Writes Chris Dominguez:
Lew, the concluding lines of "My Early Vote Against Everyone" sum up, in my opinion, the "why?" of this entire website. That is, the answer to those readers and friends who say, "All good and well, but what is your alternative? Who, then, is your candidate or what exactly is your program?"
As you put it: "What restrains this state and all states in human history ultimately comes down to public opinion. To the extent that you refrain from contributing to the sense that anyone has the right to rule anyone else, you have done your part to break the chains that enslave us to the unreal world of elections and politics."
We have been ruled too long by Strange Gods, particularly--as shown by Hoppe--the false idol of Demos. Brad Edmonds has written recently of the importance of abolishing government--not by force of arms but by simply making it irrelevant. Or as Albert J. Nock wrote, "It occurred to me then, how little important it is to destroy a government, in comparison with destroying the prestige of government." [A Journal of These Days, 1934]
In the same work he wrote of voting: “I once voted at a Presidential election. There being no real issue at stake, and neither candidate commanding any respect whatever, I cast my vote for Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. I knew Jeff was dead, but I voted on Artemus Ward’s principle that if we can’t have a live man that amounts to anything, by all means let’s have a first-class corpse. I still think that vote was as effective as any of the millions that have been cast since then.”
Now there’s the spirit! The lover of liberty need not do injury to his conscience by engaging in that charade known as Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils. This also nicely puts to literal expression the concept of Tradition that G.K. Chesterton called the “democracy of the dead.”
"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead……Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.” [Orthodoxy, 1908]
So if one has not yet made the complete break from voting altogether, perhaps the next best thing is a write-in candidacy for Patrick Henry, John Randolph, Robert E. Lee, Richard Weaver, or Murray Rothbard. It could be the proudest vote you ever cast!
