Anarchy for President 2.0
by Dan Clore
(This is a heavily revised and greatly expanded version of an earlier column, Anarchy for President.)
These are my thoughts on how anarchists, libertarians, anti-authoritarians, etc., should vote in the 2008 US presidential election.
(A useful rating of the various candidates' degree of libertarianism can be found at the Political Compass's page on the 2008 presidential election. I will refer to this through-out this column.)
Of the two candidates who have a chance of getting elected, John McCain and Barack Obama, Obama is clearly the least bad. Both are fairly typical state-corporate capitalist politicians, whose state-capitalism is mitigated by various social-welfare measures.
So Obama wins on that level. Those who follow the "lesser of two evils" strategy will therefore choose Obama.
However, I think a better voting strategy is to vote for a third-party candidate or a write-in that shows the direction away from the Duopoly Party that you want things to go. The intention is not to elect a particular candidate but to use the vote as a tool to register your opinion, not to mention to deprive the winner of a vote that could be used in an attempt to claim a voter mandate.
The Constitution Party might sound good at first, but if you look closely the Second Amendment seems to be the only part of the Constitution that they actually believe in, and they also want to turn the country into a Fundamentalist Christian theocracy. (Cf. their belief that the US was founded as an officially Christian country with the opinion of the Founding Fathers as expressed in the Treaty of Tripoli.) The Political Compass places Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin very close to John McCain. It is hard to understand why Ron Paul would endorse Baldwin.
The Libertarian Party has nominated Bob Barr, a former Republican who does not seem to have shed many of his highly authoritarian views. The Political Compass ranks him near McCain, but somewhat less authoritarian. I do not consider Barr a very attractive choice.
Three third-party candidates rated by the Political Compass fall into the Libertarian Left quadrant, making them far more libertarian than the candidates mentioned above, who all fall into the Authoritarian Right quadrant.
Ralph Nader (independent, Peace and Freedom Party, Independent Party, Independence-Ecology Party, Natural Law Party) is generally significantly better than the Duopoly Party, but also more than a little bit of a nanny-state safety-Nazi.
Brian Moore is running as the Socialist Party candidate. I know very little about him, but the Political Compass ranks him as about as libertarian as Nader and McKinney, and a good distance to their left.
Cynthia McKinney is running as the Green Party candidate. McKinney, a former Democratic congress-entity, scored among the most libertarian congress-entities in a study. (Ron Paul scored as the most libertarian, but Republicans are few and far between until you reach the bottom of the list, so that Democrats generally scored more libertarian than Republicans did. The so-called left-wing of the Democratic Party, such as Dennis Kucinich, generally scored among the most libertarian. So did independent "socialist" Bernard Sanders.) The study was on the Hammer of Truth website, which went down; WayBack has it here: (http://tinyurl.com/3oenjh ).
There are also several more third-party candidates running.
Thomas Stevens is running as the Objectivist Party candidate, but I cannot imagine voting for a Randroid.
Charles Jay is running as the Boston Tea Party candidate. (I have to love the name of this party!) This might be a good choice for those who want to make a Libertarian Right protest vote.
Gloria La Riva is running as the candidate for the Party of Socialism and Liberation. While they emphasize many issues on which I agree with them heartily, such as ending the Iraq War, this party leans far to much to Marxist-Leninist authoritarianism for me to consider it a serious option.
Out of all of these choices, I would pick Cynthia McKinney as the vote that sends the clearest message.
If none of these candidates seem to express the direction in which you want things to go well enough, you might try a write-in. For that, I would suggest someone like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, or Jello Biafra. Robert Anton Wilson's Guns & Dope Party suggests writing in your own name.
Write-in votes are not allowed or counted in all areas, however, so you might want to check the local electoral laws in your area before making them.
And as a final thought, remember that voting should be done wihtout buying into belief in the ultimate validity of the system, and that no matter how you vote, voting is no substitute for continuous direct action and self-organization.
*****
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
[link edited for length]
©2008 Dan Clore, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The views expressed in this article are those of Dan Clore only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Dan Clore is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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Reader Comments:
Posted By: Steve
Date: 2008-10-15 19:31:54
Dan,
You are holding your compas next to a green magnite thats why it is pointing to a socialist.
I am going to vote for the candidate of the Libertarian Party because while his being far from perfect he has brought a reasonable semblence of the libertarian message to the attention of the American voters.
I have listened to the the left wing of the Libertarian Party complain about the growth of the right wing of the Libertarian party and I think that the challenge for the left wing is not to fracture the party but to grow their wing thus making the party stronger.
Posted By: Charlie\\\'s Angel
Date: 2008-10-16 03:57:37
The reason you think the CP would support a theocracy is because you have not done your research. What of journalistic integrity? What you claim, just is not there. Nothing in the preamble says we were founded as an "officially" Christian nation. That is a superfuous word that is not in there. Maybe you don't quite understand the Constitution either. So many journalists are out there working with such limited knowlege.
Ron Paul chose Chuck Baldwin because he is a Constitutionalist -- a far cry from Bob Barr who only speaks the language of limited government, civil rights and lower taxes...etc. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing and much of the LP knows this. Ron Paul follows the Constitution 100% of the time, I think he knows better than you about who is and who isn't a Constitutionalist.
Elections are not about ideology, but rather the law -- which every candidate would have to swear an oath to support, protect and defend. If the candidate doesn't understand or is not committed to the Constitution, than he/she is not fit to serve no matter what their "experience" or rhetoric. Plain and simple.
Posted By: C. Al Currier
Date: 2008-10-16 09:07:44
As a Ron Paul supporter, my POTUS choice went to Cynthia Mckinney back in early summer '08.
She seems to be the least 'screwy' of all the 'screw-balls' running for POTUS. Boy-o-boy! This '08 election sure makes a good case for NOTA (none-of-the-above).
Posted By: Dan Clore
Date: 2008-10-16 09:17:12
If you look at the Constitution Party's Platform, about the first thing you read is "This great nation was founded [...] on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
It goes on from there.
Posted By: C. Al Currier
Date: 2008-10-16 10:27:47
If you look at the Constitution Party's Platform...Gospel of Jesus Christ. It goes on from there.... Dan Clore
I am a Christian, but I got to admit that I am not proficient enough in Christianese to understand Chuck Baldwin most of the time. Christianese is kinda-like a suburban middle-class dialect of English.
For the upcoming third-party debates, I hope the candidates use regular English. I know Chuck Baldwin has a speech writer that uses regular English, but debating is different than speeches. Can Chuck speak real English when he's in a bind? I'm also wondering about Cynthia Mckinney. If she gets in a bind, is she gonna start rapping?
Posted By: Jean-Christophe Roux
Date: 2008-10-16 12:07:51
The mere fact that abstentionsim is not mentioned a an option show that this is a nasty piece of statist propaganda.Don't vote. It only encourages them.