that their speeches may have intersected with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department. Or the evidence that Hillary Clinton may have had off-the-books overseas meetings with Clinton Foundation donors at taxpayers’ expense. Or the recent email revelations that expose how Clinton Foundation donors got access at Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Or the allegation that the Clinton Foundation steered money improperly to for-profit companies owned by friends. The dossier of Clinton scandals is seemingly endless. Look at all this, and ask yourself whether you want someone like her in the Oval Office.

No wonder a recent poll found that 68 percent of Americans believe Clinton is dishonest — 68 percent! And almost 6 in 10 Americans disagree with Comey’s decision not to recommend charges against Clinton. Think about that: A majority of our fellow citizens believe that Clinton is a liar who could belong in the Big House, not the White House. That should be as disqualifying for the presidency as anything Trump has said.

In other words, there is no good landing spot: In the opinion of most Americans, neither candidate is fit for the Oval Office. Yet one of them will occupy it.

So how do you choose? Stephens, speaking for many, says Clinton will “almost surely appoint liberals to the Supreme Court. But at least she’s not a sociopath.” Sorry, it’s not that simple. Clinton won’t just appoint liberals to the Supreme Court; she will tilt the direction of the court for a generation. She won’t just replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer and extend a liberal seat for decades. She’ll replace Antonin Scalia, giving us a liberal court for decades. Think what that means for the cause of human life, religious liberty, the Second Amendment and limited government. How will the Little Sisters of the Poor fare if their case makes its way back up to a Supreme Court with a Clinton-appointed liberal majority? Unlike the right, the left uses the courts as a tool to impose their agenda on the American people. And if Clinton is elected, they will have free rein to do so.

So back to our thought experiment: Instead of five unsuspecting track workers, imagine there are five unsuspecting nuns in the path of the hurtling train. Do you pull the lever, and kill a relative, in order to save the Little Sisters of the Poor?

That’s the awful choice we face on Nov. 8.

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