Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: J. Neil Schulman
J. Neil Schulman quoted Lysander Spooner:


"In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot--which is a mere substitute for a bullet--because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him." -- Lysander Spoooner, No Treason, 1870


Spooner was not perfect, for instance he embraced The Labor Theory of Value as well as well as voting. Well, here's a quote from the voluntaryist camp:


"To your plea of self-defense, I reply: Fine, defend yourself, but leave me alone. But voting is wrong precisely because it does not leave me alone. If you elect your candidate to office in the name of self-defense, his power will not be restricted to you and to those who voted for him. He will have power over me and others like me as well. ... You presume that you have the right to appoint a political guardian over me — a benevolent one, you claim, but a guardian nonetheless. Now as one libertarian to another, I must repeat my question: Where did you get such a right?"


(George H. Smith "Party Dialogue," p. 23.)

41 posted on 10/25/2004 3:11:55 PM PDT by society-by-contract
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies ]


To: society-by-contract

society-by-contract quoted George H. Smith:

"To your plea of self-defense, I reply: Fine, defend yourself, but leave me alone. But voting is wrong precisely because it does not leave me alone. If you elect your candidate to office in the name of self-defense, his power will not be restricted to you and to those who voted for him."

Which will be equally true if the candidate I vote against wins.

Your question does not connect to any real world problem.


46 posted on 10/27/2004 10:32:19 AM PDT by J. Neil Schulman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson