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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Vote or Die! "What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?" -- H.L. Mencken Addison Wiggin Dear Reader, "Can you bring it in on Tuesday?" "Sure, why not?" I replied. The "check brake" light had come on in my Land Rover, and we were trying to agree on a service appointment time with the dealer. "Well, it's Election Day." "Oh… I don't vote." From the look on his face, you would have thought I just spit on a kid. "Hey… maybe it's the cynic in me… but I just don't believe them." So began one of my favorite debates of the year. "It's jerks like you who don't vote," a reader writes, "who gave us Obama in the first place." Ha! What if we did vote… but voted for Obama? How would you know? Blaming us for who sits in the White House is ire as misguided as a drag queen getting upset by not being able to attend a secret KKK ceremony. Given the nature of politics, what makes you think the candidate you are voting for can deliver? Politics as an enterprise became fetid long before our time. "If someone asks you to vote for him at the next election," wrote Henry Miller "ask him, I beg you, what he can do for you that you cannot do yourself. Ask him whom he is voting for. If he tells you the truth, then go to the polls and vote for yourself... Politics as an enterprise became fetid long before our time. "Does the man who asks for your vote find you your job, does he provide your family with food and shelter, does he put clothes on your back, does he provide the education you need... does he even bother to see that you get a decent burial? The only time he is concerned about you is when you can make money for him. No matter how little you make, he wants part of it... "From childhood, you were taught that it is right and just to delegate your powers to someone else. You never questioned it because everything you are taught in school has one purpose: the glorification of your country. "Somehow, though it is your country, you seem to have no part in it until the time comes to surrender your life." Richard Cobden, a member of the U.K. Parliament over 110 years before Miller, implored: "Can you by legislation add one farthing to the wealth of the country? "You may, by legislation, in one evening, destroy the fruits and accumulations of a century of labor; but I defy you to show me how, by the legislation of this house, you can add one farthing to the wealth of the country." Yet so pervasive is the idea that it's your duty to vote, CNN ponders this morning whether voting should be made compulsory in the U.S., as has been proposed in Australia. What if, instead, choosing to not vote (which "just encourages the bastards," as P.J. O'Rourke famously said) is the hallmark of a successful society that doesn't need politicians to make it prosperous? Poster Comment: If you don't vote, you've got no right to squawk about the way things are. ;) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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