Below are some things I've taken from posts on the LRC Blog. If you are planning on voting today (or already have by mail-in ballot or early voting), feel free to leave a comment on why you think what you're doing is making any real difference. But if you seriously believe your ONE vote was worth taking any time or effort at all to cast, you're as delusional as a screaming tongues speaker at a faith healing tent show.
It’s an exhilarating feeling to know that I’ve withheld my sanction from a rotten system. No doubt some “responsible” people will say that I wasted my vote... But refusing to vote is itself a powerful and radical vote; it’s an act of delegitimation that says that I want no part of the current system.-source
“These voters, having given their votes in secret have put it out of your power to designate your principals individually. You have no legal knowledge as to who voted for you. And being unable to designate your principals individually, you have no right to say that you have any principals. And having no right to say that you have any principals, you are mere usurpers, making laws and enforcing them upon your own authority alone. A secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is nothing else than a government by conspiracy. And a government by conspiracy is the only government we now have. You say that “every voter exercises a public trust.” Who appointed him to that trust? Nobody. He simply usurped the power; he never accepted the trust. And because he usurped the power, he dares exercise it only in secret. Not one of all the voters who helped to place you in power would have dared to do so if he had known that he was to be held personally responsible for the acts of those for whom he voted.”-Lysander Spooner
Another man who would have been proud of your conscious decision to not vote would have been the late George Boardman, an individualist/libertarian who lived in Chloride, Arizona. Many years ago, he told me of a candidate for county attorney who visited his home seeking George’s vote. George told him that he did not believe in voting, and why. It really troubled this rascal. George asked him why it bothered him so much, as it would mean only that he would garner one less vote. The candidate came back to George’s home on two or three other occasions to discuss this issue, and seemed to be deeply concerned at the thought of one man in his jurisdiction who did not endorse this ritual. When these slugs say “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, just vote,” they mean it. They can live with your choosing one candidate over another; they can even accept that many people will simply not show up at the polls out of laziness or indifference; but they cannot abide the thought that there are some people out there who reject politics out of principle.-source
“There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.”
“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
Democracy has an “ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. . .When the national safety is menace. . .all the great tribunes of democracy. . .convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity.”
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. . . On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Well, we did finally get that "downright moron" with the last president. But every presidential election always gives us a downright con man. As for Obama, I think he'll be a one-termer, as in all probability by 2012, the economy will be much, much worse than it is now.
Happy circus watching tonight!
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ReplyDeleteI'll make a bet with you: if Obama wins in 2012, you have to go vote while he's in office (2013-2016). You don't have to actually select anyone, but you have to register and go to the polls amd submit an empty ballot if Obama wins re-election.
ReplyDeleteLet's put it this way: I just went and voted on two ballot initiatives without casting a vote for any elected officials. It's pretty harmless. I'll let you get creative with the conditions of what I have to do if you win.
What do you say?
(2013-2016)
ReplyDeleteThat would be 2013 to 2017, actually.