Doting on voting
You can spot these devotees a mile away. They endlessly prattle that voting is not only our “right” but our “duty.” They wax misty-eyed at the legions who supposedly died to secure this privilege, then hector us to fulfill our alleged obligation. They produce hagiographic movies as well as pictorial compilations lauding America’s suffragists (it goes without saying that this propaganda never treats men well or even fairly). They mistake the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for Holy Writ. With women and blacks conquered, they tirelessly seek more prey, striving to enfranchise everyone, citizen or not, regardless of age. You and I may fantasize about an upcoming vacation or dinner with our spouse at that new Greek place; they lust to “[Tell] Americans to Vote, or Else.”
In short, the ballot is as sacred in statists’ eyes as Communion’s chalice is to Christians.
I suspect their harping and appeals to guilt succeed far more with Progressives than they do with patriots. The latter may agree that “good” citizens vote. But they also pull the levers from terror — and rightly so — at the wickedness that Progressives implement when their candidates win office. Proof of this theory resides in the White House: though Trump only occasionally flirts with conservative principles, he did save us from Hildebeast.
Either way, far too many Americans venerate voting. They have not only embraced the Marxist doctrine of civil rights with its sacrament–sorry, its requirement to vote, they have swapped the Founders’ severely restricted government for this abomination. Voting is as significant as Progressives proclaim, but it shouldn’t be. And our emphasis on it testifies to the despotism consuming us.
Under the Founders’ vision of minuscule, enervated government, politicians would hardly ever impinge on our lives (and bureaucrats never would, as none would exist). Our rights would be fixed, immutable and sacrosanct. Ninety-nine percent of our neighbors could disapprove of our collecting rifles or, if we owned a complex of apartments, of our refusal to rent to sodomites, but they could never enshrine their pique legally. Our freedom to keep and bear under the Second Amendment and to associate as we please under the First would be absolute.
But the Progressive regime tyrannizing us compels us to vote from self-defense. Whether you’re on the right or the left, you genuinely and reasonably fear the harm to you, your family and livelihood when the opposition gains more power.
Contrast that horror with the Founders’ Constitutional Republic, in which the occupants of elective office wouldn’t matter much — and neither would the voting that puts them there — because officials would exercise little power. Aside from declaring wars of offense, the political class could only rarely hurt us.
How unspeakably tragic, then, that Americans long ago abandoned the Constitution’s protection from politicians. Instead, with government insinuating itself so thoroughly in our lives, we vote in desperate hope of limiting the damage.
No wonder politicians destroyed the Founders’ republic for a democratic dystopia that empowers them. Yes, the ghosts of that republic still flit along the periphery of the public square. But they increasingly flee before the dictatorship of the mob, aka., “democracy.” The idea that government’s one and only job is to protect our political liberty expired well over a century ago; instead, its leeches sponsor legislation based on an issue’s publicity (which they’ve often carefully ginned up beforehand) and its resulting popularity. And even that democracy isn’t direct enough: hence the rise of “propositions,” “ballot initiatives,” “school levies” and other ploys, whereby our friends and family decree which of our inalienable rights the State may alienate and how much of our money it will steal.
Voting legitimizes these evils and many more. By casting a ballot, victims tacitly agree that the State should reign over them. They unwittingly cooperate with their predators to change the question from whether Leviathan may manage our lives to how.
Meanwhile, rank-and-file Progressives sincerely revere voting: witness our friend who “celebrates democracy” by closing his business on Election Day. But their leaders must cynically guffaw. The franchise is a charade — and an incredibly expensive one (almost $5.2 billion for 2018’s federal race alone). Ballots offer no real choice: 90 percent of incumbents return to office, over and over, until they choose not to; we seldom ever determine their tenure. And of course, victors hailing from parties other than the two major ones are as scarce as honest politicians. In fact, the Demopublicans constructed the electoral apparatus precisely to exclude all other contenders while entrenching themselves in power.
Turns out they needn’t have bothered. A study a few years ago confirmed what we have long suspected: the hoi polloi exert virtually no influence over the rulers sponging off them. Two professors analyzed graphs and charts and statistics to declare, “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.” Whether you protest, sign petitions or vote, you’re wasting your time. The political class designs domestic and international policies to further their power and interests without regard to ours.
We who love liberty can debate the tactics of voting. Some of us never grace the State’s little booths, while others view their ballot as a weapon against encroaching totalitarianism. But we can all concur that Marxists have hyped this minor act as much as they’ve spit on the Constitution.
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