The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
– Steven Biko
Voting is a scam. Voting is the means for tyrants to get a rubber stamp from their subject populations to continue control of wealth production, freedom of movement and aspirations of freedom and liberty. It falls into the same mythos as the tired axiom that we make war on the world to keep us free at home. As if the presence of troops abroad magically steals any notions of world travel from would-be villains confining them to the environs of conflict we create in our neo-imperialist pockets around the Earth.
Every few years, the bread and circuses of the sacred franchise begins anew and we are harried by politician and patriot alike to embrace our sacred duty and cast our vote at the designated political “vote counting” depot. One used to use quaint paper products but now electronic balloting is all the rage and the machines are coming under increasing scrutiny as the possibilities of corruption become inevitable…and easier. I remember hearing that if voting could change the system it would be illegal (Mencken). Voting is best exemplified by the notion of having a talent contest for serial killers in whom your choice is to vote or abstain. By voting you have registered a preference for evil, by abstaining you have committed to a moral stance of refusing to acknowledge the choice. You have established that evil deserves neither acknowledgment nor approval, it deserves only eradication.
George Carlin described it in his own inimitable fashion:
“I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, ‘If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,’ but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.”
Democracy has proven to be mob rule dressed up in majoritarian tyranny to serve special interests whose lobbying functions for parasitic looter classes will always have a superior means of coupling expected outcomes with focused agitation for passage. Even when the occasional popular referendum does pass the muster of voters, the robed government employees are standing by to ensure that the long march of government into every facet of our lives is unimpeded.
Once the habit of robbing your neighbor at gunpoint with voter-endorsed tax increases becomes a popular notion, the state can’t help but be happy with the outcomes. Year after year, decade after decade, the vote literally rocks the voter into a somnambulant slumber of assuming they control their destiny. Yet the vote is a false choice until two things happen:
1. A bullet-proof and reproducible voting record using paper ballots is in force for all election activity. There is a reason why France and Denmark voted NO to endorse the EU Constitution. Electronic balloting would have returned a YES vote because that is what the uber-statists desired in Europe. The balloting for the remainder of the EU quickly converted to electronic balloting with the concomitant YES for the EU Constitution.
2. The provision of a None of the Above (NOTA) ballot box on all candidates and referenda and the resulting vacancy in the office if NOTA gets the majority of votes. Imagine political offices across the nation or globe remaining vacant and humans being forced to think for themselves and cooperate with neighbors in a community to use voluntarism and persuasion to advance their notions instead of the convenient government cudgel of violence and mayhem. Until this becomes a reality, there are no real choices.
Even then, I would not consider it a moral enterprise to use a majority to push other Americans into different sections of the feedlot. The noticeable absence of either of the two aforementioned measures is proof enough that the system is designed to endorse the expansion of state power in favor of the collective over the individual.
The only difference between the two major parties is the spelling. They are both government supremacist factions dedicated to the single purpose of expanding state power and reducing individual liberty and freedom. Period. From the local to the national level, the parties are forever cooking up new explanations for further increasing the amount of money they steal from the population or imposing new controls on behavior and ownership of wealth.
The Tea Party is no different; a far cry from the original intent of the savage civil disobedience of its inspiration. I remember vividly the modest news story about the Tea Party organizers agonizing over the permit process to dump tea bags in the Mirror Pool at Mordor on the Potomac. Such nice young men…
The vote simply gives the cattle in the feedlot the illusion they are masters of their fates but they will almost always end up in the killing chutes or pushing their neighbors into it…gleefully. That is the destiny of all democracies: the systematic denial of freedom and liberty in the name of security and the ever expanding customer base for a class of looters and parasites whose natural home is the State where the ruling class takes from everybody to give to the connected.
Some quotes from my favorite curmudgeon, H.L. Mencken:
“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.”
Enough said.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
-Ambrose Bierce
Notes in the Margin: A terrific compendium of reasons NOT to vote can be found here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/non-vote-arch.html
The video and audio to my debate with Dr. Howe at Freedom Fest 2010 have finally been loaded in the Media and Interviews Tab on the front page.
Copyright © 2010 by hezekiahwyman.com