Similarly, there is a nonpartisan consensus that the proper response to an economic downturn should be the Keynesian prescription of more government spending, more deficits, more debt. The Bush administration ran up deficits and added well over $4 trillion to the national debt. When Obama came into office, the national debt was at around $10 trillion, and running upwards of $1 trillion in deficits every year, he managed to increase that to over $16 trillion in less than four years. When libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, running as a Republican, proposed a plan to cut $1 trillion from the budget in his first year, Romney showed his true Keynesian colors by responding that doing so would throw the economy into a depression, the underlying assumption being that government bureaucrats know better than the American people how best to spend the American people’s money, know better than the market how to direct scarce resources to the most productive ends in order to create economic growth.
Romney has also adopted what some are calling “militarized Keynesianism”, arguing that if the U.S. cuts military spending, it will result in a loss of jobs in the military/security complex. Neither party has proposed any serious cuts in military spending, which is likewise projected to increase over the next decade. Despite lots of talk about spending “cuts”, there are none, only reductions from baseline spending increases over the next decade, and neither party is even remotely serious about eliminating the deficit and tackling the debt. The budget plan of Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, doesn’t project balancing the budget until sometime after 2040, and only then based on rosy and delusional assumptions about economic recovery that isn’t going to happen, because the bond bubble will inevitably burst, and when that happens, it will make the 2008 financial crisis look like a walk in the park.
Ah, but what about entitlement programs and health care? Isn’t there real, meaningful difference between the candidates in this area? Don’t Democrats want to take care of poor people while Republicans want to eliminate welfare and entitlement programs? Those on the “left” seem to think so. The actual facts don’t support this paradigm, however. The legislation that created Medicare Part D, for example, was signed into law by Bush. During their debate, Romney criticized “Obamacare” because it will reduce Medicare spending. Think about that. And Obama himself pointed out that his position on Social Security was not much different from Romney’s.
And returning again to the debt, the figure of $16 trillion does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security. Including these liabilities brings the debt to over $100 trillion. While Republicans and Democrats bicker on the details of these programs, the truth is that they are bankrupting the country, and neither party is willing to face up to that reality or deal with it seriously. So much for their supposedly “meaningful” differences.
Then there is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, a.k.a. “Obamacare”), which many on the “left” support because they believe it will, as the name implies, do something to make health care more affordable, especially for the underprivileged. They believe this simply as a matter of faith. But this is false. The ACA in fact does nothing to reduce health care costs and, apart from the name, doesn’t pretend to. Rather, it seeks to try to manage costs by shifting the burden from one group of people to another, such as to health care providers (such as via the aforementioned reductions in Medicare spending, which will likely lead to fewer doctors accepting Medicare patients), and in ways that will likely only exacerbate the underlying problems. With the artificial increase in demand that will result, while the supply of doctors remains the same, the predictable result will be that it pushes costs even higher, either in terms of money or time spent in the waiting room, or both.
On its face, costs are so high in the first place because government has done its best to eliminate a free market for health care, such that prices for health care services don’t even exist and the market incentive to provide the best possible care at the lowest cost is eliminated and replaced with countless perverse incentives, so the idea that even more government interference and attempts to centrally manage a complex system is the solution easily falls within Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Apart from just being bad law, the Act’s individual mandate is also patently unconstitutional. The Constitution nowhere enumerates to government the authority to lay a direct unapportioned tax on individuals for nonconsumption. In fact, it expressly forbids the laying of such a tax. The usurpation of this authoritarian power, which the American people meekly accept and even joyfully embrace in the naïve belief that government will use it only for good, is a dangerous precedent. The potential for abuse is limited only by the imaginations of corporate lobbyists and corrupt politicians who now claim for themselves the power to be able to force Americans to participate in the market by purchasing some good or service against their will or to pay a penalty tax for their refusal to do so.
The reasons why bureaucrats decided it was “necessary” to include the mandate to purchase health insurance is instructive. One of the centerpieces of the ACA is its reform that would force insurance companies to accept people even with preexisting conditions. One of the reasons people are unable to get insurance is because they are ensured through an employer, but then they lose or change their job, and when that happens, under the current system, they typically lose their insurance as well. And if, in the meantime, they have developed some health condition requiring costly care, they are unable now to get on a new policy. Instead of making reforms to allow people to have more control over their own insurance and how their own money is spent, such that they might obtain a portable policy, the bureaucrats decided to just force insurers to accept people with preexisting conditions, which defeats the whole purpose of insurance. (If that isn’t plainly obvious enough, imagine if the government, in the name of helping poor homeowners, passed a law forcing fire insurance companies to insure people after their house has burned down.)
There are two predictable immediate consequences: one, insurers will have to increase premiums to cover the additional costs that would be incurred; and, two, people would have an incentive to not buy insurance unless and until they get sick. Thus a bill that ostensibly set out to make insurance more affordable and to have more people be insured included reform that would produce the exact opposite results. But instead of recognizing that this was just bad policy and scrapping it, they came up with another “solution” to solve the very problem that they, with their own bureaucratic bungling, created in the first place: the individual mandate, among the practical effects of which include forcing young people who have lower incomes to subsidize the costs of care for older people with higher incomes and forcing healthy people who eat right and exercise to subsidize the costs of unhealthy people whose lifestyle choices result in their higher health care expenses.
Returning to the alleged “meaningful” differences between Obama and Romney, those on the “left” seem to forget that Massachusetts’ “Romneycare” was the model for “Obamacare” (and Romney supporters seem only too happy to do the same). The only difference between Obama and Romney on the matter of the unconstitutional mandate is that Romney thinks that state governments should have such a dangerous authoritarian power, while Obama thinks this power belongs properly in the hands of the federal government, as well.
This is illustrative of the nature of the kind of “choice” people have this election. Sure, there are differences, but the basic underlying premise of both candidates’ positions are exactly the same. Sure, one can find areas where they disagree, but only within a framework wherein the disagreements lie within a limited range of acceptable dissent and debate that doesn’t risk upsetting the existing status quo. Thus, while Romney disagreed with Obama on bailing out the auto industry, there is no difference between them on the basic principle of using taxpayers’ money to bail out troubled corporations, as illustrated in the fact that Romney, like Obama, supported bailing out the banks. On matters of foreign policy, as already noted, the only difference, if there is any, is that Romney would escalate the policies of Bush/Obama even further (which Obama is likely to continue doing in a second term, anyway, just as he has escalated Bush’s policies during the first). Like Obama, Romney also said he would have voted for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) under which the government has claimed for itself the power to lock away American citizens in indefinite military detention (R.I.P. habeas corpus). In a speech outlining his positions on foreign policy, Romney asked “how the threats we face have grown so much worse” before proceeding at length to explain how he would continue to do more of the same that resulted in the situation becoming “so much worse” under Bush and Obama, promising to continue or escalate all of the U.S.’s existing policies right across the board. Et cetera…
Such is the nature of the “choice” Americans are faced with this coming election.
The logic behind the “lesser of evils” argument can be effectively boiled down to: “Most everyone else is going to vote for one of the two pro-establishment candidates, so therefore you should do so, too!” Or, to put it another way: “Most everyone else is going to employ a failed strategy that can only prevent real change by perpetuating the existing establishment order, so if you don’t do the same, you will be wasting your vote!” This thinking is beyond merely irrational; it is insane. If most everyone else was going to either jump off the bridge or lie down on the railroad tracks, would you decide that you should do so, too? If most everyone else in the group was going to commit mass suicide by drinking the Kool-Aid, would you decide that therefore you must do it, too? If you were on the playground and a bunch of your friends started talking about how they were either going to beat up the new kid or call him names, would you vote to go make fun of him on order to stop him from getting beat up, or would you dare to speak up and object to both suggestions? If you were chosen to participate in an experiment in which the scientists told you that if you didn’t push a button to apply an electric shock to a subject strapped into a chair, someone else in another room would apply an even more powerful shock, would you push the button in order to “help” the subject to be spared the even worse consequence of the guy in the other room pushing his?
By this logic, if Americans were given a choice between voting for Hitler running as a Republican, Stalin running as a Democrat, and Jesus running as a third-party candidate, they would vote for Stalin to keep Hitler from gaining power rather than wasting their vote on someone who is “unelectable” by virtue of not belonging to one of the two establishment parties.
Of course, the only reason it is true that “most everyone else” will vote for one of the two pro-establishment candidates in the first place is because they all cling to this same flawed thinking, too. It would be like observing that most other people weren’t recycling and concluding that therefore it wouldn’t make a difference for you to do it, when the whole reason nobody else was doing it was because they were all thinking the exact same way you were, and if everyone just stopped thinking that way, everyone would recycle. It is a self-fulfilling argument, because acting according to the conclusion of this logic is the very thing that makes its premise true.
How many people actually would have preferred Ron Paul as the Republican nominee but didn’t vote for him in the primaries simply because they considered him “unelectable”? How many people would prefer one of the third-party candidates, such as Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, but will still choose to vote for one of the two establishment guys anyways because they think that’s what everyone else is going to do, and they don’t want to “waste” their vote?
Voting isn’t a horse race. It’s not about picking a winner. Chances are, if everyone just stopped thinking, “I really like this alternative candidate, but I won’t vote for him because he’s ‘unelectable’,” and instead just voted their conscience, then he wouldn’t be unelectable, the establishment order could no longer be sustained, and the door would be opened to the possibility that the country might see real, meaningful, significant change.
There has to be people who are willing to go against the herd mentality, to reject groupthink, to dare to be different, to have the audacity to set aside insanity and adopt reason. And then more people will follow the path of sanity and moral conscience. And then more, until finally a tipping point is reached and change is ushered in. What is needed is a revolution. Not a violent revolt, and not even peaceful protests, but a revolution in thought. What is needed is a paradigm shift. The tipping point will not likely be reached this election. But if more people wake up this time around and either vote for an alternative candidate or simply choose not to participate in the whole charade at all so as not to recognize its legitimacy, then that will constitute progress.
Whatever you do this election, do not vote to perpetuate the establishment order. Do not vote to maintain the status quo. Do not vote for more illegal wars, more violence and murder of innocent civilians, more violations of international law, more trampling of the Constitution, more loss of your Liberty. Do not vote for the nation to continue down the path of self-destruction and economic ruin. Do not vote to legitimize the corruption, lawlessness, and immorality of the government. Do not vote to approve of a government committing crimes in your name, to have blood on your hands. Whatever you do, do not join in the mass insanity. Whatever you do, do not waste your vote. Do not vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.
Thank you editor
Your on the money time and time again
one of the best if not very best of on the Web
while its still free
Thanks for the comment!
It would be my wish that this article be mandatory reading for every American before casting their vote this coming election. Excellent. Keep up the great work.
I agrree with Dawn couldn’t have said it better!
Thank you for putting into words many of the things I have been thinking whenever I’m told that I’ll be wasting my vote. I see it quite often, I also have had people telling me that I’ll be stealing a vote from the two main candidates by choosing a third party. this has never made sense to me, because the vote belongs to me until I choose to give it. Your words in this article are elegant, and a true pleasure to read. I hope many more people take the time to read them.
I am voting my beliefs while I am still allowed to! You gave me the very words I needed for a come-back to the “wasted vote” rhetoric. I’m not betting a horse in a race. I’m not voting to win. I’m voting for what I feel it right! Some may not get it, but maybe some will stop and think…
Would like to express my sincere appreciation for your well-written piece. Hope everyone could read it before the nov elections.
Excellent article, I’ve been arguing these points to deaf ears for a long time now, I will post this bit of wisdom everywhere I can. Thanks, RC
Thank you Mr. Hammond
for your excellent analysis of the ‘election’ this year where people have been given a chance to continue wage more wars.
Your article explains how dangerous would be if people vote for “the lesser of evils” since this way of thinking helps the status quo continues without any real change that Obama promised and gullible people believed him which means Bush policy on steroid meaning more war and killings of innocent people including children in the faraway places where is considered CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
People should remember voting for a third party or boycotting the election is not a crime, but voting for criminal policies of the ‘elected’ party against Muslims is a crime.
Most important, your position against the “left” and their message of electing a ‘lesser evil’ is right. The cooperation of the phony “left” with imperialism/Zionism is not limited to American ‘left’, but is a daily practice among the Iranian ‘left’ abroad. According to one of the Iranian ‘left’, Majedi, the majority of the Iranian ‘left’ opposition groups abroad receive hand out from western governments in EU and the US even Arab states. They also have close cooperation with Israel Lobby, no wonder people will find their names on “Israel Hasbara Committee” next to Jaffarzade, a member of the Mujahedin, MEK, where recently was taken off the US department terrorist list due to strong influence that Israel Lobby has on US policy.
You write:
{The “lesser of evils” argument certainly qualifies. This insanity … people on the “left” telling others that they should vote third-party if they live in a “blue” state, but that if they live in a “swing” state, they should vote for Obama.}
Mr. Hammond: These are the words of Noam Chomsky who tells the voters vote for Obama who believes in “the Jewish State” and thinks undivided Jerusalem is the ‘capital of the jewish state’. This is not the first time that Noam Chomsky asking the voter to elect one from the establishment.
Noam Chomsky did the same and in 2004 asked voters to vote for John Kerry, another war monger, against George Bush where Obama inherited his policy of mass murdering of Muslims in the far away
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/200501–.htm
places including American citizens and their children abroad and violation of human rights at home, but against all these hypocrisy he force illegal sanctions on Iranian population to ‘correct’ Iranian government behavior to abandon Iran’s legal right to enrichment. Obama’s policy is considered CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, according to international law. Many Iranians have received death sentence due to shortage of medicine which is ILLEGAL to bring ‘regime change’.
People are united to defeat the DARK FORCES of our time.
I don’t agree with you sir. I think Bush was a good president, certainly better than the guy in there now. I voted for McCain and Palin. I new Obama was a mistake. He could sweet talk, but no substance, just Hate white males For a so called christian pastor in Jeremia White, and Marxist leanings for his government philosophies. Bush made a major mistake going in Iraq i think. It cost too much and hurt our economy. We had to go to war in Afghanistan they committed Pearl harbor on our twin towers. Would you say President Roosivelt (FDR) the god of all democrats was a war monger? Was his vice president (a democrat too) a war criminal for dropping the bomb? not once but twice on Japan?
I don’t see anything of substance which makes me think Romni is not a Constitutionalist. ANY way all this talk about the least of two evils is a bbunch of dribble. No man is good, only God. We have to choose men of character and reputation both of which Romni has and none of which Obama had prior to his election. We put a man with no experience who has proven himself incompetent to do the job and has cost American lives at our US Embassys abroad.
He is a war criminal.
Willful ignorance is bliss.
Jeremy, this is a solid article, but you are missing out on an important aspect: math.
That old song about the lesser-of-two-weevils actually *does* have practical basis in reality, although it is a bit subtle. I fully concede you are on the nose about the *morality* of voting for evil, even a wee-bit-less evil, rather than voting *FOR* somebody you really and truly believe is a GOOD person for the job. But practicality sometimes trumps idealized morality, and the style of voting-system we use makes elections just such a scenario. Here is my own swingstate-lesser-of-weevils-but-elsewhere-greater-good rule, which captures the essence of the *correct* practical way to deal with elections of the sort we are stuck with:
SLOW-BEGG#1. Vote 3rd-party if you live in a locked-up-solid state, to send a message through time to future primary-election-candidates about what you REALLY want in a president, *but* vote lesser-of-two-dominant-party-evils if you live in a swing-state (this year) where the electoral-math of the general-election is against you.
This rule can be tailored for an audience:
#1_C. For liberty-loving constitutionalists, if you live in a swing-state then pick your poison of 4 years Obama versus 8 years of Our Party Rominee, but if you don’t, vote Gary Johnson or maybe Virgil Goode or even write-in Ron Paul (assuming you are sure your ballot won’t be invalidated by some clerk).
#1_D. For dems, if you live in a swing-state vote Obama, but if you don’t, vote Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, to send a message about 2014+2016.
#1_R. For repubs, if you live in a swing-state vote Romney, but if you don’t, vote Virgil Goode or Gary Johnson, to send a message to 2014+2016.
The phrasing of what I call here #1_D is very similar to something you mentioned in the article as “intriguing yet insane” advice for some liberal folks, presumably from other liberal folks. It is good advice. The math is clear.
Here is the election-math, as simple as I can make it, with links that explain it more fully. We use a voting system that we think of a normal voting, but the technical name is plurality-voting. There is a specific feature, the independence of clones criterion, that our voting system lacks. We have proof this feature *really* matters in practice: when two repubs and one dem ran in 1992, and also in 1912, the lone dem won. Similarly, when two dems run against one repub, the repubs lose.
TR 27% + Taft 23% = 50% repub, but dem Wilson still wins w/ 42%. Perot 19% + Bush#1 37% = 56% repub, but dem Clinton#1 still wins w/ 43%.
Gore 48% + Nader 3% = 51% dem, but repub Bush#2 still wins w/ 48%. Humphrey 43% + Wallace 14% = 57% dem, but repub Nixon wins w/ only 43%.
This phenomenon is the mathematical foundation of the lesser-of-two-evils rule. It is *also* the mathematical reason we have a twin-party-dominated election system, by the way! Because, as you quite correctly point out, the lesser-weevil rule becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the rule is not to blame. The voting-system-math *driving* that rule of thumb is what matters.
Every few years, a good chunk of conservative voters decide they like the libertarian-party guy better than their usual choice of the repub nominee, and as a direct result of them not picking a major-nominee, the *dem* nominee wins. (Wilson and WWI was the greater of two evils!) Similarly, every few years a good chunk of liberal voters decide they like the green-party guy better than their usual choice of the dem nominee, and as a direct result of them not picking a major-nominee, the *repub* wins. (Nixon and watergate was the greater of two evils!)
Therefore, your primary argument, that voters just need to change their minds about believing in the lesser-weevil stuff, and if that happens, we will no longer have awful candidates, is flat wrong. Liberal-leaning voters have tried that before, and ended up causing the Iraq war and Watergate. Conservative-leaning voters have tried that before, and ended up causing WWI and Hillarycare.
However, there *is* a silver lining. If we look at the math of the lesser-weevil rule, it becomes crystal clear that it *only* applies to people living in swing-states, for presidential elections anyways (the electoral college is all that matters in those… which means the nationwide popvote is only vaguely predictive… but otherwise totally irrelevant to winning). Every presidential race, there are about ten swing-states, and they tend to be the same for long periods of time. In 2012, the swing-states are FL OH NC CO VA IA NV WI NH.
If you reside *anywhere* else, then you can vote your conscience on the presidential election, most likely by following something like #1_R, or #1_D, or in my case #1_C. Imagine how many popvotes Gary Johnson and Virgil Goode might get if the millions of everyday repubs in CA understood that Obama was *going* to win every single ecVote from the state, and therefore they could decide *honestly* whether they liked Mitt the best.
Spread the word for people to vote best-of-all-good-ones should they reside in a swing-state, but explain the math that shows them it cannot hurt their second-choice lesser-weevil. That rule of thumb *only* applies in the ten swing-states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting#Plurality_voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system#Disadvantages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect#Presidential_elections
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bull_moose_party
p.s. Long-term, of course, we need a better voting-system for our elections. We have computers now, and we have many novel and interesting voting-systems that have been invented in the last couple hundred years. There are also ancient voting-systems, used in the days of Aristotle and the Venetian Doge, that might be useful.
Personally, though, having looked into this issue seriously, no existing voting system quite fixes all the major problems, at least, without introducing other problems just as bad. Fundamentally, we need a voting-system which does not encourage favorite-betrayal, a voting system which does not mathematically tend to be two-party dominated (key!), a voting system which is straightforward to understand for the below-average-intelligence-american, and a voting system that rewards voter-honesty rather than punishes it. Of course, we also want a voting system that exists! And we want that voting-system to be resistant to fraud, and easy to verify, and cheap to implement, and so on.
The best I’ve been able to come up with so far is a modified form of auto-exaggeration-embedded range-voting. I plan to try it out at the corporate-board level, and then see if it can be deployed to the local city council, before pushing for my scheme as the best way to elect the POTUS. But I’d very much hope for some competition, from other good voting-system variants.
p.p.s. Short-term, I think our best option is to encourage folks in non-swing-states to follow the SLOW-BEGG rule. Third-party candidates may begin to get significant chunks of the overall popvote… which will get more voters interested in those wacky libertarian and constitutionalist ideas… and more than anything, *that* increased awareness in and of itself will help us to get better twin-party nominees. Because after all, freedom is popular!
Once that starts happening, there will be a demographic tipping-point where the SLOW-BEGG rule starts to be ‘incorrect’ for mainstream dems and repubs. The lesser-weevil rule only applies to swing-states, but if enough people in California stop voting for the dem nominee, then the state of California might *become* a swing-state once again. At that point, it may be prudent to modify our advice to mainstream voters who actually *like* the sort of twin-party system that gives us Clinton-Dole and Romney-Obama candidates. Like this…
#2_D. For dems, if you live in a [shaky-blue-state or] swing-state vote Obama, but if you don’t [i.e. you live in a solid-red-state], vote Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, to send a message about 2014+2016.
#2_R. For repubs, if you live in a [shaky-red-state or] swing-state vote Romney, but if you don’t [i.e. you live in a solid-blue-state], vote Virgil Goode or Gary Johnson, to send a message to 2014+2016.
However, the more general SLOW-BEGG rule *is* still completely correct, as long as voters realize that “swing-states” can change from election to election, and pay attention to the statewide polls for THEIR state, every year before actually voting.
So if you recognize that voting for evil is immoral, why do you argue that people should do it anyways? I fully concede that if we reject morality and sell our souls by voting to perpetuate the establishment order, then you are on the nose about the “math” of voting for evil.
No, it is not “flat wrong” that if Americans don’t want to have evil, they shouldn’t vote for it. Your fallacy is obvious, apart from rejecting morality, which is that obviously this wasn’t tried. Obviously, a plurality of Americans in the cases you offer voted according to the “lesser of evils” thinking and voted for a candidate from the Republican/Democrat Party. There just weren’t enough Americans in those cases who came to their senses and refused to sell their souls by voting to endorse evil policies. A second fallacy is that, obviously, it wasn’t voters who didn’t vote for the Rep/Dem Party who caused the policies the Rep/Dem implemented, it was all the voters who didn’t have the sense not to do so who were responsible for those evils.
“So if you recognize that voting for evil is immoral, why do you argue that people should”
For the same reason I argue that people should shoot burglars who break into their house in the middle of the night, even though killing is not the best way to morally deal with petty crime. Because of the math. Nine times out of ten, the burglar will turn out to be a petty criminal just suffering from dumbness. But that other one chance in ten, they will be a killer, planning to wipe out you and your entire family. The math says to shoot all burglars. Period.
You are arguing that voting for the lesser-weevil would be immoral, so people should stop doing it. You also imply that only PSYCHOLOGICAL reasons exist for why people ever started doing it. But that’s not true. There is a mathematical reason for people to follow the lesser-weevil rule: because if you do not follow that rule, the math of our voting system WILL punish you. You say that Americans that want to avoid voting for evil, should. I have no problem with that, it is their choice. But those in swing-states will have to overcome the practical math of the voting-system, which is a disincentive. And those outside the swing-states do not realize there *is* no penalty.
You also say that a moral decision will *end* the long train of evil nominees in the twin-parties. That is incorrect — because the voting system is going to punish those with the moral fortitude to do what is right, practical consequence be damned. Maybe you are confident that 50% of Americans are filled with the necessary gumption? But from here I just don’t see it. The punishment is too strong in practical terms. Speaking of which, we seem to be disagreeing about the set of examples somehow.
Here is one that I say illustrates the practical punishment of voters failing to follow the lesser-weevil rule. 1912: the dem nominee is Wilson supported by 42% of voters, the repub nominee is Taft supported by 50% of voters. However, TR does not think Taft will run the country properly, so he forms the Bull Moose 3rd-party. *If* the repub voters follow the lesser-weevil rule, then they will all vote for Taft. But half the repub voters (an anomalously large percentage!) break the rule and vote for TR’s 3rd-party. The rule-breakers are all punished, because Wilson wins, not TR their first choice, and not Taft their second choice. Since *only* a very small percentage of dems broke the lesser-weevil rule (to vote for Eugene Debs or whatever), Wilson the dem won. Do you not agree that the folks voting for TR were punished with an undesired outcome?
(Maybe the trouble is that you see TR as an evil candidate too… if that is the holdup, then try replacing his name with Ron Paul, or Patrick Henry or whomever your favorite non-evil politician may happen to be. The math stays the same: voting for the 3rd-party person results in immediate and painful punishment, with your least-favorite of the three candidates winning. This disincentive keeps the lesser-weevil rule alive, forever.)
“There just weren’t enough Americans in those cases who came to their senses and refused to sell their souls by voting to endorse evil policies”
Ahhhh. Ummmm… yes, that is a true statement… but do you realize how many tens of millions of people will have to *simultaneously* all decide to refuse to vote for the twin-party nominees, for those decisions to actually change the outcome of the election in question? Remember when Perot got 20% of the votes, and then faded to obscurity the very next election — that isn’t bad luck. It is the math. People that voted for Perot in 1992, but wanted Bush as their second choice, felt punished by Clinton getting elected. (Because they *were* punished!) That is why Perot dropped like a rock in 1996, and was out entirely in 2000.
This is the key point. The math of our voting system is what causes the lesser-weevil rule, not people deciding to believe the rule, making an immoral compromise for no reason. There is a very good, very plain reason, even if not every voter can explain the math behind the rule to you. Most dems “know” not to vote for the green party or the libertarian party, because Nader spoiled FL in 2000 for Gore. Most repubs “know” not to vote for the constitution party or the libertarian party, because Perot spoiled a few states for Dole, and a ton of states for Bush1st.
My main argument is that what everyday voters think they “know” is actually incorrect, in 40 states out of the 50. Mathematically, the lesser-weevil rule is only applicable if you live in a swing-state, for presidential elections anyhoo. Is your argument with me that, even in the swing states where the lesser-weevil rule applies, and the practical consequence is punishing, voters should still refuse to follow the rule? In that case, we have no disagreement on any fundamental, just a disagreement on gumption-level of America.
But you sound like you think we should *never* advocate the lesser-weevil rule, on principle, and that explaining the math to the residents of the 40 states (where the lesser-weevil rule does NOT even apply) is therefore pointless. Is that what you intend to say, or am I reading you wrong?
p.s. You also put forth an argument that, if person #1 voted for Wilson, person #2 voted for Taft, and person #3 voted for TR, that in fact *only* person #1 bears any responsibility for Wilson’s presidential policies. The other folks did not vote FOR him, after all. Well… sorta.
Because of the voting-system we have, quite often voters are in fact voting AGAINST their least-favorite nominee, rather than actually voting ‘for’ any person whatsoever. Person #3 insisted on voting *for* TR, and as a direct result of their refusal to vote against Wilson (by following the lesser weevil rule), in the election Wilson won. Whether you think person #3 has any responsibility for the policies Wilson follows while in office, depends on whether you think that person #1 in fact has any responsibility…
We are getting into deep territory here, concerning the intent of the voter and the transitory-or-not nature of responsibility, that we prolly cannot settle today. Was *Wilson* responsible for our troops that died in WWI, or were the American generals, or were the German snipers, or the German generals, or even the French leadership which began the war… or the assassin who shot the archduke?
I’m really more interested in the other discussion we are having. I’m saying that we ought to be doing our best to inform the people in the 40 states *outside* the swing-states that they can feel free to do the moral thing, and vote *for* a candidate they want. It won’t change the outcome of the electoral college anyway, so why not? You are saying that we should make the moral case against the lesser-weevil rule… but do you mean, in the 40 states where there is no practical pain, or *also* in the 10 states where there is pain?
Because while I *agree* with your stance on the moral issue, I think we will have far more SUCCESS convincing folks that will experience no downside from doing the moral thing (the 40 states), than we will achieve with the folks in swing-states, where there is a mathematical penalty on morality.
But acting in self-defense is not immoral. There is no parallel.
Yes, I am arguing that people should stop acting immorally.
Nobody is suggesting that it would happen all at once. But sanity and morality has to start somewhere. So instead of arguing that people should act insane and immorally and vote for evil, you could, for instance, persuade people to act sanely and morally and not vote for evil, and thus grow the numbers of people who do the right thing instead of the wrong thing, until the numbers grow to the point of critical mass necessary for the crimes of the establishment order to become unsustainable, instead of perpetually endorsed and legitimized.
That is a circular argument.
I don’t know what you are unclear about. I am saying people should not act insane, and that they should not act immorally. I am saying they should not vote for evil. Period.
Your “rather than” makes that statement false, since the means by which you are saying the vote “against” Tweedledee is by voting for Tweedledum.
Dude, did you not actually read the whole article, or what? Again, in what way have I been unclear? What did I say? I wrote:
This insanity sometimes manifests itself in an intriguing way; you will sometimes hear people on the “left” telling others that they should vote third-party if they live in a “blue” state, but that if they live in a “swing” state, they should vote for Obama. In other words, the argument is that Obama is a candidate who is at best not worthy of receiving your vote, who is unworthy of the office of the presidency on his own merits, but who is just considered less unworthy than the other guy.
We may agree with liberals that stopping Romney from becoming the president is a worthy cause, and with conservatives about stopping Obama from gaining a second term—but at what cost should this goal be achieved? At the cost of sending the message to Washington that the president is above the law, that he will not be held accountable for violating his oath of office, no matter how abhorrent his violation of the Constitution or international law? The ends do not justify the means. Preventing Romney from becoming president does not justify voting for Obama, and vice versa.
No, since you are arguing that people in swing states should act immorally and vote for evil, you absolutely do not.
“voting for the lesser-weevil would be immoral, so people should stop”
Here we agree. What we disagree on is how to achieve that goal.
j: “do you realize how many tens of millions of people will have to *simultaneously* all decide…” Jeremy: Nobody is suggesting that it would happen all at once.
I am trying to point out that *you* are suggesting such a thing, in effect. The slow approach that you explicitly speak of, gradually persuading people one-by-one to give up voting AGAINST tweedle-ree or instead AGAINST tweedle-dem every election, getting them to start voting *for* non-evil candidates, has an Achilles’ heel, a deadly weakness not readily apparent at first glance. The slow and gradual winning of hearts and minds will take many election cycles.
However, each and every election cycle, the folks that refuse to follow the lesser-weevil rule are being passively punished (their vote for a third party candidate is ‘wasted’ except as a message). Far more importantly, on a regular basis, in 2000 and 1992 and 1968 and 1912 (some would also say 1996 and even 1980 … with Anderson the moderate RINO spoiling the election for Carter!), the math behind the lesser-weevil rule will come into play, and the president will be the greater-weevil.
Under those circumstances, people that voted for non-evil may or may not bear direct responsibility for any policies of the greater-weevil prez (deep question!), but they *will* get the blame for not following the lesser-weevil rule from friends and neighbors. This is an ACTIVE repeated punishment on top of the passive repeated punishment of not actually getting a non-evil candidate elected.
Because the math is clear: people who voted for Nader in 2000 are the reason we had Bush2nd and a war in Iraq, rather than Gore with cap-n-trade. People who voted for Perot in 1992 is the reason we had Clinton and Hillarycare, rather than Bush1st and read-my-lips. [In repub mythology and under some assumptions… some say Bush1st would have lost anyways by a hair even without Perot-voters.]
You are correct when you say that sanity and moral voting have to start somewhere. But you are not correct to assume that you can slowly grow the number (and more crucially the percentage) of folks that refuse to follow the lesser-weevil rule, because there *are* definite disincentives that will quickly reverse all your work. Thus, I can assert that you are advocating for tens of millions to all change their minds simultaneously, deciding in the course of a SINGLE election to stop voting immorally. That, on paper, could work out… but the practical barriers are obvious.
The practical barriers to slowly convincing folks are less obvious, more subtle, but clear as a bell to those who look at election-history. Trying to win hearts and minds slowly is a noble goal, but every person you win over will be continually punished by inherent math the voting-system, until that day when you’ve converted over the necessary tens of millions. My argument is that day will never arrive, with those gradual tactics: the penalty for failing to follow the lesser-weevil rule is far too great: for every 10 people you convert in 2012, by 2014 you will have lost a third of them, by 2016 another third, and by 2018 all of them, or with *luck* all but one.
You can argue that the penalty is not as severe as I seem to think, or that we can convert people over so super-quickly that we will exceed the rate of loss causes by the practical math-penalties I point out, but you cannot argue that there is *no* downside to voting for non-evil candidates, right?
My suggestion is that, *while* we argue the moral case, we should also pick our battles carefully. Trying to convince repub voters in california that their vote is *already* ignored by the electoral college, since the dem wins all the ecVotes from CA every time no matter what, and that *therefore* they ought to vote morally, is a good plan. The lesser-weevil rule is not applicable in that state, for those voters! Trying to convince dem voters in FL that they should never vote for the party nominee, and instead should vote 3rd-party, is absolutely positively an uphill battle, since Nader is the counter-argument. You are saying that we should still make the moral argument, and I have no problem with that. I just don’t expect it will *work* very well, because the practical costs are too high for Florida dems. But there are only ten or so swing-states, so why should we not concentrate on the low-hanging fruit first?
Think back to the 1800s, and the moral battle to end slavery. Vermont ended slavery in 1781 or something like that, right? And christians argued for the morality of freeing slaves, and ending the immorality of slaveholding, pretty constantly. In states where there was low practical cost, such as in the north, or in new territories, they had many successes. In states where the practical cost was high, they got nowhere from 1776 through 1860.
The point is not that we need a war to change the voting-system… the point is that we ought to get half the voters in 40 of the states voting morally first, and then work on the remaining ten states where the lesser-weevil rule actually has a clear practical cost.
p.s. You saw this as a circular argument: “The math of our voting system is what causes the lesser-weevil rule, not people deciding to believe the rule, making an immoral compromise for no reason.” Actually, it isn’t exactly a circular argument in the way you mean… but it absolutely is a cyclical argument.
The voting-math exists at all times, without changing. But only in certain elections are conditions right for a spoiler candidate to arise. (There are always 3rd-party candidates but they are rarely successful enough to be *spoiler* candidates that change an election outcome.) Thus we live in a dynamic situation, where at any given time perhaps 3% of the population is willing to vote third-party, in a particular election. Then, as the successful third-party gains traction, and donors, and popularity, their candidates start to get more popvotes in elections.
Which is good, right? Yes in obvious ways, but no in a subtle way: popular third-party candidates are *exactly* the cause of the conditions for a spoiler election. The more popular they become, the more likely they are to spoil an election! Once they spoil an election, or even are *perceived* as maybe having spoiled an election, that candidate and that third party die, nigh-immediately. TR and bull moose, Perot and reform, Nader and his little cadre.
The math never changes, but the people who follow the lesser-weevil rule constantly fluctuate. Once you’ve been the disappointed spoiler-voter, you have a visceral understanding of the consequences of failing to follow the lesser-weevil rule, and so you tend never to vote 3rd-party again. That is the cycle: people do not follow the rule for “no reason” as I pointed out in the snippet you quoted. They follow it for a very good reason! They convince others to also follow the rule… including many folks that have no *real* reason to do so, such as repub-voters in California.
We agree that persuading people to act morally, and vote *for* non-evil candidates, is a good goal. But we disagree on which people to focus on: I’m saying that there are particular groups of voters in particular states which can *sanely* vote morally, with no penalty whatsoever. You are saying that voting for evil is always insane, but that is equating immorality with insanity. Many sane people were slaveholders. Many sane people were soldiers in the German army under Hitler. Fighting immorality is tough! We need to pick our battles carefully, if we someday hope to win. That’s all I’m trying to say here.
“…point of critical mass necessary for the crimes of the establishment order to become unsustainable, instead of perpetually endorsed and legitimized.”
Yes. Achieving critical mass is the key. But the first question is, how? Some say boycott the vote (which I say won’t work). You say push the moral argument (which I mostly agree with… but again feel that there are some aspects that won’t work).
The second question is, what sort of change are we intending to accomplish? From my understanding of the math of the voting-system, the root *cause* of the fact that we live under a twin-party system with increasingly evil nominees is the math behind the lesser-weevil rule. Once we achieve critical mass, and are in a position to make changes, it is crucial that we find a voting-system which does not suffer from the flaws of our current one.
The historical precedent is clear. Remember how George Washington always said to avoid political parties? Remember the era of Good Feelings, when elections were vicious but everybody liked the results? Those days gradually disappeared, partly because of the immorality of slavery that caused regional frictions, partly because of corruption in DC that caused political frictions, but also I would argue because the math of our voting-system guarantees we end up with a twin-party-dominated election system. Not circularly: cyclically.
We need to fix that problem, by figuring out a voting-system that doesn’t suck, or to put it more precisely, a voting system that rewards moral voters, rather than punishing them. Once we do that, nobody will have to *argue* for morality in voting — it will happen naturally.
p.p.s. “Dude, did you not actually read the whole article, or what?” Heh heh. [grin] Yes, I read the whole thing. It’s a long article, but a good one, well worth reading. As long as it is though, my argument is that your article will remain incomplete until you address the election-math.
Calling dems in Florida ‘insane’ for refusing to vote 3rd-party again is simply incorrect, because of Nader — the lesser-weevil rule applies to them, so their refusal is quite sane IN THE SHORT-TERM, albeit (you argue and I mostly agree) somewhat immoral. Calling repubs in California ‘insane’ for refusing to vote 3rd-party, using exactly the same logic as the dems in Florida, is closer to the mark… but they aren’t actually insane either, but simply uninformed. They don’t know that the lesser-weevil thumb-rule does not apply to them!
I’m saying that we should focus advocacy on the groups of people that are demographically most likely to be receptive to our message, repubs in CA, dems in TX, and so on. We should also *honestly* explain to dems in FL (and repubs in FL for that matter) that, while we understand the lesser-weevil-related penalties exist, we still think the moral argument wins, and if they will just look to the *long-term* results of continuing to follow the lesser-weevil rule, they might agree. Especially if we already have many millions of voters in the non-swing-states voting morally, right?
That is my actual argument. If you still think, therefore, that I disagree with you about the morality of voting, well, read my comments again. Jefferson was morally against slavery, but could not figure out *how* to end it, and was himself a slaveholder his entire lifetime. He argued that slavery should be ended, but he understood that, when many of his fellow Virginians refused his argument, it wasn’t because they were insane, or willfully immoral (in most cases), but rather quite simply because the associated penalty was TOO HIGH for them to follow the moral pathway. Along the same lines, while I do not condone FL dems and FL repubs following the lesser-weevil rule, I certainly grok why they might. Would you argue that Jefferson was ‘absolutely not’ really and truly deep-down morally against slavery?
p.p.p.s. Maybe that’s a better parallel than the shooting of burglars. But to me, acting in self-defense is a moral response only to the extent that your action does not have immoral consequences that are avoidable. Consider a situation where 20 terrorists from Saudi Arabia, led by a and funded by a former Saudi now living in Afghanistan, were to kill 3000 americans. Is it therefore moral to nuke the Sauds? My answer is no. Self-defense cannot be used as justification for any arbitrary action.
Say, for example, invading Iraq? Pretty sure you and I agree on that one! Morally, given evidence the Iraqi dictator bought Nigerian yellowcake, and has plans to use it against us (by giving a ‘dirty bomb’ to some terrorists), I would argue that an invasion of Iraq to overthrow that leader was *plausibly* self-defense, maybe. But what if the yellowcake was a lie, cooked up to justify profits for favored defense-industry contractors?
As for the burglary thing, I understand shooting in self-defense as a practical response, but for me personally, I’d rather depend on a baseball bat (and living in a rural area). If I moved to a city with a high violent crime rate, I’d keep a gun… but the first few rounds in the clip would be blanks, or maybe riot-control rubber-bullets, rather than live ammo. Moral *and* practical.
Anyways, I’ve enjoyed this discussion. One thing that I just noticed, and which may be throwing your understanding of my true position off-kilter, is that the SLOW-BEGG rule actually does in fact tell voters in swing-states to vote for evil.
That’s not because I believe they ought to, morally, but as a way to keep the rule somewhat terse. It’s just supposed to be a transitional rule, until we get a better voting-system. I’m happy to revise it, in a way that conveys the idea that voting for the lesser-weevil is still just voting for a weevil, which is immoral… but how can we do it in a way that keeps the rule a single phrase, as opposed to a series of my thousand-word posts? Here’s an attempt.
Revised: Vote *for* good candidates (3rd-party) if you live in a locked-up-solid state, to send a message through time to future primary-election-candidates about what you REALLY want in a president, *but* you may decide to pragmatically vote against the greater-of-two-dominant-party-evils if you live in a 2012 swing-state, where electoral-math hurts you when you vote 3rd-party (but we still say voting for evil is immoral and that this is bad long-term policy).
It’s a confusing topic, and that leads to a confusing general-purpose rule. 85 words! Which is one of the main reasons I want to tailor the general rule to specific audiences: it simplifies the language dramatically, if we make some assumptions about the person reading the rule.
Something like this:
Dear repub-leaning voter in California — voting for the lesser-weevil is not just immoral, it is crazy! Your vote for McCain was thrown in the trash by the electoral college!
Please, vote *for* good candidates (3rd-party), to send a message through time to future primary-election-candidates about what you REALLY want in a president. (Plus you feel great doing it!)
Doing this cannot help Obama, nor can it hurt Romney (except perhaps his pride)… but it might just help make the Republican nominee in 2016 somebody you actually *want* to vote for, not somebody you have to hold your nose and vote for.
(That’s 25 words for the tailored-rule; not bad.)
I see your second question answers my reply to your first, which is that, yes, you are arguing that people in swing states should vote for evil. So with that, from your previous comment,
Indeed. I want to achieve that goal by persuading people to stop acting immorally and voting for evil. You want to achieve that goal by persuading people to continue acting immorally and voting for evil. That is insane.
It’s unclear to me what you are arguing. Are you arguing that people in swing states should vote for the lesser evil? Or are you arguing that they shouldn’t, but that we just shouldn’t try to persuade them not to?
I see no reason not to try to persuade everyone , regardless of which state they reside in, to act sane and morally.
You digress, but you do know that was a lie, right? Surely you cannot be unaware that the documents alleging to show Iraqi attempts to obtain yellowcake were forgeries.
Jeremy,
In the run-up to George W Bush’s second term of office, the thought occured to me that there was a distinct possibility that he would receive just one vote in the presidential election.
He had proven beyond doubt that fears of his lack of cogitive reasoning skills expressed before his first term of office were fully justified. For a while I thought it possible that his wife may vote for him, thus giving him two votes, but on reflection I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
We all know how wrong I was.
So unless someone has discovered a cure for mass insanity, I think you are spot on.
The Highlander