Thoughts on how anarchists and libertarians should vote in the upcoming presidential election. by Dan Clore
(libertarian)
Friday, June 6, 2008
Voting in elections presents a dilemma for anarchists and libertarians. They do not accept the legitimacy of the election or its outcome. However, as they are forced to accept the outcome anyway, and as abstention has no chance of doing any good, the only viable way to attempt to move things in the direction that they desire is to vote -- And to make damn certain that they continue with more direct forms of activism.
These are my thoughts on how anarchists and libertarians should vote in the upcoming presidential election.
Of the two candidates who have a chance of getting elected, Obama is the least bad. (Hillary I would put between the two, with McCain the worst.) Both are fairly typical state-corporate capitalist politicians, whose state-capitalism is mitigated by various social-welfare measures.
So Obama wins on that level.
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 Constitution Party might sound good, 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 Libertarian Party has nominated Bob Barr, a former Republican who has not shed many of his highly authoritarian views. This doesn't make him an attractive choice.
Ralph Nader is generally significantly better than the Duopoly Party, but also more than a little bit of a nanny-state safety-Nazi.
Cynthia McKinney is running for the Green Party nomination. 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 study was on the Hammer of Truth website, which went down; WayBack has it here: (http://tinyurl.com/3oenjh ).
Out of these choices, I would pick Cynthia McKinney.
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, or Jello Biafra; Robert Anton Wilson's Guns & Dope Party suggests writing in your own name.
*****
This article has been posted to Cynthia McKinney's website as:
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in this article are those of Dan Clore only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
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Wouldn't an anarchist be seeking to cause as much chaos in the current system as possible-to hasten its destruction, rather than looking for the most appealing figure? Seems to me that your position is to vote for the nearest thing to an Anarchist politician that you can find.....that only changes the name of government to anarchy-it does not hinder the system, but propagates it. Not something Chomsky would approve of, I'd think.
Admittedly, I'm no anarchist, nor do I wish to be, but I would challenge your assertion that everyone "must" accept the outcome of elections-I don't. I carry a gun without a license, don't wear a seatbelt, speed, used to violate drug laws willfully, refuse to buy a dog license, spit on the sidewalk, and frankly am not willing to let a threat of jail change any of that. How did I accept anything?
Agreed, lacking a full anarchist candidate, and iwth nothing but shit to chose from for runding candidates, anarchists should vote for the worst candidate. Not to bring about chaos, but to exacerbate the populations hatred for the corruption of the republic.
They really don't need to, however, because the idiotic public typically votes for the worst candidate wins anyway.
Really though if you are an anarchist, you should run for office, rather than vot for anyone else you find unacceptable. Run as an anarchist, or run as an independent. Bring down the police state empire from within. Or make things better, irrelevant of it.
As far as... "How did I accept anything?" goes. You didn't. You didn't vote on any of the laws under which you live. Without your signature on them, they are non-binding contracts. Most of which were formed between men, long before you were born, and men who are long since dead.
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