MicroBalrog
New member
Leftists, Vote Badnarik
This might sound slightly insane to you, but it's true: it is of little point to vote for Kerry. Yeah, yeah, I know, Bush is the Devil. And we are "a brown shirt and a bad moustache away" from a dictatorship. But this does not, in itself, justify voting for Kerry. In actual fact, it means voting for an ever more extreme right-winger: Badnarik.
I can almost feel you squirm somewhere out there, behind your iMacs. The libertarians? Horror of horrors! They support repealing minimum wage laws, labour regulations, welfare programs, and generally turning the world into a Dickensian nightmare. Why the heck should anybody – and particularly anybody of the left-wing persuasion – vote for them?
The answer is simple: the first priority for any voter should be, before anything else, civil rights – the same ones that should be defended – as the first priority of any government. And the various welfare programs are not rights. They are good programs – at least some of them are, those that work – but they have nothing to do with rights.
Unlike what socialists were preaching for years, you have no right to an education, a home, or a bundle of cash from the government. It is certainly possible that the government will decide to give you these things – it could even be a good thing - but they are not rights in the same sense of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Rights like the ones the American Founding Fathers believed in are rights simply because, under most every moral code known to man, it is wrong to violate them. Murder is wrong, because everybody has a right to life. Coercion is wrong because everybody has a right to liberty. And so on. These rights exist until you forfeit them by committing some crime. You do not need to deprive anybody of anything to realize those rights.
But the so-called "right to an education", "right to own a house", and so forth, are different. It is impossible to realize those rights without having some other person – the taxpayer – foot the bill. It might be a good idea, but it's not a right. You do not, and I repeat NOT have an unalienable, God-given right to another person's pocket.
Now, people do have undeniable, God-given (if you are religious) rights. As I've said, the prime purpose of a government, a state, is to protect the rights of the citizens. That's what you're paying taxes for. If those rights don't exist, then, welfare programs regardless, life becomes hell. Look at Cuba. All the welfare programs imaginable. The best child healthcare service on the planet, bar none. Yet thousands of Cubans every year brave the dangers of the sea, the sharks, the Cuban border patrols, the INS to try to get into America – where subsidized healthcare is still walking in baby steps. You tell me, would you want to live in a police state – even if it had all those services?
Right. Neither would I. Now, from the standpoint of individual rights, Kerry is every inch as bad as Bush. Oh, yeah, he supports some nice social programs – but we just covered that. But on individual rights, they are practically the same. Every person has a right to freedom of speech. Bush signed a bill supporting "campaign finance reform" – limiting people's right to contribute money to finance the sort of political speech they like. Kerry supported it and wants it tightened. Every person has a right be protected from needless police searches and wiretaps. Bush created Patriot Act I and II, vastly increasing FBI authority to do those things. Kerry supported it. Every person has a right to defend himself if attacked. Bush supports extending Clinton's restrictions on modern defensive arms. Kerry supports tightening it.
Wake up. Smell the coffee: it doesn't matter who is President come 2005, Bush and Kerry are both driving us faster and faster down the slippery slope. Kerry's tyranny might be slightly more benevolent (like a concentration camp with air conditioners in the prisoners' barracks), but you are still going to be wearing a striped shirt.
So what can you do about it? Certainly voting for Bush or Kerry won't help. Voting for Nader won't help either – if anything, voting for someone who support nationalizing the campaign advertisement system will be even worse. How would you like not being able to promote your favorite candidate at all?
So there's only one real choice: Badnarik and the libertarians. Yes, these guys are offering a Dickensian future. But that is not the most important part. The most important part of their message, the one that brings them votes, is that they stand for freedom. No Patriot Act. No Finance Reform. No War on Drugs. No stupid limitations on weapons you buy to defend yourself or to participate in some new-fangled sport. No bans on gay marriage. And the Dickensian part? Well, it's not that they're going to get elected to implement it.
You're probably in total shock now. If they don't get elected, why vote for them? Let me demonstrate. Imagine it's 2004, the day after Election Day. They've counted the votes and saw that Kerry won and the margin between him and Bush was, say, 5%. The libertarians get, say, 10% (I am being optimistic here). What would the Republican strategists say? Probably something like "Yeah, Joe. We want the White House come 2008, we need to grab some of those 10% votes". And there begins the process used by small parties in many multi-party systems – the process by which, for example, a few religious MK's controlled the Israeli Knesset in the 90's – the pandering process. And, with luck, the Democrats will be doing it too – just to get a second term.
You are not going to salvage freedom in a single day – it took almost a century to get us to where are now. If we win, it is by nibbling away at tyranny like the statists nibble away on freedom. Let's start the nibbling now.
This might sound slightly insane to you, but it's true: it is of little point to vote for Kerry. Yeah, yeah, I know, Bush is the Devil. And we are "a brown shirt and a bad moustache away" from a dictatorship. But this does not, in itself, justify voting for Kerry. In actual fact, it means voting for an ever more extreme right-winger: Badnarik.
I can almost feel you squirm somewhere out there, behind your iMacs. The libertarians? Horror of horrors! They support repealing minimum wage laws, labour regulations, welfare programs, and generally turning the world into a Dickensian nightmare. Why the heck should anybody – and particularly anybody of the left-wing persuasion – vote for them?
The answer is simple: the first priority for any voter should be, before anything else, civil rights – the same ones that should be defended – as the first priority of any government. And the various welfare programs are not rights. They are good programs – at least some of them are, those that work – but they have nothing to do with rights.
Unlike what socialists were preaching for years, you have no right to an education, a home, or a bundle of cash from the government. It is certainly possible that the government will decide to give you these things – it could even be a good thing - but they are not rights in the same sense of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Rights like the ones the American Founding Fathers believed in are rights simply because, under most every moral code known to man, it is wrong to violate them. Murder is wrong, because everybody has a right to life. Coercion is wrong because everybody has a right to liberty. And so on. These rights exist until you forfeit them by committing some crime. You do not need to deprive anybody of anything to realize those rights.
But the so-called "right to an education", "right to own a house", and so forth, are different. It is impossible to realize those rights without having some other person – the taxpayer – foot the bill. It might be a good idea, but it's not a right. You do not, and I repeat NOT have an unalienable, God-given right to another person's pocket.
Now, people do have undeniable, God-given (if you are religious) rights. As I've said, the prime purpose of a government, a state, is to protect the rights of the citizens. That's what you're paying taxes for. If those rights don't exist, then, welfare programs regardless, life becomes hell. Look at Cuba. All the welfare programs imaginable. The best child healthcare service on the planet, bar none. Yet thousands of Cubans every year brave the dangers of the sea, the sharks, the Cuban border patrols, the INS to try to get into America – where subsidized healthcare is still walking in baby steps. You tell me, would you want to live in a police state – even if it had all those services?
Right. Neither would I. Now, from the standpoint of individual rights, Kerry is every inch as bad as Bush. Oh, yeah, he supports some nice social programs – but we just covered that. But on individual rights, they are practically the same. Every person has a right to freedom of speech. Bush signed a bill supporting "campaign finance reform" – limiting people's right to contribute money to finance the sort of political speech they like. Kerry supported it and wants it tightened. Every person has a right be protected from needless police searches and wiretaps. Bush created Patriot Act I and II, vastly increasing FBI authority to do those things. Kerry supported it. Every person has a right to defend himself if attacked. Bush supports extending Clinton's restrictions on modern defensive arms. Kerry supports tightening it.
Wake up. Smell the coffee: it doesn't matter who is President come 2005, Bush and Kerry are both driving us faster and faster down the slippery slope. Kerry's tyranny might be slightly more benevolent (like a concentration camp with air conditioners in the prisoners' barracks), but you are still going to be wearing a striped shirt.
So what can you do about it? Certainly voting for Bush or Kerry won't help. Voting for Nader won't help either – if anything, voting for someone who support nationalizing the campaign advertisement system will be even worse. How would you like not being able to promote your favorite candidate at all?
So there's only one real choice: Badnarik and the libertarians. Yes, these guys are offering a Dickensian future. But that is not the most important part. The most important part of their message, the one that brings them votes, is that they stand for freedom. No Patriot Act. No Finance Reform. No War on Drugs. No stupid limitations on weapons you buy to defend yourself or to participate in some new-fangled sport. No bans on gay marriage. And the Dickensian part? Well, it's not that they're going to get elected to implement it.
You're probably in total shock now. If they don't get elected, why vote for them? Let me demonstrate. Imagine it's 2004, the day after Election Day. They've counted the votes and saw that Kerry won and the margin between him and Bush was, say, 5%. The libertarians get, say, 10% (I am being optimistic here). What would the Republican strategists say? Probably something like "Yeah, Joe. We want the White House come 2008, we need to grab some of those 10% votes". And there begins the process used by small parties in many multi-party systems – the process by which, for example, a few religious MK's controlled the Israeli Knesset in the 90's – the pandering process. And, with luck, the Democrats will be doing it too – just to get a second term.
You are not going to salvage freedom in a single day – it took almost a century to get us to where are now. If we win, it is by nibbling away at tyranny like the statists nibble away on freedom. Let's start the nibbling now.
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