I’ve had a few talks with friends and family lately about the fact that I’m going to be voting for a third party. Libertarian, to be specific. Their candidate this year is a man named Michael Badnarik. He recently did an interview at Slashdot.org. The friends and family I’ve talked to have all, without hesitation, asked me why I’m “throwing my vote away”. Badnarik put it best.
If the “wasted vote” argument ever held any water, it doesn’t any more. The two major parties have moved toward a weird, non-existent “center” for the last 50 years, to the point where it’s difficult to tell them apart.
We could argue all day about whether Bush or Kerry is the “lesser evil.” The fact is that they both support the war in Iraq. They both oppose gun rights. They both supported the PATRIOT Act. They both support the war on drugs. They both support confiscatory taxation. They both support ruinously high levels of spending, huge deficits and increasing debt.
It’s hard to tell them apart on the real issues. They spend their time scrapping over “swing votes” in the gray area of the “center” — which means, in practice, “how do I not make too many people too angry to vote for me?” That’s no way to do politics. Politics, in my view, should be as unimportant as possible — but where it’s important, it has to value freedom, remain rooted in principle and be forward-looking.
All I can tell the “lesser of two evils” folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they’ll keep getting evil. If you don’t like the way things are, how do you change it by voting for more of the same?
In all of the conversations with families they all agree that they’re voting for “the lesser of two evils”. If that’s the case then you’re going to keep getting evil. Both parties have crap candidates, vote for the person you believe in the most.
I feel good knowing that my vote is niether “lesser” or “evil”.
But, uh, what does Mr Libertarian stand for? You don’t reveal his platform, he merely slams the “other guy”.
Um. I link to the Libertarian Party’s website. You got eyes don’t you? 🙂 I also have some past posts covering the things I like (and don’t like) about the Libertarian Party.
Nothing about politics annoys me more than apathetic people and voters without a real opinion. That whole “lesser of two evils” is crap to vote on, and I would rather people not vote than really waste their vote. You are supposed to vote for who you want (based off what we informed people call “platforms”), and not because you saw a really good joke about Kerry on SNL so you are voting for Bush cause hes not as dumb (and vice-verse).
So while I will be voting for Bush this year, I can at least respect your rationale, and disrespect voters just voting to ‘be heard’, when they aren’t even saying anything for themselves or their country. What MTV doesn’t say is ‘vote after you are informed’, they just want you to VOTE. Bad call.
Jon Carroll wrote an interesting editorial about third-party politics. It suggests that perhaps times are too desperate to be too idealistic about this election.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/15/DDGD56N6D31.DTL
See also: http://www.bushgreenwatch.com
Times are very desperate.
It’s not about the war, Joe. It’s about the future of the Supreme Court and the debt that Joe’s kids will have to pay to subsidize the neocon’s global ambitions. Your potential daughter will nto be qble to make her own decisions regarding her health, Your possible future son will be eating dust in the Middle East. Both of them will be paying for Bush et. al’s folly.
So what if Kerry is the lesser of two evils? Changing the direction of US politics is a glacial thing and it begins with this election.
Don’t waste your vote. Any other vote except for John Kerry is a vote for the downward spiral of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Look, I’ve voted for Libertarians, Communists, Socialists and every other possible protest vote a voter could imagine. A vote for anyone but either of the two top candidates is nuthin’ but a protest vote. If you want to protest what’s happenin’ in the world at this moment in history, you could do better than John Kerry, but you’d be pissin’ away your vote.
The Libertarians are selling you just as much of a bill of goods with their “no difference” garbage as anything Bush and Kerry are peddling. Anyone who can’t see a difference between the two candidates either isn’t looking very hard or isn’t being honest with you.
I love his ‘neither Bush or Kerry support gun rights’ line. That is just precious. I think he’s defining gun rights as your ability to own a howitzer and park it on your front lawn. If that’s your idea of gun rights, I’m glad you’re not living in my neighborhood.