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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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November 05, 2002
Mixed feelings about democracy
"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. -HL Mencken"
As any thinking man might, I've got very ambivalent feelings about democracy, which naturally come to a head on election day. They're all confused and running together, so let me just toss a few contradictions and ambivalences your way. Maybe some of y'all can tell me if I'm sensible or just a fool.
I don't really much believe in democracy. There's no special dispensation from God or Rand that makes the Will of the Majority sacred. Yet it's the best thing we've got to work with. As the saying goes, democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for every other kind.
I never agreed to any "social contract." I feel no inherent moral obligation to obey a law just because some idiots had a vote. I do not submit my liberty to a popular vote. Can anybody reasonably refute Lysander Spooner's point? [Natural law, or the Golden Rule is a different issue.] Yet I'm constantly and sincerely arguing politics based on constitutional law.
I don't think that one person's vote makes any difference, because it doesn't. Indeed, I would generally prefer to discourage voter turnout. I think there are way too many people voting. [See below.] Yet, I wouldn't miss a chance at voting. Moreover, however much I mask it, I can't help but feel contempt when someone tells me they don't vote.
Politicians disgust me. I regularly have to restrain myself from throwing things through the tv when congressmen are on. Yet I'm totally fascinated by the game, as other men are by sports. Election day, as they say, is like the Superbowl and the World Series rolled into one.
Even within the general bounds of majority rule, I say the deck is severely stacked in a hundred ways against any true expression of the will of the people. Yet, I enthusiastically engage in third party politics, setting up fair booths and writing pamphlets and fliers, running for office.
I consider government and politics to be largely a contemptible criminal enterprise, yet I never feel so much a part of the community as when I'm politicking. Last Saturday, for example, I was walking through a neighborhood in Brookville, Indiana, kicking through the bright fall leaves at their peak of color. I was campaigning door to door for election as county tax assessor, passing out my fliers and feeling at one with the world.
My heart burns with feelin'
Oh, but my mind is cold and reelin', uh
Is this love, baby
Or is it-uh, huh, just, uh, confusion? "Love or Confusion" by Jimi Hendrix
posted by Al at 11/05/2002 02:58:00 PM
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