Voting – when you get right down to it – is a form of compliance. You are going along with it – as opposed to opposing it. “It” being the system that is used to interfere with your natural right to be left alone (so long as you leave others, who have the same right to be left alone) and that enslaves you by asserting its unnatural right to compel you to hand over money that by right belongs only to you (because no one else has a rightful claim to it).
Compliance is – ultimately – compliance.
Whether one complies a little or less but still complies means one is compliant. When we vote for government, we get governed. I understand the “hold the line” point of view espoused by some well-meaning people, who urge that people vote for less government – because it was my own point of view for a long time. I also understand that we’re apt to get more government when it is only those who want more government vote. But at least this getting-more-government would no longer be incremental. At least it would no longer be possible to pretend – as many do – that we will somehow vote our way out of this.
We have been voting our way into limitless government for a very long time. Longer than any of us now living have been alive. Is the steady progression toward more rather than less government not self-evident? All that can be achieved by voting again is the possibility of feeling better, briefly – until the reality sets in. Again.
Consider the most recent presidential election. Many of us – me among them and mea culpa for it – voted for Trump because we allowed our hope to cloud our reason. We actually believed that by voting for Trump, there would be less rather than more government. What did we actually get? More government – again. We got government troops deployed on American streets. We got the hard-push for a federal ID card that will be used to further cinch tight the net that we’re already caught in. We got a massive tax increase that many do not understand is a tax increase because these taxes are styled “tariffs” – as if that makes them cost us any less than a tax.
We did not get the elimination of the federal expropriation of our earnings – the income tax. People are still forced to “contribute” to Social Security (another tax by another name). We did not get the elimination of any of the multitude of pestilences that afflict us. All we got was vague talk in that general direction, which is all we ever get.
What else did we expect to get?
Voting – as it is currently structured – is like being in a room with 100 other people, half of them with no money and no compunction about taking yours and everyone given a vote as to how much of the other guy’s money they think ought to be given to them or spent on something they would like to see “funded.” This is literally what it is, with the small tweak that the voters vote for one of the 100 to be their “representative.” You are not allowed to vote to keep your money – and that everyone else keeps theirs. More finely, your vote does not matter if the others vote otherwise.
Do you suppose a good-looking woman would be ok with a vote among a group of men as to whether she “owes” them her favors? Why is it any different, fundamentally, when it comes to our money or our right to be left alone?
It isn’t, of course. But voting can make it seem like it is. It drapes a shawl of legitimacy over illegitimacy. Over morally abhorrent action. It makes theft – ordinarily something almost everyone agrees is wrong – lawful. It makes the use of violence – something that in any other context repels most people – something that people just accept as a normalcy when it is done by government. Because it was voted for. Because it is abided, even by those who voted against it – because they accept that violence becomes acceptable when everyone has had an opportunity to vote yea or nay.
It is an extremely effective form of mind control. That is why we are urged to vote – by the government. That is something worth thinking about. Most people do not seem to think about it at all.
But how would we get anything done without voting? Precisely the point. “We” are not a collective – or ought not to be sucked into thinking of ourselves in the plural. We are individuals and perfectly capable of figuring things out on our own, including mutually agreeable, cooperative things. Do you need a vote to get your friend to help you with something? No. You call him up and ask him to help – and he probably will, because he is your friend. If you are able to force him to “help” then the relationship is no longer friendly. It is the sort of relationship established by the ballot box.
De-establishing that kind of relationship requires taking other people’s right to be left in peace (as well as their money) off the ballot. That requires a private ballot – in the voting booth of one’s own conscience – to stop voting for a system that legitimizes the taking of other people’s money and abusing their natural right to be left in peace.
When enough people refuse to vote for that – without ever going near a ballot box – then the ballot box will lose its power. The power so many good people give it without understanding what they are voting for when they enter it.
This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.
