Quote of the day—Laurel

We have the belief that, through voting, our voice is being heard. How is my voice being heard if the ideas I cherish are defeated, and those I abhor prevail? How have I accomplished anything other than giving my consent to being ruled, potentially by someone my ideological opposite?

Well, I do not consent, and that is my vote.

Laurel
November 2, 2010
Check your premises.
[There is more than a little bit of truth to this but at the current time I’m not seeing “I do not consent” making a big impact or even the potential of a big impact. What are you going to do instead? Vote from the roof top on the day after? The last I heard that hasn’t started yet. Until it does voting seems to me to be the better alternative. And even if you do start applying “Second Amendment remedies” I don’t see voting with paper yesterday being a blocking issue for voting with copper jacketed lead today.—Joe]

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8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Laurel

  1. Being heard doesn’t always mean getting your way.

    Sometimes my voice is in the majority, many (most) of the times it isn’t.

    What matters is whether or not my freedoms are being restricted – I don’t consent to that.

    I live in Arlington Texas, I didn’t consent to building the Death Star for Jerry Jones but I did consent to abide by the majority decision.

    How have I accomplished anything other than giving my consent to being ruled, potentially by someone my ideological opposite?

    I am not ruled by anyone unless I let them. I am represented by people and those people need to know that not everyone agrees with them. Hopefully that knowledge restraints them enough so that measures other than voting aren’t needed.

  2. I am sympathetic to arguments like this, but I am more partial to Lysander Spooner’s arguments, where he points out that voting is mere self-defense, an attempt to get people in office to leave you alone. I am also more partial to Rose Wilder Lane’s point that voting is really just another “check and balance”, and that, until we fully understood the implications of that, we won’t be able to leverage it to our best advantage.

    One example Rose gave: car owners should be voting for the people who build our roads.

    In any case, voting does not give a government legitimacy…indeed, to the extent that our elected representatives vote against the interests of the people, it gives us even more legitimacy if we have to resort to “Second Amendment remedies”.

    As for myself, though, I hate voting, though I still do it: because if I’m in the minority, I will not be represented. The remedy for this is to get rid of voting altogether, and go to a Medieval Icelandic system, where individuals chose their representatives, by affidavit, and representative positions could be bought, sold, shared, and inherited. For this to work, we should increase the House by a factor of 10, the Senate by a factor of 5, and require each State to have a minimum of 10 representatives.

    This would dramatically increase the size of the House and the Senate, but then, should we really expect 435 Representatives, and 100 Senators, to represent 300 million people? Especially when, in almost every one of these cases, at least thirty percent of the people will not be represented, and even in the majority, a good portion is merely voting for “the lesser of two evils”?

  3. We don’t have a government by consensus, we have a government by consent. The two are different. We don’t all agree on the outcome of the vote, we agree on the method of the vote, beforehand, and agree to abide by the results. This allows a representative republic to function under constraint of constitutional limitations on governemnt authority.

    Saying you don’t consent if your favored candidate or position does not win is the whine of a child that donuts would be a better side dish for dinner than vegetables, when the carrots are being served. Vote again, convince your friends and acquaintances to join you, and fix any problems caused this time around. That is how it works here.

  4. “This allows a representative republic to function under constraint of constitutional limitations on government authority.”

    That’s the idea, but it’s been failing. I do not agree to abide by the results if the results are anti constitutional or anti human rights. That is the American way. That’s why we have the Oath requirement for even the local police– it demands individual judgment and individual action in favor of human rights, regardless of election outcomes. Why else have the Oath?

    That being said; the communist usurpers have infiltrated every level of government over 100 years or more. If they can do it, we can do it. This needs to be looked at as a counter revolution. The question is; how to fight it? There is the vote as one possibility, and that should perhaps be seen as the preferable one, though choosing between a douche and a turd is not worth the trouble. There has to be someone to vote for or we’re just playing a game we will lose either way. Then there is the tactic of letting the Republicans know we’re not falling for their good-cop-bad-cop ruse. If they want to get out the vote, there is one way to do it– straighten up and fight the Progressives in both parties, like you mean it, or you don’t get to play at all. Lead, follow, or stay out of the way.

    We did the voting thing– we gave the Republicans the Whitehouse, the House and the Senate just a few years ago, and they showed us who they are. Free prescription drugs, no real fight on Socialist Security, bailouts, perpetuation of the housing bubble, zero activity on picking vulnerable socialists and targeting them for destruction one by one– they kicked the can down the street, and here we are.

    The way I see it is; we need to see the communists defeated, hard, and we’ll need our pound of flesh afterward, as payment for 100 years of harassment and destruction. The Republicans can give us that, or we’ll have to take it ourselves in our own way at some point. It’s either/or. Too bad so many Republicans are on the wrong side, and will have no choice but to fight us, to protect themselves from justice.

  5. Every time I hear someone say “I do not give my consent to be governed by voting” or “I will not legitimize this process by voting” etc…

    …All I hear is “I’m an immature, childish ass, who can’t handle adult responsibilities, and not getting my own way. I’m taking my ball and going home”.

  6. Chris, I think given the opportunity, most of us would like to take our ball and go home. Unfortunately, the guys that get the votes seem to think it’s okay to follow us home.

    I still hold onto voting, but I don’t think I’ve so much as gotten a referundum I voted for go my way since 2004. Christ, one would think I’d at least get one of those, they’re a damned 50/50. I recognize the system is rigged, I just take the side Joe does on this. I want it to be said that I did all I could to avoid the inevitable…

    Besides, how does making an educated decision not to vote come across as being unable to handle adult responsibilities? It takes nothing to fill in some bubbles. The responsibility resides in being educated and politically active, not in filling in bubbles.

    Frankly, I think it takes guts to stand up against this religious fervor for voting that we have in America.

  7. In your post you said “I don’t see voting with paper yesterday being a blocking issue for voting with copper jacketed lead today.” Does this mean you feel armed revolt is going to be necessary soon?

    I am a great believer in the second amendment but I don’t ever remember you writing anything about use of force because you have to make a vote between the lesser of two evils.

    Also to Lyle,

    “That being said; the communist usurpers have infiltrated every level of government over 100 years or more.”

    I am sorry but that is not true. Please state some kind of credible source for that.

    Believe it or not my family is very liberal (they love me but we just don’t talk politics anymore) and they used to complain this way. The end was near, Reagan was going to blow up the planet, the Christian Right had taken over every level of the government, the “School of the America’s” is training South American dictators how to torture and repress their people, Israel must make peace with the Palestine’s etc.

    I once just ended up yelling enough! I then spelled out all the good things we had at that moment.We had each other. Neighbors who we loved and who all looked after each other. We had food on the table. We had a local government we could stand. Most importantly we lived in a free country. That sort of shut them up for a night.

    I still I feel that you must go through a list of what you are grateful for, like the cops do when investigating a murder. Whenever they investigate a murder, they start with the people who are closest to you and work their way out. Just try to keep the big picture in its proper place or you will screw up what is really closest to you, by taking it for granted.

    Sorry I wrote so long,

    Miles

  8. miles said:

    Does this mean you feel armed revolt is going to be necessary soon?

    It depends on your definition of “soon”.

    I think the chance of that being “necessary” (also requiring a careful definition–thoughts on that are here) in the next week or month are extremely small. The next year or decade gets very fuzzy. I know that sometimes things changed very rapidly from “no big deal” to “death camps” (see the last couple paragraphs of this post).

    One year out I think our current “trajectory” leads to a “no” with a 90% probability. 10 years out I have no idea. The error estimates just fuzz everything into noise.

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