If you plan to vote in the next presidential election, you can stop reading. This article isn’t for you.
As a voter, you’ve been sold on the idea that elections are a critical element of a free society — that if we didn’t have elections, the government would consider us slaves, would treat us as roadkill. If we didn’t have elections the government could take the bread we earn and use it any way it pleases.
As a voter you’re showing your preference for who should fill the slots in the monopoly power that rules you — not all the slots, of course, not even a majority, but a few at least. As a voter you accept this monopoly as a brute fact of life, like the air you breathe. You not only accept it but regard it with awe because without it there would be anarchy, which you’ve been told means chaos, the antithesis of civilization. You firmly believe that no matter how low government gets, anarchy is always a rung lower.
This is why there is no “None of the above” on the ballot — rather lice than nothing. You cringe with horror at the thought of unfilled government positions or government “shutdowns.”
As a voter you might be someone who hopes to get something from government you couldn’t get otherwise; as a voter you feel a sense of importance because you see politicians exhausting themselves trying to get your vote. And after you cast your ballot you even get to wear an “I voted” sticker as a way of showing your participation in democracy, unlike the dregs who shirk their responsibility.
As a voter you know that government’s overwhelming firepower is the key to your goals. Government guns can save your job or move you up a notch in the food chain. But it requires votes to make it happen.
So, voter -- you champion of freedom and civilization and good will among men, who supports to the dire end the government that educated you because you can’t live without it -- you are hereby advised to find something else to read.
What can no-accounts do?
For the rest of us, our choice has been to stay away from the polls on Election Day, as a majority have done in the past.
But why do nothing when the process you're boycotting is stealing your life away? Why not take some action?
If you showed up in Washington D.C. on Election Day carrying a sign that said “Don’t Vote” or “Bureaucrats Go Home” you would be ignored, at best. If you and a million others showed up carrying signs you might get some attention.
But what would prompt so many to discomfort themselves in a protest about government itself?
Perhaps they recognize that every evil they experience or witness in the world today involves government to a significant degree. Wars? A government specialty — Wars R Us, highly lucrative for the well-connected, possibly a death sentence for the ones who do the fighting. Economic recessions? Made possible by its monopoly counterfeiter the Federal Reserve and government restrictions on trade and employment and competition. Government criminalizes competition not only with itself but for whatever gang or corporation can win its favor. Taxes, no-accounts understand, are a politically correct name for government theft, which at the federal level runs into the trillions.
Perhaps they’re curious about why people question whether free-market billionaires should exist when a thief that tops them by orders of magnitude is never questioned.
Perhaps they recognize that government policies criminalize or hinder their ability to get the best health care or education. Perhaps they want to shrug off an organization that spies on them and makes traveling feel like a criminal activity.
Perhaps they wonder why so much attention is paid to whether an election was influenced while almost no one talks about government’s coming default.
Perhaps they’re sick of having to tolerate government lies. Maybe they’re tired of seeing government agents rewarded for gross incompetence.
Perhaps they recognize that government is an outlier in a free society. All our transactions are made with others voluntarily, except when the “other” is government.
Perhaps they believe that a return to small government is not the answer, but a new kind of government based on market incentives.
What services do we need that cannot be done through voluntary means, they want to know? Why is this question not even raised?
Why do we surrender our sovereignty at gunpoint and call it patriotism?
I say these are good reasons to march on Election Day and for the days that follow.
