To Vote, or Not to Vote

Stefan Molyneux hosts Freedomain Radio, a series of audio and video podcasts dedicated to liberty-oriented topics. Recently, he posted an audio podcast about whether it is right to support the current political system by voting for Ron Paul for president. He also posted the transcript for this podcast on his blog. He then had a debate on the topic, in which I think he made some points against supporting Ron Paul (or the political process at all) that are invalid.

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Edit:
Since I wrote this, Stefan has posted another debate with someone who argued some of my points and many others that I agree with, and did so far, far better than I did. Starting at one hour and twenty seven minutes and forty five seconds into the second debate (01:27:45), they agree on the point that to use the political system (i.e. to use force) to eliminate force is illogical; I have added my comments regarding this issue at the end of this essay.

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At four minute and twenty seconds into the debate (00:04:20), Stefan said to David, his debate opponent:
“Do you think that government spending as a whole has gone down because Ron Paul is not lobbying for pork?”

As a Congress-person, Ron Paul is one of 535 people that are split into two groups which must agree to create laws. If he always voted to reduce government spending in every way, every time, he’d still be only 1/535 of that solution. Also, he may indeed have reduced government spending or reduced the rate at which it increases, but the other 534 Congress-people may have been acting to increase it. If one person causes less spending and another causes more spending, the person who is more effective wins; if one person causes less spending and 500 others cause more spending, it is not likely he will be able to be more effective than the 500 others, so they win. Stefan suggested that since government spending increased during Ron Paul’s terms, Paul has not lived up to his word. Yet Paul may be making heroic ground in reducing spending or lessening its growth. Stefan has mentioned before that the current political system is corrupt, evil, and does not work, and this is true, but I’ll get to that in a bit. My point here is that his argument that since government spending has gone up Ron Paul must not be doing what he claimed he would do, is erroneous.

00:18:30
“[Ron Paul] can’t interrogate you personally. He doesn’t know that you’re just voting for the lesser of two evils. All he is going to know is that you support him having the right to initiate the use of force…”
01:51:30
“He’s not going to know whether you voted for or against. You just get to do a checkmark. It’s a package deal. He won’t know that you don’t support his position on immigration. He’s going to view your vote as a support of the deportation of ten million people.”

Ron Paul would not know whether each vote was for or against any specific one of his policies. It is the best that a democratically elected representative republic can offer: few people represent and rule over many. Since it is near impossible for any two people to agree on 100% of the issues, you must accept the bad with the good, assuming there is enough good for you to want to trade value in the first place. I might support Paul because he will end the war, while someone else might like him because he will put up a wall between the US and Mexico, which I despise. But in a trade of values, in an evil system that only offers so much, that is the best I can get. And it may or may not be a move in the right direction (I submit Ron Paul’s goals are a move in the right direction). It would be no advancement towards liberty if he did as much evil as good, just in different directions. But I believe he will do a little more good than evil, that he will do a little more shrinking than growing of government. I do not believe that any government shrinkage that he accomplishes will last in the long run, but temporary relief from evil and pain is better than no relief, and it may even last long enough for someone else to join the fight against the foe that Paul helped to weaken.

00:25:00
Stefan does not vote; he says that he writes on ballots “voting is immoral.” He says, “There is something you can do to reject the political process as a whole that’s not voting for somebody who wants to use less force in a different direction.”

What is wrong with using less force? I’ll grant that the direction the force is applied is advantageous only to the one applying the force at the time, hence force is always immoral to at least someone. But I am not arguing that force is moral. I am wondering why using less force isn’t better than using more force. If a local gang boss kills one person on my street every month, and I give the gang members enough money to buy their own gun and kill their boss and have a new boss take over who ends up only beating each person on my street with a club once per month, there is no question that the gang is still evil, but the lesser use of force is preferred.

00:32:00
“For a short time in Austria things were better…but unfortunately you live in a system where there are other governments, right, so the fact that Austria didn’t pursue hyper inflation was one thing, right? But of course Germany, next door, did pursue hyper inflation, which led to the invasion of Austria…There was a short burst of benefit…but unfortunately the fact that governments still existed meant that they just got overrun by the Nazis”
00:33:40
“It’s the difference between trying to reform slavery and trying to abolish slavery.”
00:34:30
“I think that focusing on reforming the state [as opposed to abolishing it] gives people an easy out. It lets people waste and drain their lives and political energies and it legitimizes the very power that we all know is morally evil…” (there is a related discussion at 00:50:00)

Why? It is possible to co-opt the system against itself while simultaneously using civil disobedience, education, logical thinking, protests, etc. to initiate further change towards a free society. While I vote for the lesser of the evils within the system, I can speak publicly about the system still being corrupt, evil, not valuable, not savable; and I can tell people that I’m voting to make it smaller, more manageable, easier to defeat and destroy – that I’m not voting because the system is the way things should be. I understand that the system is evil, but it is so huge that I cannot kill it with one stroke, that I must hack away at it until it weakens and pieces fall off and die, until someone can issue the final blow. I understand that even though I am using the system (by voting for a president who will help me weaken that very system), the system itself is still evil (force via taxation, war mongering, etc.). And since I can understand it, other people can understand it.

00:39:50
“If I tell you that your toothache can be cured by doing the Shimmy Dance, right, and you don’t have to go to the dentist. Your toothache can be cured by doing the Shimmy Dance, right? And you do the Shimmy Dance, right, but your tooth is actually rotting. Right? Then if you continue to do the Shimmy Dance then your tooth is going to get worse and worse and worse, right? And then at some point you're going to say to me, ‘Well I’m doing the Shimmy Dance but my tooth is just killing me!’ And then you say, ‘Well, yes, but imagine how much more it would be killing you if you didn’t do the Shimmy Dance!’ Well my argument is: if you didn’t believe the Shimmy Dance was going to cure the toothache, you’d go to the damn dentist and get it dealt with, right? And so by engaging in political action, which is not going to do anything other than give people an out from what they need to do, which is to go to ‘the dentist of no state’ so to speak, it’s actually making things worse.”

Stefan’s suggested “Shimmy Dance” has nothing to do with lessening the pain or increasing the health of the toothache, but voting for a person who will shrink government does act towards the goal of smaller government (or no government). To use the toothache metaphor, Ron Paul is not a Shimmy Dance, but is perhaps the Novacaine; he is lessening the pain of the toothache, making the bad tooth easier to extract. If I seek a dentist to correct the rot in my mouth and he wants to just yank my bad tooth out with no preparation, I may fear that the pain he will create is too much to bear, or perhaps he will cause other damage in the process since I will be thrashing around in pain and fear. But if he injects me with Novacaine first, extracting the tooth will be easier. He will have acted to lessen the problem, still acknowledging that the problem existed, and later he, or another dentist, will be able to eliminate the problem. As a Ron Paul supporter, I do not think or suggest that he is the magic cure to all our woes, that he will fix all problems. I think that he will correct a number of them, making the overall problem smaller and more manageable.

00:42:00
“Again without sort of specific blips in the radar, I have never seen a situation wherein the government has shrunk as a result of somebody who wants to shrink government going in.”

Why does Stefan ignore those blips in the radar? Perhaps one or more of those blips were temporary positive results by a Mises or a Rothbard whose success was temporary only because they didn’t have enough public support or they made mistakes. Why does he disregard these successes, however minor or short-lived they may have been? Also, David, Stefan’s debate partner, sited a couple government-shrinking successes such as Jackson’s and Polk’s. Stefan says at 01:33:20: “If I’m falling out of a tree and I bounce a few times on the way down, it doesn’t mean I can fly.” I think this is his reason for ignoring the blips of success, but I don’t quite understand his reasoning. He is pointing out that what may look like flying when seen only for short periods of time, is not necessarily flying at all when viewed over a long period of time. But his metaphor doesn’t work; he’s basically saying, “If I’m falling, I’m not flying.” That is true, but if you are flying for short periods of time (perhaps like a novice on his virgin hang glider flight), they you are flying. If those blips on the radar were successes at shrinking government, then they were successes at shrinking government. I think Stefan’s point is that those blips of success did not last long term, as he later points out that the system that exists makes it impossible to shrink long term, it is designed to grow. I agree completely. But, again, I support voting within the system in order to turn the system upon itself as one of many tactics; to temporarily shrink and damage the government while also protesting, educating, thinking, etc.

Also, he is arguing that because he has never seen someone who wants to shrink government actually shrink government (except for those radar blips that he ignores), that it could not happen. In 1902, you could have said “Without specific blips in the radar, I have never seen a man-made machine fly.” But because it has never happened does not mean that it never will. He argued that 150 years of government growing (with only blips in the radar of successful shrinkage) is enough evidence to prove that it cannot be done, especially since “they had a much smaller government to deal with and a much less armed government to deal with [100 years ago]. If it never could happen when it was much easier, how on earth is it going to happen now that it’s infinitely harder?” (00:44:10 – there is a similar argument at 01:02:00). But it took thousands of years of governments and force before humans came up with even the Articles of Confederation, the closest humans ever came to establishing a free society. And even if it is more difficult now that the current government is so bloated and corrupt, he is suggesting that it is not worth trying. He is saying, “We didn’t fight for our freedom when it was easier, so now it’s too late – it’s not worth fighting for any more because it’s too difficult. I don’t see how it’s possible.” Stefan once stated in another podcast that it isn’t necessary for each person (or any person) to know how everything will work in a free society, like it’s not important for them to understand how an internal combustion engine works; the free market will figure it out. Yet he argues here that since he cannot comprehend how it is possible to gain freedom by using the current system against itself, it must be impossible.

Stefan pays taxes because, he has said in another podcast, he prefers to live to fight another day. If he stopped paying taxes the government would take away his home or put him in jail or kill him, and then he could not educate people about liberty and philosophy. So he is supporting the system, he is helping the system grow by paying his taxes. Why? So that he can continue to fight the system and discover or create a free society. He is using the system against itself; he is paying taxes, which is legitimizing the evil and corrupt system and helping government grow, so that he can continue his fight against the system. Some Ron Paul supporters, like me, are using the system against itself; we’re voting for politicians, which is legitimizing the evil and corrupt system, so that we can continue our fight against the system. Notice one difference between our tactics and Stefan’s: his paying taxes increases the size of government and has no possibility of shrinking government, while our voting for a politician who claims to shrink government at least has the possibility of shrinking government or stalling or slowing its growth.

Ron Paul may not shrink government – he may fail or he may be lying about his intent – but I believe he will try harder than any other politician ever. (I did not follow politics before about a year ago, and I am terrible with history. I understand that Reagan promised to shrink government but, judging only from the news-bites that I saw years later regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, etc., I think that Reagan was nothing but a politician saying what people wanted to hear, whereas I think Paul truly understands and believes the principles he promises to uphold. Surely, people thought that of Reagan, too, and I may be completely wrong about Paul, but Stefan is arguing that Ron Paul must fail, not that he is lying, so it is irrelevant to this discussion.) Ron Paul speaks and writes with a great understanding of libertarian principles. He gets some things wrong, but who doesn’t? He is a minarchist more than an anarchist, he has immoral views on immigration, etc., but he also has liberty-oriented views on taxation, war, foreign policy, property rights, etc. He has claimed he will abolish the IRS and bring US troops home within his first two weeks in office, which I’m sure is impossible – imagine the paperwork involved, let alone the battle he will have with Congress to get things done (especially things that shrink government). But if he at least tries, it is better than another Bush or Clinton or any president we’ve had in 150 years. Even if he completely fails to shrink government in any way and to restore any of our lost liberties, and the public becomes disillusioned with attempts to shrink government, at least he will have stalled the growth of government a short while – perhaps enough time for another Thomas Jefferson to start speaking and acting.

01:12:00
“I argue now for the non-involvement in the political process and for, you know, a passionate and repetitive and personal and grindingly repetitive, at times, denunciation of the evils of the state. And for enacting…not sanctioning the use of force, not supporting the use of force, not laboring under the delusion that you’re doing anything other than legitimizing the state when you participate in the political process. You can’t be an abolitionist and own a slave. You can’t be somebody who passionately argues for freedom and participate and try to wrestle control of the political process.”

Why not? Stef loves his wife completely, as he has said in many podcasts, even though there is at least one thing about her he does not like. His listeners choose to learn philosophy and liberty from him via his podcasts, even though he has made a few mistakes and corrections. He drives a car perhaps because of the amount of time and resources it saves him, but it pollutes his air and uses some of his other resources; it is a little evil, but mostly good. He pays taxes (or they are stolen from him), which is wholly evil, yet he continues to participate because the current evil system makes it too “expensive” for him to stop (it will cost him his life). His participation in paying taxes makes him hypocritical regarding his last quote: “You can’t be somebody who passionately argues for freedom and participate and try to wrestle control of the political process.” Yes you can, fellow tax-payer and freedom-fighter!

01:20:10
“I think we place this amazing thing on these individuals that one guy can do something to change the logic that is based on hundreds of billions of dollars of nuclear weapons and, you know, just an astounding Gordian knot of power and control and violence, that one guy is going to stand there and clean up that town. That to me is just an amazing fantasy. There just no example of it ever happening. Yes there’s been little pockets here and there but, you know, so what? Guys dying of cancer rally from time to time – it doesn’t mean they’re not sick.”

There are probably a lot of Ron Paul supporters who idolize him as a god, just like there are those who think similarly of Obama, JFK, George Washington, etc. But there are also Paul supporters who realize that whichever one man is in the position of president in this corrupt system has a lot of power over that system. This one man can rally support from the mindless masses as well as liberty-oriented intellectuals, appoint like-minded people in key positions, even fire “enemies” and veto/negate their work. Ron Paul may even consider himself the savior of the system or the man who will shrink the government so that it “only lynches one black per month, instead of one black per day,” but some who support him realize he is only the man who will help weaken the government (some of those people would then continue to destroy the government, while others would try to keep it at a “constitutionally small” size).

01:32:00
“There is no possible way that Ron Paul will be able to cut spending because the whole point, the whole reasons the people are there and get the funding is so that they can get the spending. The system will never even let him close to the reins of power.”

Here, Stefan must mean that Ron Paul will not be able to cut spending overall, over a long period of time. If he was able to end the non-declared war in Iraq, which is an attainable goal, federal spending would drop dramatically. But perhaps his immigration plans would increase spending so much as to increase spending over all, despite the decrease in war funding. I won’t know whether he can lessen government spending until after he succeeds or fails, but it is worth a try because the alternative of not participating in the political process is guaranteed to get someone who will grow government.

01:40:45
Stefan and David took questions from callers near the end of the debate, and one caller said: “Either the use of aggression is wrong or it’s not. Either the use of force is wrong or it’s not. And simply retracting troops from Iraq isn’t…a clear enough statement to me for him that he is against the use of force. All it says is that he’s against the use of force in Iraq…He’s only against the use of force in certain circumstances”

The caller is saying that even if Paul did one good thing (amongst all the bad things that are automatically tied to the political system) like ending the war in Iraq, hence ceasing the mass murder, the caller would still consider Paul unprincipled. But the caller almost certainly has registered his car with the government, pays his taxes, went to public school (and sends his kids there?), and maybe even believes in god. Does this mean that he is unprincipled? I agree that Paul will do immoral things (like having a goal to reduce government but not eliminate it), but he will also do liberty-oriented, principled things. Even if his unprincipled actions outweigh his principled actions, it seems likely that he will accomplish more principled actions than anyone within the system has ever accomplished before. This is advantageous for a number of reasons already discussed (less evil is better than more evil, even a small step towards shrinking government is better than no step, etc.). How can Stefan or the caller claim that Ron Paul (or anyone) must act 100% according to his principles when they don’t themselves? In the dream society we’d like to create, maybe it would be possible to act in accordance with 100% of your principles, but in today’s society we cannot even stay alive if we behave freely. We must each choose our battles, and when battles are won we move on to the next battle. Maybe one person can fight 3 battles at once and another person can only fight one. Maybe one person thinks fighting to not pay taxes is the most important battle, while another person thinks fighting to end the war is the most important battle. Maybe this way it will take generations to win the war. But it’s guaranteed that if we fight all the battles at once we will be spread too thin to win them, and we will be killed in the process, literally.

01:53:00
The same caller asked “Isn’t the most feasible option to just let people do what they want?”

Yes, that’s the ideal society, and the market would accommodate all needs and desires, such as arbitration, punishment, retribution, shelter, food, and entertainment. But it is impossible to just suddenly be at that point. The caller is suggesting that since some of Paul’s goals are immoral, he should take the stand that the most feasible option is to just let people do what they want. But there is no way to get there suddenly without violence. If Paul was an anarchist and was somehow elected president on the platform that he would immediately abolish all government, I think the American society would self destruct (although perhaps out of the ashes a libertarian society may be born). There are too many people who do not understand freedom, have not ever considered free markets, have not even heard of libertarians and who incorrectly define “anarchy.” The market would try to accommodate the sudden needs of 300,000,000 people, and would possibly succeed, but there would be much chaos and death in the interim. I think a lot of Paul supporters agree with anarchism, as I do, and they see Paul merely as a step on the way there – not as a long term solution.

01:54:15
“Wouldn’t you agree, though, that if nobody voted for the state, if everybody spoiled their ballot, that that would be quite a change?”

Stefan suggests that no one participating in the political process would be the best scenario, and it would be in an ultimate free society. But in today’s American society with maybe 200,000,000 potential voters, it is not possible to have everyone not vote. And that is what his suggestion would require because the way the current, evil, corrupt system works: if only one person votes, they win. Suppose you could talk 500,000 people into not voting, which is actually easy since only about 75% of potential voters already don’t vote. Suppose, instead, that you could convince 90% of potential voters to not participate in the political process; the political process is still going to happen, but now in control of even fewer people. And since these are people you could not convince of the principles of freedom, the principles they vote for are even more dangerous. Now suppose you can convince 99.99999% of potential voters to not participate in the political process; with 200,000,000 potential voters, you’ve now left the political process in the hands of 20 people: the 20 people most resistant to freedom.

Stefan seems to want all or nothing (even though that’s not what he practices), and he is willing to wait for it. But how long will he wait? What is going to trigger our dream society into being? Why does he think the longer we wait the more likely it will suddenly appear, or be easier to enact? He professes that the government always grows, and he even argued that “they had a much smaller government to deal with and a much less armed government to deal with [100 years ago]. If it never could happen when it was much easier, how on earth is it going to happen now that it’s infinitely harder?” So the longer we wait the harder it becomes. What is wrong with incremental steps? Or even if not incremental, then parallel steps: use the system to weaken/shrink/destroy itself, while also using education, activism, and logic to advance towards freedom.

By the way, I am not opposed to someone not participating in the political process. For example, I have never voted for anyone or any thing, ever. And I’m not opposed to someone convincing others to not participate. I am opposed to Stefan’s argument that using the system to weaken or destroy itself is wrong.

01:57:00
The caller said, “Even if we go from the logistical standpoint, it costs nobody anything to stop participating. There are no resources involved in not going to the ballot box. There are no resources involved in not using guns to force people to do things.”

It uses no resources to not vote, but it may have a cost. If you don’t vote for Paul and therefore someone is elected who wants to stay in Iraq, thousands more people will be murdered. Or perhaps the new president will support the Military Commissions Act and Stefan will be “disappeared” for trying to teach philosophy and liberty. Yes, Paul will have costs as well, like his immigration stance, but I think he will have less costs than the other candidates. And ignoring Ron Paul for now, Stefan and the caller are advocating not voting for anyone. So not matter which candidates have which principles, they suggest not participating at all. Again: not voting does not mean that no one will be elected; not voting does not mean that the system disappears (unless every single person does not participate, which will not happen because the person running for president can vote for himself).

01:58:50
“If it’s the right thing to do to not participate in the political process, then it’s the right thing to do.”

It is the right thing to do not to shoot other people with guns. Yet if you are being attacked by someone with guns, it may be the right thing to do to shoot that other person with your gun in defense. What is right, is contextual (although not subjective!). I think it is right, now, to defend myself against larger government by using government to shrink government – or at least to try. Even if only temporarily.

01:59:45
“That what the vote means. That you approve of him using force to do what he wants. And you hope that it’s going to be what you want. But you have no guarantee of it. And for sure, it’s not going to be what the ten million people who fled tyranny and who are working shitty jobs in America, right, they don’t want him to come and deport them, right?”

Stefan is right. As long as there is force, there will be at least one person wielding it and at least one person against whom it will be wielded. It is horrible. And he is also right that assuming control of that force for any purpose – even that of lessening the force – is immoral because you are still using force. But it is still true that one person using less force is better than another person using more force. In a situation where force exists. And since it is impossible, right now, for the force to cease to exist, I support using it for the least destructive, the least evil end as possible.

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Edit:
At 01:27:45 into his second debate, Stefan finally stated what I think he has meant all along: the argument of using the system against itself is illogical. If you use the state for any reason, you are using force; if you use force, it must be a value to you (i.e. you cannot be opposed to the use of force if you are using it to achieve an end); it is illogical (i.e. self-contradictory) to simultaneously maintain that force is evil and force is good. This is a conundrum about which I need to think. I agree that the argument is self-contradictory and therefore invalid, but is it truly what I am arguing? I have indeed said that my goal in voting for Ron Paul (i.e. using the political system) is to help eliminate that political system. I consider it an act of self defense - the state has aggressed against me. Is it not valid to use force in self-defense? If someone is shoot at me with a gun (assuming no direct or indirect provocation on my part), am I not logically and morally entitled to defend myself, possibly by using my own gun? To not defend oneself is to be a pacifist - to use no force, ever. I am opposed to pacifism because it invalidates the self; it holds the self as a lesser value than the use of violence. For example, if a pacific is unduly aggressed against, they hold the non-use of force as a higher value than their own life. My philosophy is that my life is my highest value (this does not give me the right to end other lives or take their property, etc. - the logic of Objectivism explains why). Since my life is a higher value to me than the non-use of force, then when there are no other perceived possibilities, I will defend myself with force if I am unduly aggressed against. If someone is shooting at me (assuming no direct or indirect provocation on my part), I will shoot back in defense. If someone is using force against me (assuming no direct or indirect provocation on my part), I will use force to defend myself. If the political system is robbing and oppressing me, I will use the political system against itself (use one program to eliminate another, use it's stolen money to enact programs that will cease the stealing of money, etc.). I will definitely contemplate this issue more.

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