The argument has been made time and time again that voting is a duty of a citizen of the United States. I call this “duty” false, as apparently does most of the US, considering the vast majority do not turn out for any election. This is not nearly the same as why I choose not to vote though.
The main problem I see with voting is that it is tantamount to terrorism. Your vote puts a man into a position of unjust power; a position of power that affects all sorts of third parties who have nothing to do with the actual election. If you are willing to vote, then you must also be willing to accept responsibility for any rights that are violated after he assumes his seat of power. I myself do not believe it is my right to impose my will on any other people, therefore it is not right for me to say that I cannot do that but I will allow someone else to do that for me. Voting for an elected official in my eyes would be me saying “I don’t want to take my neighbors money to pay for my child to go to school, so I will have someone else do it for me.” This is what you condone by voting. The question was posed to one Wendy McElroy of if she could cast the deciding vote against Hitler would she? Her answer was no, but her counter answer was brilliant , "No, but I would have no moral objection to putting a bullet through his skull." The logic here is that by putting a bullet through his head you affect a very limited amount of people. However by casting your vote against him you vote for the lesser of two evils and even if it is lesser, it is still evil.
Another question you must ask is if you accept the state as a ruling authority. I myself do not, ours is a country that is ruled by an elite class of citizen who have nothing in common nor any interest in advancing the common man. Our government has become one where big business and big government are one and the same. Especially with the current administration has turned into an Imperial form of government, one which does not follow its own rules nor one which follows the will of the people as was the intention of our founding fathers when this country was established. We need only look at our congress which cow tows to the president on his demands, or our president and vice president who do not believe they are part of the executive branch of government to see this.
On another note I will borrow a quote from a very wise man by the name of Lysander Spooner, he asked “Does choosing your master every four years make you less of a slave?” To this I give a resounding no. All you are accomplishing by casting your ballot is to choose who will be your master and who will make the decision on what is right and wrong for you, what you should and should not do. You do not cast a vote for freedom or for liberty you cast a vote for oppression and for control. By doing so you forfeit all right to complain about government in its decisions, even if you do not vote for the politician who gains power. Arguing that you can complain about his form of oppression and “for the good of the people” decision making is like starting a game and then saying you didn’t want to play if you knew you would lose. You willingly entered the contest but when the results don’t favor you, it’s no fair.
On the other hand by not voting I have put no one in power, nor do I believe that anyone should make my decisions for me. My life and my property are my right and my choice as are the rights of all other people. As Voltaire said “Man is free the instant he wants to be.” Until the citizens of this country stop being blind and voting into the same system that has failed for years they can never be free. There are some however who see this as the only solution and I now county myself as one of them.
3 Comments:
It is an interesting concept that you declare, however for you to truly believe and practice it is impossible. You would need to also stop paying taxes or using any of the services provided by the government or its money including the roads, schools and everything that is regulated in this country for standards such as water and food. If you could stop doing all of this then I would say that you are truly free of the yoke of our government. However since this is an impossible dream, you are still a part of the system and therefore since your money is going to be used anyway it would be in your interest to choose the lesser of the two evils, because by not choosing you are selecting the biggest evil of all and that is the evil of trusting others to make choices in your better interest which as we have seen is something that rarely happens.
I disagree, my not voting is the only act that will topple the system that exsists and if practiced by all it would be a reality. I would for sure stop paying taxes if it were a reality but being coerced and extorted by the government is what makes me continue to pay. As for using roads etc. these would exist were it for the government or not, society when left to its own devices accomplishes much greater things than you give it credit for. It is not in my interest to choose the lesser of two evils as I do not believe in the system they run or the way it is managed. I do not believe that government has ever acted in mine or anyones interests but their own so what good does even voting for the lesser of two evils accomplish?
The only problem is there needs to be a way to organize large groups of people in order to make projects like expressways or airports or even phone lines successful. I am not a history major, but the only roads that are big enough for national trade have always been built by government whether it was the romans or any since then. I like the idea of toppling but, something will fill that void whether it be a dictator (I know that you would say that we already have one) or some other form of localized war lords. In order to destroy what is already there, I would like to here a suggestion on what would fill it. As for people would live and let live, we have seen in every example across the world that someone always wants to make the rise to power and that would happen here as well. I am no fan of the current government, however I am a fan of having a government, to establish and enforce at least the most basic of rules.
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