'Flight 93 Election' Essay (2016)

Published September 5, 2016 under the pseudonym 'Publius Decius Mus' in the Claremont Review of Books — the flagship intellectual journal of the West Coast Straussian conservative movement — the essay 'The Flight 93 Election' was the single most influential piece of political writing in legitimizing Trump among conservative and Christian nationalist intellectuals. The author was subsequently revealed as Michael Anton, who became a National Security Council official in the Trump administration. The essay's central argument: '2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You — or the leader of your party may make it through, but the leader is still more likely to succeed than the armed bad guys overpowering the plane. The odds aren't good. But what's the actual alternative? To sit and do nothing and wait for certain death? At least try.' The essay argued that: 1. Conservative governance had utterly failed to conserve anything against the progressive advance. 2. The Republican establishment was complicit in the country's decline. 3. Trump, despite his obvious flaws, was the only candidate who grasped the civilizational stakes. 4. A Hillary Clinton victory would be irreversible — she would cement demographic change, regulatory expansion, and cultural liberalism beyond recovery. 5. Therefore, the only rational choice — the Flight 93 choice — was to support Trump regardless of his character, fitness, or policy positions. The essay's reception in evangelical circles was immediate and significant. It was circulated, quoted, and endorsed by evangelical intellectuals and leaders who had been reluctant to support Trump. It provided the intellectual architecture for the 'lesser of two evils' argument in theological language — reframing evangelical Trump support not as a compromise but as a necessary act of civilizational defense. The Claremont Institute connection: the Claremont Institute and its associated scholars (Charles Kesler, John Eastman, others) have been the primary intellectual infrastructure for Christian nationalist political theory through the 2010s and into the Trump era. The Institute's 'American Mind' publications provided the ongoing intellectual framework for January 6 and Stop the Steal. John Eastman, a Claremont senior fellow, authored the memos advising Mike Pence to refuse to certify the 2020 election results. The essay's lasting significance: it normalized the 'emergency exception' logic that has defined the Christian nationalist relationship with Trump — the argument that normal ethical standards do not apply when civilization itself is at stake. This logic, once established, has no limiting principle.

Documented themes

• Christian Nationalism
• Anti-Democratic
• Political Strategy

Connections from 'Flight 93 Election' Essay (2016)

• influenced → January 6, 2021 (2021) — The 'Flight 93 Election' framework — the claim that electoral loss equaled civilizational death and that extraordinary measures were therefore justified — was the intellectual architecture that made January 6 legible as a righteous act rather than an insurrection. If losing an election truly meant the end of Christian civilization, then preventing the certification of that election was not a crime but a moral obligation. The Claremont Institute's Michael Anton, who authored the original essay, and associated figures continued elaborating this framework in the weeks between November 2020 and January 6, providing the theoretical scaffolding for the assault.
• influenced → 2016 Election: The Machine Delivers (2016) — The 'Flight 93 Election' essay, published pseudonymously in the Claremont Review of Books in September 2016, gave the evangelical vote its eschatological frame: voting against Trump was not a moral option because the alternative was civilizational death. The essay was amplified across the evangelical and conservative media ecosystem and absorbed into the religious framework already provided by figures like Robert Jeffress. It transformed the question from 'can a Christian vote for Trump?' to 'can a Christian afford not to?' — a framing that resonated perfectly with the spiritual warfare theology the NAR and dominionist networks had been cultivating for decades.
• influenced → Trump Evangelical Advisory Board (2016) (2016) — The 'Flight 93 Election' essay (September 2016) provided the intellectual framework that made evangelical reluctance about Trump's character irrelevant: if the election was genuinely a civilizational emergency, normal ethical standards governing candidate selection did not apply. This 'emergency exception' logic was widely circulated among evangelical intellectuals and leaders in the final weeks before the election and provided cover for advisory board members who had previously expressed character concerns about Trump.

Sources

• The Flight 93 Election — Publius Decius Mus (Michael Anton) (2016)
• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 268–280
• The Claremont Institute's Dangerous Influence on the American Right — The New Yorker (2022)