Punish the Wicked
For any national office, vote for Democrats today. If you can’t bring yourself to vote Democratic, vote for anyone who isn’t a Republican. If you don’t have a third-party candidate on your ballot, or only disgusting ones, write someone in. I recommend Jesse Walker of Reason magazine.
A lot of us came to libertarianism because we learned from Hayek that schemes to mandate economic equality, pursued zealously enough, led to torture, arbitrary detention and state murder. All true. But it’s also possible to skip the mandating economic equality step and go straight for the torture, arbitrary detention and state murder. That’s the path we’re on now. I’m not saying we’ll get there, but that’s where rule by the Republican Party, as presently constituted, leads.
If you insist on a single reason to rebuke the GOP at the polls today, here it is: In late 2001, some libertarians hoped that the New Seriousness after September 11 would lead to government setting new priorities. With a real threat to deal with, surely the government would have less time and energy to spare for drug wars and pornography crusades. What actually happened was that government, under the Republican Party, has used draconian laws ostensibly drafted to “fight terror” to ramp up programs against drugs, pornography and online gambling of all things. These are not people you want to have practically unchecked power.
The counterargument is that the Democrats will be gutless and no real threat to the security state the GOP has spent four years building. I think that’s probably true. However, there is still one principle worth upholding: throw the bums out. Voting is like being strapped into a high chair and offered a couple of bowls of mush. The one useful way to communicate is to fling whatever they made you eat yesterday against the wall. Go now and fling.
Comment by Handsome —
November 7, 2006 @ 9:13 am
I voted straight Dem, choosing to see it as a series of votes against Karl Rove. As Heinlein said, when you don’t want to vote FOR anyone, vote AGIN’ someone. You’ll rarely go wrong that way.
For more, see http://abehm.blogspot.com. And if you like it, add me to your blogroll! That would be super kewl.
I need to do a post on HEROES on my other blog (the geeky one, http://miserableannalsoftheearth.blogspot.com) soon, too.
Maybe tomorrow.
Comment by Leonard —
November 7, 2006 @ 10:17 am
There is no moral dimension to mush. You can eat either bowl. There is a moral dimension to voting.
You want a fevered analogy? Try this: voting is like being strapped into a chair with two buttons before you, and two other innocent captives, one of whom, you’re told, will be killed by your captors. But they’ve also told you: if you press either button, you can control which captive is killed. Oh joy! Democracy!
The only moral alternative is to refuse to press either button. Pressing either button makes you complicit, in whatever small way, in the resulting murder. You don’t sit there and try to determining which person is slightly more deserving of life, perhaps because they are a bit more innocent, or slightly smarter, or somewhat better looking.
That is how I feel hearing all this talk of voting for Democrats or Republicans. Parsing trivialities to justify the unjustifiable. The socialism and me-too militarism party vs the militarism and me-too socialism party. Oh joy! Democracy!
Of course, I realize it can be hard to walk the moral path, especially when you can see the other two captives furiously pressing their buttons. And when, of course, your captors have made doubly sure to propagandize you since you were knee high that it is your solemn duty, as a good person, to help them decide who to kill.
Comment by David —
November 7, 2006 @ 10:25 am
Walking the dog park this morning, picking up all the dogs**t, was my metaphor for voting today.
Futile as it may be because no one ever truly leaves Washington; these bums that get voted out, just go hang out at the end of the street, peddling their ideas and wares to the bums that stayed and corrupt the new bums: “It’s just a little pork and graft, it’ll make ya cool, give ya friends…”, you have to vote, for some hope of returning to sanity.
Anyway, to the polls for divided gvt and then a few pints of Guinness.
Comment by Lars —
November 7, 2006 @ 12:17 pm
A little tangiential, but I’m curious: how many of those schemes to mandate economic equality were inspired by unchecked inequality? It seems to me that unfettered capitalism has a tendency to concentrate wealth, and this will eventually piss off a lot of people, but I don’t really have the historical knowledge to evaluate this.
Comment by Hesiod —
November 7, 2006 @ 12:18 pm
Can I say that Dave is a coward? From the left, I heard the same idiocy from Nader voters: “There’s no difference between Al Gore and George Bush.”
Well…yes there was. A hell of a lot of difference.
And I have no time for Jack Benny libertarians whining about how their marginal income tax rate might go up a few percentage points to justify allowing fascism to persist.
People who sit out this election are no better than those Germans who sat around and didn’t lift a finger to stop the Nazis from taking power. Sure, they weren’t Nazis themselves, but, heck, it’s not their problem. They were morally superior.
Sorry. Nope. If you don’t vote, you are part of the probnlem, not part of the solution. And I have no time for false equivalencies between the Democrats and the Republicans. Libertarians used to justify their votes for the Republican party because they were the “lesser of two evils.”
Well, the lesser is on the other foot now, so get up off your sanctimonius, holier than thou ass and vote.
And, quite frankly, I’d rathert yo voted for Republicans than sat it out. At least you’d show you had some balls.
Comment by Hesiod —
November 7, 2006 @ 12:19 pm
So Dave is voting after all? My apologies.
Comment by David —
November 7, 2006 @ 1:07 pm
Yes, Hesiod, I did vote; my intention all along.
Comment by Mona —
November 7, 2006 @ 1:38 pm
Jim, outstanding post. My test on most political issues is: What Would Hayek Do?
Hayek would vote for Democrats, and so I just voted a staight Dem party ticket, for the first time in my life. My universe has inverted.
Comment by micah holmquist —
November 7, 2006 @ 2:47 pm
I assume Ron Paul is the exception to the Vote Against Republicans line. Correct?
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 2:49 pm
Yes, but I figure any readers I have in his district will autocorrect.
Comment by Leonard —
November 7, 2006 @ 2:53 pm
From wiki:
“Congressman Paul advocates a strict non-interventionist foreign policy. He voted against the Iraq War Resolution and continues to criticize the US presence in Iraq and what he charges is the use of the war on terror to curtail civil liberties. He has also broken with his party by voting against the Patriot Act in 2001 and again in 2005, and is very opposed to a military draft. He strongly endorses American withdrawal from the United Nations.
His base of support has been among conservative Republicans, but after 9/11 he has gained some strong support from liberal Democrats in central Texas because of his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq.”
What’s not to like? Well, there’s this: you have to live in Texas’s 14th district to vote for him. I wish I had someone to vote for.
Comment by Barry —
November 7, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
Jim Henley: “In late 2001, some libertarians hoped that the New Seriousness after September 11 would lead to government setting new priorities. With a real threat to deal with, surely the government would have less time and energy to spare for drug wars and pornography crusades. What actually happened was that government, under the Republican Party, has used draconian laws ostensibly drafted to “fight terror†to ramp up programs against drugs, pornography and online gambling of all things. These are not people you want to have practically unchecked power.”
In short, ‘war is the health of the State’. My version: No matter how short of ammunition at the front, there will always be plenty of bullets to shoot ‘enemies of the state’ on the homefront, and plenty of ‘patriots’ who prefer shooting them to facing the armed external enemy.
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
“If you don’t vote, you are part of the probnlem, not part of the solution.”
Go fuck yourself, “Hesiod”. Never once in my life have I let a presumptious asshole like you push me into your rotten game, and it’s never going to happen. I am not interested in wielding power over other peoples’ lives in any way, and most emphatically includes ganging up at polls to angle on gripping the force of goverment in my hands.
I’ve got your “balls”: if you really think that my life — or any part of it — is yours to dispose of, then get up on your hind-legs and see if you can come get it, face to face. Don’t hide behind your democracy, sonny.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 3:17 pm
Billy, you’re an anarchist, I know. You also used to take government money for killing foreigners, didn’t you? Have you repented of that, somewhere? Because the last time I surfed over to your blog the references to your military service seemed kind of nostalgic.
Comment by Jesse Walker —
November 7, 2006 @ 3:17 pm
If elected I will not serve.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 3:25 pm
Why do you think I picked you, dumbass.
Comment by Lenny Bailes —
November 7, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
#2: Try the high chair button decision with the following assumptions:
a) one button is explicitly programmed to arrange for overt mayhem against innocents.
b) one button is indeterminently programmed. It doesn’t have explicit specs to commit overt mayhem, but you can’t analyze all the subsidiary results of pushing it.
c) If the baby abstains, one of the two buttons is going to be pushed, anyway. This is fairly definite.
Re-analyze the moral implications of abstention in this light.
Comment by Chuck —
November 7, 2006 @ 4:17 pm
I discovered that I’m really, truly allergic to Democrats.
Living in Virginia, I had about the best Democratic option one could hope for in the form of Jim Webb.
Anti-imperialist but not anti-American, seemingly sensible with regards to social issues, probably good on rule of law, and not radically redistributionist on economics, Webb seemed destined to earn the first Democratic vote of my decade as a citizen of the age of majority. I really thought I was going to vote for him. But.
But, I couldn’t get it out of my head how he had demagogued the outsourcing issues. No Jobs for Foreigners! seemed to be the new battle cry of this old war veteran.
Well, I see. Fuck you, then, Jim Webb. If lifting hundreds of millions of Indians and Chineses out of poverty while making Americans better off is too difficult for you to stomach (or understand) then you’re not my candidate.
You tell the truth about the Middle East War, why not tell the truth about Trade Wars, too?
You’re better than Allen but you need to do better than that to win my vote.
Also, when the Democrats come to power and claim it’s our moral duty to give more to Uncle Sam and leave less for American families, I would vomit for weeks on end I’m sure. So.
So I wrote in my vote for a libertarian UVA professor and now I’m done with it.
Comment by Rasselas —
November 7, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
Great commenter turnout. Very inspiring to see that, six years of borrowing money to kill people notwithstanding, conservatives, libertarians and, apparently, anarchists can still draw together, join hands and hate the Democrats.
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 4:37 pm
“You also used to take government money for killing foreigners, didn’t you?”
I’d like to know why you didn’t know the answer to that question before you asked it, Jim.
You’re dead wrong.
Now, there are respectably contentious issues in this matter but, at this point, I haven’t a great deal of confidence that you will sort them out.
I’d like to be wrong.
Comment by Jesse Walker —
November 7, 2006 @ 4:48 pm
Just for that, Jim, I will serve. Naked.
Comment by Leonard —
November 7, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
Lenny Bailes: logically, there is a point in button outcomes (and probabilities) where it tips. That is, as you constitute the choice, I might be tempted to push B. But I was positing that both outcomes were morally unacceptable. I do not see your scenario as analogous to what was on offer to me, today, nor in general, in any large-scale democracy. Both choices in our winner-takes-all one-man-one-vote are always flawed. (Except Ron Paul, who is good enough for me. He’s very exceptional, though.)
In your specific posited case, by pressing B you are still affirming the system, that is, you are complicit in the whatever B does produce. It certainly does behoove you to try to figure out what that is. And if (to return to the case actually at issue) that is “what Democrats have produced over the last 100 years”, I’ll pass.
Furthermore, by pressing either A or B, in a context where both the A team and the B team believe that the system of voting is legitimate, you are playing the game, and thus affirming whatever outcome of the vote happens. Some libertarians (i.e. Billy Beck) believe that one should not vote at all because of this, and IMO it’s a tenable argument. Note that this aspect of voting does not map into the “high chair” scenario, at least not in your formulation, because the two outcomes you have posited are at least possibly morally distinguishable. Whereas, in the high chair scenario as I formulated it, either decision A or B is an affirmation of the murder of an innocent. If you push B (perhaps because person A is your sister and you are biased towards her), you have affirmed the death of an innocent. And thus you have no moral grounds to complain if the captors tell you, sorry! we lied!, and kill A. Of course you can still complain about the deception in this case; but not in the general case (democracy) where it is quite clear that your one button press is not going to determine the outcome.
In the general case, you’re missing one vital aspect of choice C. If everyone believes that choice C is utterly futile, as you imply, then they will weight its value as precisely zero; thus while choosing it does no harm, neither can it do good. Whereas, I see choice C not only in terms of not affirming evil (although not subscribing to evil is a good enough reason to abstain), but also in terms of “sending a message” of what I do want, which is, for other people to respect my rights, as I am signaling I am willing to do for them.
Put another way, if a sufficient number of people choose C, the system collapses. That is the good I seek, and although it is highly unlikely, the value on it is high. How much would you give to live in a moral society?
Comment by Justin Slotman —
November 7, 2006 @ 5:28 pm
I have done my duty and flung both far and wide.
Comment by Nancy Lebovitz —
November 7, 2006 @ 5:48 pm
I voted for Democrats. I’m not expecting much good from them, and probably some evil, but they aren’t nearly as energetically destructive as Republicans.
And I’m linking to this article at my livejournal.
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
“Furthermore, by pressing either A or B, in a context where both the A team and the B team believe that the system of voting is legitimate, you are playing the game, and thus affirming whatever outcome of the vote happens. Some libertarians (i.e. Billy Beck) believe that one should not vote at all because of this, and IMO it’s a tenable argument.”
It’s not my only reason, but it is a very serious one.
It is often asserted that “if you don’t vote, then you have no right to complain”. Nothing could be further from the truth, which is exactly opposite. When you enter this affair of voting, you must be taken to have agreed to abide the outcome — either way – or else your vote simply cannot have been in good faith. Further: if you were honest in the effort, then you must be ready to renounce your conviction if enough people vote its opposite — certainly in the short term practicality of things.
Anyone who votes has implictly agreed to abide the outcome, no matter what it is, and, therefore, must hold his tongue in the aftermath, or betray his own cynical regard for the agreement. Such a person might have held the principle that the outcome will rightly be decided by the majority prior to the poll. This “principle”, in itself, dismisses the essential and indisputible fact that there are such things as right and wrong. However, for that person to bemoan the outcome, after the fact, is evidence that he never held the original principle of agreement. He merely, and secretly, hoped that fortune would smile on his investment in sheer luck.
You people do what you want. I do not submit the crucial moral issues which are indisputably at the rock-bottom of electoral politics to polls, and I am serious enough to say so right out loud and in the face of this bloody national hysteria.
And you should mark my words:
It is really important that various pundits, news outlets, et al, use terms like “battleground” in their treatments of this stuff.
That’s because it really is just rehearsal for full-blast civil-war.
I know that almost nobody understands this. If you live long enough, however, you certainly will.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
Jesse: Cool. You may just, unless my choice was at odds with those of my fellow voters – and what are the odds? be Maryland’s next attorney general.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 6:08 pm
Billy: I thought you were a veteran of the American military, Vietnam era. Am I misremembering?
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 6:20 pm
You certainly are.
My father was an Air Force NCO lifer.
I think I know what has confused you, but I’m not going to say it yet.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 6:32 pm
Well I apologize for my misunderstanding. Perhaps there’s another cranky “BB” out there posting to libertarian blogs whose link I followed. (Pretty sure it was off some No Treason thread about the iniquity of Jon Henke, back before I had lost all respect for him.)
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 6:58 pm
I think that “misunderstanding” is exactly the correct word.
When you get a minute, you might want to read this, which, I suspect, might very well enhance your misunderstanding.
Do not instantly conclude that you’re looking at a contradiction.
I believe that I can make this clear to you.
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 6:59 pm
Ps. — Henke was utterly contemptible just about as soon as I laid eyes on him. It actually took me a while to say it out loud.
Comment by julian —
November 7, 2006 @ 7:54 pm
Is it just me, or has the weather in this thread turned a little …blustery?
Comment by Leonard —
November 7, 2006 @ 8:17 pm
Blustery? I hear that will suppress turnout, but especially Democratic turnout. Is that good?
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 7, 2006 @ 9:01 pm
I think it’s just you, Julian. I think your ear for what’s going on here might be conditioned by the prevailing culture of symbolism, metaphor, and general euphemasia in language. When I use a word like “misunderstanding” in a discussion like this, I’m not like most people these days: I am not trying to insinuate that anyone was lying or imputing any sinister motive at all. I mean exactly what I say, at all times.
Very often, people wonder about it because they’re so accustomed to reading shitbag liars, creeps, and assholes who’d rather be smiling at you on TEEVEE in the ways of practiced liars whom they admire and emulate.
It can take some practice to read what I have to say.
Comment by Barry —
November 7, 2006 @ 9:46 pm
I wouldn’t include libertarians in that statement; I’d put it as ’self-professed libertarians’. The last six years put a lot of those guys to the test, and many failed. I’d be the same on self-professed anarchists, as well, but I don’t see an appropriate screening situation on the horizon (thankfully).
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 7, 2006 @ 9:52 pm
Actually, the last six years had their anarchist casualaties – *coughcough* Samizdtata **coughcough** Randy Barnett **coughcough** – as well.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 8, 2006 @ 1:15 am
I employed just the suggested strategy. Dems in higher offices, mostly Libs in lower ones, and no Reps.
The only provable superiority of the Dems is they haven’t been in power the last six years, but that’s enough. I have no confidence Gore or Kerry would been better on the domestic front than Bush after 9/11, but this isn’t about picking a “good” party – it’s about kicking the feet out from under the one in power to curb its excesses.
Comment by Glen Raphael —
November 8, 2006 @ 3:50 am
In accordance with my anarchist principles, I tried not voting this time around. First time ever. You know what? It felt pretty good!
The problem with voting Dem is that even after all this time, all the incompetence, all the lying, all the full-bore idiocy of the current administration, I somehow can’t manage to convince myself the Dems would have done better. Different, I’ll grant. We’d certainly have different problems in a Dem administration or with a Dem congress. But different is not the same thing as better. There’s a lot of ruin in a nation – things could be better, but they could be worse too. Having been lied to too many times before, I’m just not buying it any more. Go ahead and play the game if you must, but deal me out. I abstain.
“Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.”
Maybe next time I’ll just vote for Ron Paul for every office, eligible or not.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
November 8, 2006 @ 4:03 am
Jim, and a happy election to you, sir. Let’s see how the Democrats carry out your preferred policy of non-interventionist foreign policy. If Samizdata is put in the same company as Randy Barnett, a superb scholar, we can live with that, definitely.
Beck’s response to the sanctimonious Hesiod is justified. If a guy abstains from voting, that is also a choice that person has made, particularly if he or she cannot bear to vote for one Big Government party instead of another Big Government party. I have abstained in previous British national polls and judging by the dreadfulness of the current Conservative opposition to Labour and the other parties on the likely menu, may do so again.
Comment by Ray —
November 8, 2006 @ 7:57 am
I’m an anarchist, and I don’t vote in (Irish) elections. But I don’t carry a gun in government service either, because that would be an enormous contradiction.
Comment by Barry —
November 8, 2006 @ 2:50 pm
Jim, thanks for keeping me honest. I looked over at Libertarian (who all seemed oddly bummed that the GOP had lost) Samizdata this morning.
Trackback by In the Agora —
November 8, 2006 @ 9:47 pm
The libertarian spoiler, part 2…
ITA neighborand friend Jason Kuznicki follows up my analysis below with even more evidence that the GOP’s drift from limited government principles helped fuel their losses this November.The spoiler effect may be even more significant when we consider …
Comment by Paul —
November 11, 2006 @ 12:13 am
Billy Beck once said:
You know my stand on immigration. As a general principle, I say, “The more, the merrier.” The thing that I insist on is that they come here to be Americans, like my great-grandfather did.
Earlier this thread he stated:
I am not interested in wielding power over other peoples’ lives in any way…
Well, Mr. Beck, I assume there’s going to be some consequences for those who pay no attention to your druthers on how they come into this country?
Comment by Billy Beck —
November 11, 2006 @ 3:00 pm
You can assume that if you want to, Paul, but you’re not going to get very far at insinuating words into my editor.
What we’re talking about is a cultural problem which is not going to be solved through politics, with the single exception of eradicating the welfare state which is manifestly anathema to Americanism to begin with.
If you want to know what I think, you’ll do a lot better with questions than assumptions.