Against conventional wisdom - Part One - The Civic Duty of Voting

I am thinking about starting this as a series....Against Conventional Wisdom.....

I have a lot of issues where I think what has become 'conventional wisdom' or the standard way of looking at things is not really the right way. Maybe I can start blogging about them, and maybe be more consistent with this than I have been with my music recommendations! (I do hope to add more to that topic also, though!)

So, for my first ACW post, I would like to look at that most sacred of civic duties, or so we are told: The DUTY of voting.

Conventional wisdom (CW) goes like this:

We are fortunate that we live in a country where we CAN vote, therefore we ought always VOTE. Period.

The more people who vote, the better. Low voter turnout is a sign of apathy.

If you DON'T vote you CAN'T complain about the outcome.

The method of voting is as follows - educate yourself on the issues, know what you believe, then find the candidate who best reflects that belief and vote for him/her.


In responding to this, I want to just speak generally, and not necessarily point by point. I do very much agree that before one votes, one needs to educate himself. Do we really want millions of ignorant people deciding who holds office? However, this education is not of the type usually espoused by the CW crowd. They seem to indicate that we should all be educated on the ISSUES - as if political questions are all matter of a collection of individual issues - and then vote for the candidate that best meets our opinions on these issues. However, issues are not really 'individual.' The issue of Abortion is not really totally isolated from the issue of gun control or foreign policy or tax rates or any of a million other issues. I am against abortion. I am against gun control. I have certain views on foreign policy and tax policy. My views can be summed up by saying I am for limited, constitutional government at all levels. If I am looking at these issues individually, how do I decide on a candidate? What if Candidate A is also against abortion, but is very pro-gun control, for interventionist foreign policy, for higher taxes. What if his methods of dealing with abortion are actually as unconstitutional as abortion itself is immoral. Do I place abortion at the top of the list and say that no matter what else, if a candidate voices an anti-abortion position I am obligated to vote for him?

Rather than 'educating' ourselves by looking at the issues individually, we need to educate ourselves by looking at the very form of government we have in this nation. We have a constitutionally federated republic. How many people out there can really explain or understand even what this means? Very few. Yet it is in forgetting this, or in never knowing this, that we make our biggest mistakes.

Most individuals in this nation either have no clue about issues either individually or in the 'big picture' sense, or they believe their individual view of a particular issue is what should govern how they vote. A person on the lower end of the economic ladder may in fact think any view which taxes the rich and disperses these funds in some way to the poor must be good. Therefore, he finds the candidate that espouses this view and votes for them.

Usually what ends up happening is this: Most people either don't care enough about much of anything to think about the issues and educate themselves (yet they are still encouraged to vote) or they care very strongly about certain issues (tax the rich, stop abortion, win the war, stop the war, more gun control, less gun control, environmentalism, or on and on) and they vote for candidates they think agrees with them on that particular issue with no concern over the constitutionality of the actions to be taken to meet the desired ends.

All of this has led us to move away from being a constitutional republic to being a democracy. All individuals vote and majorities win. This was not the goal of the founders. In fact, democracy was one of their greatest nightmares (read the Federalist Papers!!)

So, I believe in limited, constitutional government. While a few (very few) candidates occasionally talk as if they also believe in this, almost none of them actually practice it. (One of the biggest joke campaigns I can remember was watching Bob Dole go around with a copy of the tenth amendment that he would pull out and read saying that whatever power was not given to the central government in the constitution was reserved for the states. This is true and is a major part of our constitutionally federated system. Thing is, Dole had spent a long and distinguished career totally ingoring the tenth amendment. What a sad commentary on the ingnorance of our nation it is that most people really did not even know that amendment existed, did not know what it meant, did not know that Dole really didn't care, and nominated him anyway!) What most end up doing is voting this way and that on a variety of issues depending on what they believe will keep them in office. There is no underlying theory of government to back this up. Therefore, even a 'conservative' or 'right wing' or whatever you want to call it office holder or potential office holder may sound on many individual issues as if he holds the same position as I do, while in fact, very few if any will govern that way. Probably ninety-nine percent of office holders in this nation, whether on the 'right' or the 'left', whether dems or reps, are actually activists. They all ignore the constitution and the strict limits it places on what they can actually do. This central concept of governing (activist, big government, do whatever it takes to accomplish a certain end) flies in the face of what I hold as a central concept of government (limited, constitutional government). Therefore, please please tell me why I should vote for any of them??!!

If two candidates are running for an office , and I have serious and fundamental disagreements with BOTH of them, why should I feel some sort of obligation to vote for EITHER of them? The example I always use is this: What if Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were the two candidates running for President. Am I a bad person if I don't vote? Both of these guys are evil and fly in the face of all I hold about government and everything else. I would proudly NOT VOTE. Wouldn't you?

Now, fortunately this is an extreme example, but, just to take the frontrunners as an example, both Rudy and Hillary are politicians who have absolutely no clue about limited constitutional government (or if they do have a clue, they are totally against it). Both of these candidates would bring further damage to our already precarious republic. Neither of these candidates have a worldview even approaching mine, and neither have a philosophy of government compatible with the actual government of this republic as described in the constitution. Now, why should I feel some sort of obligation to vote for either of them? I don't. I feel zero. If these two are in fact the last two standing, I will be sitting, or voting for some third party candidate or something.

One argument I hear frequently - especially from 'conservatives - to justify voting for a bad candidate is this: " If I agree with (Candidate A) on 80% of the issues, and (Candidate B) on almost none of the issues, then of course I think it far wiser to vote for (Candidate A) than to not vote or to 'waste' my vote on a third party candidate that I may agree with 95% of the time." This argument really reveals what is wrong with modern American Politics. I have heard this used to justify a conservative Christian voting for Rudy. "Sure, Rudy is FOR abortion, FOR gun control, FOR same sex marriage, FOR lots of spending, but otherwise I agree with him 90% of the time and he would be better than Hillary!" I ask, "what kind of governmental philosophy would he have if he could justify these positions?" He could not have the philosophy I have. If he is pro-abortion and pro gun control, how could we expect him to be drastically different from Hillary on any of a million other issues? Where else might his philosophy, or lack thereof, lead him to? But, we are told to vote for him because he stands the best chance to beat Hillary?? Well, then, Hitler stands the best chance of beating Stalin. So what? Neither are good candidates! Supposedly agreeing or disagreeing on some percentage of the issues is really meaningless. When there is no underlying governmental philosophy limiting what the person can and would do in office, then there is no limit to what he will do.

With all this in mind, I want to address a couple of the points above. 1) Low voter turnout is a sign of apathy....WRONG!!!! If I don't vote when there are no suitable candidates, that is not a sign of apathy in the least. Quite the opposite. If I was apathetic, I probably would not even know enough to know that both candidates are bad. If I were apathetic, I would probably know just enough to have some sort of sympathy for one of the two major parties and vote for that party, or be just shallow enough to fall for the slickest candidate in either party. The fact that I am not apathetic means that I know enough to understand that a vote for Hillary or Rudy is only a slightly less noxious choice than a vote for Stalin or Hitler.

2) If you don't vote you can't complain....WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!! If I DID NOT vote when there are no suitable candidates, then I actually have MORE right to complain. No matter who gets in, I can say I did not vote for them. Again, Hitler and Stalin. If that is our choices, the ones voting for them are the ones responsible. If I say both of them are awful and do not vote for either, then I have every right to complain and complain I will. I did not like AlGore (Or JFKerry) or W. I did not vote for either. I will complain and I have a right to! In state politics, I did not like Lucy Baxley OR Bob Riley. I did not vote. I am proud I did not vote. I WILL complain!

To sum all this up and say something that may be shocking in our vote vote vote society. Sometimes I believe it is your CIVIC DUTY to NOT VOTE!

Instead, educate yourselves not so much on individual candidates, issues, or parties, but educate yourself on government in general and constittional government specifically. Then look for and vote for candidates who understand and stand for these things also. If there are no candidates who espouse a solid view of constitutional government, then don't vote. (interestingly enough, occasionally a candidate who did hold to the same general philosophy may hold a different view than ours on how that affects a specific issue. I would still rather vote for that candidate even with his difference on that issue, than a candidate that supposedly agreed with me on that issue, but had a totally different underlying theory of government. The latter is far more dangerous than the former). It is frustrating. There are very few of them out there. Usually if they exist at all, it is during the primary season and they do not make it past that point. (This time, for instance, we have Ron Paul who is as close to being a constitutionalist as any candidate who has run in a major party in my lifetime). To make this clear, if Dr. Paul is on the ballot when the Alabama Primary rolls around, I WILL vote! Likely, though, he will not be on the final ballot in November, and I will likely not vote, or at least vote third party.

Is third party voting a wasted vote? Well, if Hitler and Stalin were running on the major party tickets, and Mother Teresa was running as a third party candidate but had no chance of winning, would a vote for her be wasted, or would a vote for Hitler or Stalin be wasted?

Let me close with a couple of quotes (I don't know who to contribute these to)

"Don't vote. It only encourages them."

"If God would have meant for us to vote, he would have given us candidates!"

happy Thanksgiving!