John Venlet
A man whose fishing advice I trust implicitly and who has been invaluable to me in choosing equipment seems to be one of the fraternity of people who choose not to vote. I’m posting this here because I have already been more disagreeable on his site than I prefer, and if the discussion will go forward here, I don’t mind a little blood and guts spewing around.
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Now, I understand if you’re a drunkard or a clot, or if you haven’t got the brains that God gave a duck; those people shouldn’t vote, and lord knows, far too many of them do. I also understand if you’re some teenage anarchist wannabe who thinks the whole system is fucked from the get go and wants another one,(Though that probably puts you in the “Clot” category) or you’re some peter pan who is sitting in his room pouting because he can’t play with the toys he wants to play with,(Erm, “Clot” again) but the system we have is the system we have, and good things can be done to it to rectify the bad things that have been done to it, if people get off their halfmoons and do something about it. No, it won’t happen in one election. No, it won’t happen over night or even in ten years, but it can be done. It got corrupted, it can get uncorrupted.
The idea that not voting somehow gives you a moral superiority over people who do is utterly foreign to me, and I’ve never had anyone explain it to me who didn’t resort to some freakish playbook of bizzare near-revolutionary jargon and tired old shibboleths about- well, frankly, I don’t care.
All of it is a fabricated high hobby horse from which idiots want to blame me for the shit we’re in, while taking the stand that “I didn’t do any of this!” Of course. And you did exactly nothing to stop it, either.
For any of you that are sitting out there thinking, Damn, Og’s really out in left field in this one, let me splain a little something to you.
There is something called a Sin of Omission. A Sin of omission is where you, of your own free will, fail to do something you ought to do.
Jesus spoke of a man on the road to Jericho from Jerusalem, overcome by bandits on the road, beaten, robbed, and left for dead. A levite and a priest both cross the road to avoid the poor bastard, but the Samaritan takes care of him. We don’t think too much of this today, but imagine the half dead man in the road is a jehova’s Witness and the Samaritan is a pimp. it’s kinda like that.
Now, we know that the bandits did wrong, but most of us think this story is about how wonderful the Samaritan was, even though Samaritans were no great friends of the Jews.
The story is not about that, really.
It’s about the sin of omission. The priest and the levite are as guilty as the bandits in this instance, because they saw and did nothing to alleviate the suffering of their own countryman. Stop thinking about the Samaritan, he just did what humans are supposed to do. Instead, focus on the levite and the priest. Do they have the moral high ground, because they did nothing? of course not. Well, you say, they didn’t actually beat the man. No, but neither did they undo the wrong that was done to him. but hey, the Samaritan could have been beaten and robbed too! And he probably got blood on his clothes. And he paid money out of his pocket to take care of a total stranger! What a sucker!
We are called upon by our Creator to do what we can. We are imperfect and we fail, but we are charged with the responsibility to keep trying. We are also told to shake the dust off our sandals at lost causes. Knowing where to concentrate our efforts and when to shake our sandals is what is called wisdom. I don’t claim to be an expert at that, or even an amateur, but I sure know it when I see it.
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Power is a fluid, folks. It flows along the path of least resistance. Choosing not to participate in a political process because you feel it makes you morally superior in some way is the most ludicrous thing I can imagine. The power you relinquish then flows into the hands of the people whose aim is to change not only the process but you. And they do; even more people get on the “I won’t vote” hobby horse. In the end, you are completely controlled, down to your actions, by the people and the process you disdain most. “I’m not a slave to this system!!!” no. You are the system, you are a cog in the machine designed by the enemies of freedom to enslave everyone. And thanks to those who “Choose not to participate”, that machine is running flawlessly.
So I don’t understand this mindset. Otherwise perfectly reasonable people chose to believe some action or inaction on their part fixes something or changes it for the better; it demonstrably does not, and in fact acts to make things worse.
I have a giant list of things I’m probably going to rot in hell for, but the sin of omission in this case will not be one of them. I don’t have some misguided “Belief” I’m going to change the world; hell, I work very, very hard to have no “belief” at all. I do know this, for certain: I did NOT get the government I voted for. I got the government a whole bunch of other people failed to prevent.
I fully welcome any explanation of this that doesnt’ cite some dork as the ultimate authority on how I should live; if you can make some sense of this attitude to me, I’ll send you a $20 gift certificate to Hooters.
but I’m still voting.
76 comments Og | Uncategorized
Pray more.
Og, I took your sound advice to pray more, regarding my stance on voting, and also picked up my Bible to plumb it’s wisdom.
I did that both last night, and this morning once again, and I arrived at the conclusion that when H.L. Mencken wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”, he was channelling the prophet Samuel, who was channelling God, when he said this.
I’m not going to argue with Samuel, God, or you about it any longer.
For everything you can find in the bible or elsewhere to support this ignorant assertion you have, I can find ten which show it to be wrong.
I do find it amusing that you quote Mencken and refer to God in the same sentence. You do know Mencken was an avowed atheist and anti-theist, right? Sure, a lot of his antisemitism and hatred for religion was later purged from his work, but if you want to be a student of Mencken, you have to take the good with the bad.
I’m not arguing. I’m trying to understand why someone so legitimately intelligent can be so closedminded on a subject. It might take me a long way toward understanding the mindset of liberals, who make an entire living from deliberately ignoring facts in favor of their feelings. If I was arguing, you’d feel it in your spine.
And you have a bunch more praying to do. Especially if JB is any indication. By the way; I’ve been on the internet since around 85, and ‘I’m not gonna argue anymore ” has only one unmistakeable meaning, and it is this: “I expect you are probably right, but rather than find out I’m sticking fingers in my ears lest my jealously held assumptions be questioned even in my own mind”
This discussion is pretty far along and my two cents is pretty much unneeded but that’s never stopped me from offering my opinion before so here goes:
I believe there are situations when not participating is the moral thing to do, when something is so horrendous that the only alternative to blackening your soul is to refuse to have anything to do with it but such events are so rare that millions of people go their entire lives without running into such a one. Being forced to choose which of your children will be allowed to live is such a situation – voting is not.
No matter how corrupt the process has become it is salvageable, but only if good people get their hands dirty and participate. I may have missed it but there seems to be something missing from this discussion, Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mills.
Burke is credited with saying “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I prefer the Mills version: “A person may cause evil to others not only by his action but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
Good on ya, Og for getting such a discussion going.
Well said, Steve: there are times, as I’ve said, when shaking the dust is the only option. Our forefathers did exactly that, coming to this country and striking out on their own.
but: we still have work we can and should be doing here.
Attempting to force others to do your bidding is wrong anyone doing so should be killed outright in self defense.
This point is so unarguable that only a child could do so.
This is a crucial thing to understand, and it’s at the root of why most limited-government “libertarians” have no choice but to accept the very premises every commie on the planet uses, and ultimately, when pushed to it, will soon enough start arguing just like a commie.
It’s inevitable.
The root of the problem is laziness and dishonesty, both a product of two of the basest human emotions/motivations: fear and greed. To state it another way: humanity involves, most simply, the conscious and principled discipline and control of fear and greed, which one has no choice but to experience as a higher biological organism.
A good way to think about how the non-human homo sapiens respond to fear and greed is that they seek to hoard profits and spread losses. The chief motivation is laziness and chief tool to satisfy all is dishonesty. The interesting thing about dishonesty — self, other directed, and institutionalized — is that the better one is at it (the more dishonest) the less detectable and more powerful it is.
What’s interesting about laziness is how hard people work at not producing tradeable values. Consider a bum on the exit ramp day in, day out. I’ve seen some of them work their asses off at begging in the hot, cold, and rainy for years on end. How much easier it would be to work at a job.
It’s the labor theory of value. The lazy look to a world where raw physical activity, disconnected from any other requirements, is of paramount value.
To look at it in its plainest form, there are those advocating that some fears are just too great not to force others to pay for general anesthesia, and the argument turns on which anesthesia and in what dosage is most “efficient” and “useful.” Hey, maybe we can “privatize” the production and delivery of it, which still doesn’t address the root laziness, dishonesty, individual responsibility or accountability.
Then there are those, “the nouveaux ancaps,” who rightfully understand that you can’t hold consistently to individualist principle and advocate any degree of state coercion, but have failed to understand that the state is an effect of a deeper problem (as outlined above). They think that you have to win friends and influence people by trying to explain that life would be so much better without the state.
But you can’t truly understand anarchism until you accept that it doesn’t matter what society “would be like” without the state. It’s not the issue. The issue is that nobody has any right to chain me to their fears or satisfy their greed at my involuntary expense and anyone who thinks otherwise, even just a little tine bit can just go fuck right off and there’s simply no kind way to put that.
Don,
WTF!
Who is trying to chain you to their fears or trying to satisfy their greed at your involuntary expense? What is the point of your comment – how does it relate to encouraging participation in the electoral process?
No one is putting a gun to your head or dragging you to the polling place. Vote or not, it’s your choice. Just don’t expect to be patted on the head and given an ‘attaboy’ for it.
I prefer the Mills version: “A person may cause evil to others not only by his action but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
Actually, I don’t because I know for whom Mills was working — the Incrementalists who deliberately latched onto the double-meaning label of Progressive — and YOU don’t like the outcome of such thinking.
The father of Utilitarianism? The short version of which is “you are not DEEMED useful to society you are not fit to live.” You-know-who is doing the deeming. It is not you and it is not me.
This same discussion is going on simultaneously across the dexterosphere (thanks, Pasc).
While I try to be as polite as possible in political discussions…
Any conservative that does not vote for Mitt Romney in this election (since he is the only candidate that has a credible chance against Obama) is as stupid as dirt, and a traitor to this nation.
If you vote for anyone other than Romney, or don’t vote, you’re for enabling Obama.
(That may not be your intent, but Obama will thank you nonetheless.)
Or you want to see collapse and insurrection, in which case you’re just plain stupid or uninformed, hard to tell which from here..
Collapse of government has only worked well once in history, and we don’t have enough patriots or firepower this time around.
Actually, O’Keefe has proven how the game is rigged in one fashion. What we cannot know is the depth and breadth of it. It’s not everywhere at all times, else Bush would not have won election. We all witnessed the bullshit of that ballot count, and it makes us angry. But the numbers of good votes outweighed the corruption.
One of the biggest lies we accept is that our own experience is ubiquitous. The only thing that is everywhere at once is the Eternal God. Lesser mortals only strive to make you think their influence and reach goes farther than it possibly can.
I’m not willing to risk so much for my own pride’s sake of thinking I can possibly know the reach and run of corruption. It’s a damnable offense to believe it just because it suits my inner curmudgeon.
So why deny a voice to those who would do good and love mercy and walk justly? There are many decent folks who, finding only cynicism and fear from their constituencies eventual fold from the pressure. (Palin)
All that Jesus suffered at the hand of a rigged game, and yet He was never cynical. Still isn’t. And that’s a tough, rough challenge in this day.
Joan;
If the majority in the Right is greater than the margin of fraud, they can’t very well steal the election invisibly.
Now, what we do when we catch them red-handed, I do not know. All I do know is that, if it goes from ballot to bullet, the Republic will not survive.
Nor will most of us.
Meantime, we must keep teaching that there can be no reasonable objection to voter ID and all the rest of the anti-fraud protocols EXCEPT that the objector is operating with bad faith intent and bent on mischief.
Blow your horn. Point your finger. DO NOT let them get away with it.
M
IOW, Do NOT shut up, to quote somebody we both know.
(A little staircase wit fer ya there.)
M
Thanks, Mark. And happy Blogiversary!
Don: A lot of run for a little slide, but having troubled to read it all, I have to say, I can pretty well agree on almost all points. Thanks for the contribution.
Here’s a bit of logic for all those who use “the game is rigged” as their pass on voting:
If the game were truly rigged everywhere in every place, then how does one explain the presence of Conservatives in our House and Senate?
Oh, Joan, those aren’t REAL conservatives!!
Heh.
You’re just a bought and paid for tool of the man, man! I mean, woman.
Did you ever buy another boat?
My vote this Tuesday will not make a difference in who becomes the Republican Candidate but it will count! I am NOT voting for Romney I am voting for a conservative candidate. That vote will be counted by the Pennsylvania Repubs and it will be noted that I refused delivery of a Rino –
In November I will have to vote for the Rino since he will be timid and less likely to shit all over me in his first term, something a lame duck socialist has already signaled that he is planning to be “more flexible”.
yeah, I keep asking “How will not voting fix anything” and all these hyperintelligent people who are obviously smarter and cooler than I are silent.
— Daniel Webster
— Daniel Webster
Pascal;
That comes from a more innocent age, before the perversion introduced by John Dewey, who preached that you can’t make good socialists out of people possessed of the capacity for critical thought.
I am, however, encouraging to see George Will’s name at least associated with the concept of a Freedom to be Left Alone, even if he’s too damned ecumenical about it.
Me, I prefer the crotchety attitude of the fictional Lazarus Long: “Beware of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors — and miss.
M
I agree about the more innocent age Mark.
Yet not unawares.
While there are many who are smart enough to learn the hard way, from their own mistakes, there are indeed very few wise enough to learn from the mistakes of others.
So at this point, I fear the only thing I care about now is: Will the citizens of some future epoch of free men have learned our lesson of the Incrementalists even if our chronicles survive better than did ancient republican Romes who succumbed to attacks by incrementalists of their own?
Oh, Mark:
Can you please link me to where Will said that? I’d have to scrutinize it to see if he were actually alluding for allowing him to continue collecting paychecks from ABC News (over 20 years now if he’d only play dead to the attacks from the Lefties on “This Week”) FREE from conservatives giving him the fish eye.
Dear Mr. Og;
I hate to do this, but I have to ask. How much of your argument regarding voting could be applied to our discussion in comments about running for (and possibly holding) elected office? I think your question “How will not voting fix anything?” could be extended to “How will not holding office fix anything?” Isn’t that a part of the hard work and activism you referred to?
Precisely. And for someone with the right attitude, and no skeletons in his closet, a good one. But the skeletons in my closet, once freed, would be a force. You don’t want to see that. On the other hand, if you’re unclear on what freeedom actually is, and you hold office, you will produce more trouble, amd become more of the same. The converdsation you and I had about this was completely crystal clear; you still don’t get why this is not a good action for you?
I guess not; or I wouldn’t still be thinking about it. I have skeletons, but unlikely to matter in a local election. I think I understand what freedom actually is; but I have never articulated that understanding. And I have no idea what the right attitude would be; is being pissed off sufficient?
I’ll have to go back and review our prior conversation to see if I can understand what I am still missing.