I was a county and state LP chairman for a while, and you can take it from me: nothing in politics is quite as grueling as trying to get people to work for a hopeless campaign. Most LP members get together for free donuts and coffee, and an evening's abstruse argument. Asking them to work is as near to self-defeating as makes no difference.
Eventually, I decided that third-party campaigns weren't doing any good for the cause of freedom, and might be doing some harm -- for sure they were doing me some harm -- and I declared my days as a third-party activist to be over. Life's been a lot more pleasant since then.
Still, I have yet to be convinced that voting for someone as far distant from my own principles as the candidates of the majority parties usually are is a good idea. One steals my liberty wholesale, the other steals it retail. Neither really conceals his intent to steal. On even the most fundamental matters of Constitutionally guaranteed rights -- what part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" could they possibly misunderstand? -- no majoritarian candidate is willing to take an absolute stand.
Of the original ten Amendments to the Constitution, only the Third (no quartering of troops) has yet to be grotesquely violated and nullified, with no penalty to the nullifiers. Yet the Constitution and its Amendments are the "supreme law of the land," transcending all other legislation. Why is it that the supreme law is never enforced upon those persons whom it was specifically designed to limit?
Ask a majoritarian candidate if he believes that the Constitution means literally what it says, and is willing to stand by it letter for letter. You'd have more of a shot at getting him to subscribe to a literal reading of the Bible, including the part in Leviticus where it says to stone homosexuals and adulterers. Yet they all have to swear to preserve, protect and defend it! Why repose trust in such people? What good does it do the country to vote for liars and oathbreakers?
So, in the absence of a constructive alternative, I don't vote. And I've discovered something remarkable: that is what terrifies the minions of the majority parties. They have a sense that the total vote tally is a gauge of the perceived legitimacy of the two-party system, of the parties themselves, and of government in these United States -- and I think they're right.
I've taken to making it an explicit thing. "I don't vote," I say, "because none of the candidates strikes me as honest or principled. I wouldn't be willing to have them in my living room, so why would I want them to have power over me? So I'm withholding my affirmation from all of them." And you should see the faces go pale. Because each and every person in the room has been harangued about how "it doesn't matter who you vote for, so long as you vote" until it's coming out of their pores -- and now they've been given a cogent reason why the reverse is true.
George W. Bush strikes me as an honest man -- but look at the things he's done since his election. Granted, he had to promise many things to many people to get elected, but that doesn't make the promises themselves palatable; it just means that, however he really felt about those policies, as an honest politician (i.e., "one who stays bought"), he had to deliver.
Given the political power of the redistributionist paradigm, nothing will change meaningfully until we come up with an enforcement mechanism for the Constitution. Even an honest man needs a wall to put his back against, now and then, so that he can convince the pullulating mobs that screaming at him won't work. He has to be able to say, "Gee, I'd like to give you what you want, but if I violate the Constitution, I'll be guest of honor at a necktie party." When that day comes, we can expect genuinely honest men in substantial numbers to re-enter public life, where, out of distaste for the types they'd have to rub elbows with, they will not go today. And I'll return to the voting booth.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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