I know it’s customary after an election to righteously ridicule nonvoters, calling them names, like apathetic, uninvolved, lazy and ungrateful. Even though I did vote, I won’t indulge this noble tradition. My contention, shockingly, is with the majority of voters.
I know voters are considered beyond reproach after an election. But it’s not as simple as voting and earning a doughnut, a coffee, a sticker or whatever the enticement may be. Voting (for the wrong thing) can actually be a ruinous and even shameful act.
Aristotle once said, and I paraphrase roughly from memory, that a democracy tends to decay when the people discover that they can vote for themselves the things that they want.
I’m afraid Aristotle was speaking directly to our age. You see, we may pride ourselves for having traded the bullet for the ballot, but I have a sense that ballots are often used just as decisively and just as disastrously as the bullets they’ve replaced; only they perform our deeds with greater secrecy and less shame.
If you shoot a man, it’s hard to escape the accompanying guilt or consequences. If by voting you remove his livelihood by shutting down a sector of the economy, it’s easy to shirk any responsibility. If your vote puts a man out on the streets or sends him abroad to fight an unconstitutional war and drench thirsty sands with his blood, no matter. After all, not just you but millions more voted alongside you.
There’s safety in numbers, as they say. One vote wouldn’t have made much difference either way I suppose. And you can always feign innocence of having voted for such an unsavory proposal anyway.
But if your candidate does something splendid, well then you may delight in all the joy and pride that your vote holds. See, every single vote counts! No guilt when it goes wrong, buckets of glory when it goes right. Imagine a democracy that encourages greater apathy and irresponsibility among voters than nonvoters. What a pure comedic tragedy! Unfortunately, it requires little imagination.
It’s time we recall that underlying our democratic Republic is the idea that government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Whether a Democrat or a Republican victory, surely these hallowed principles should not be endangered. But those who voted for McCain and Obama have alike threatened the concept of government by the people.
You see, for some curious reason it seems to be an inarguable inevitability that we can only effect change through the government. (This explains the roaring popularity of the clever candidate who formed his slogan around this limited, pathetic idea.) And sadly this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We clamor for the services or the solutions we want through the vehicle of government rather than attempting our own solutions. Elections have simply become a time when we decide who gets what and how much.
It seems that we can’t solve the environment problems, we can’t achieve energy independence, we can’t educate our children, and we can’t provide affordable healthcare without the government’s direction. When did we all become such useless and formless blobs awaiting the direction of our Fuhrer?
Regrettably, the government usually contrives only one way of solving problems: taking from some to give to others. Sad truth is, if you voted for McCain or Obama you voted for someone who wants to take from some and give to others. I know that offends McCain supporters because their prized insult against Obama is that he’s a socialist, but facts are dirty and they don’t favor the pure evangelists of either party. Both candidates plan on taking from us (the taxpayers) to pay for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout (at least that’s what they voted for last month), both are going to fleece the taxpayer to fund the continuance of the wars, both propose taking ungodly sums to bailout the subprimers.. The list goes on, full of more promises that hinge on spending more of our money.
Solutions to the big problems that plague society aren’t going to come from Washington. So forget all the inspiring speeches you’ve heard lately from presidential hopefuls. Half of it’s lies anyways. The other half is nightmarish enough to make us pray that it’s a lie. Remember, it is WE THE PEOPLE who rightly govern this country, not a single individual in the White House, and it’s high time we resume office and get back on the job.
Jeremy Hicks is a 2008 political science graduate, the founder of the Cal Poly Libertarian Club and a Mustang Daily politcal columnist.