Don't Vote, Eh

As many of you know, I was born and raised in the Soviet Republic of Canuckistan but defected about 8 years ago and have been free ever since.

However, having grown up playing and watching hockey (it's mandatory in the Land of the Freezing), I still enjoy an annual spring tradition of watching playoff hockey.  I don't actually enjoy Olympic hockey that much because I dislike nation-states and patriotism and so I have a hard time dealing with all the people painted up in their tax-farm's flags... although the hockey is good.  But I enjoy the NHL because it is free market hockey.   My team, from my home town, Edmonton, hasn't been in the playoffs for a long time, but I still enjoy watching.  If you've never watched, I highly recommend it.  I especially recommend attending a game.  The energy in the building is something I've never felt at any other sporting event.  There is something about hockey that is very gladitorial.

I have trouble watching football (soccer) for many of the reasons I love hockey.  In soccer, if anyone touches you, you have to fall down and reel around on the ground like you've just been shot.  In hockey, in last years playoffs a guy lost 7 teeth when he got hit in the mouth with the puck.  He didn't fall down, or roll around on the ground, he just kept playing, without even showing a sign of being in pain (in hockey it is very against the culture to ever show weakness).  This year a guy got cut across the face by a skate blade.  Over 100 stitches, ON HIS FACE.  His face was basically sliced right open.  He, too, didn't even stop skating.  He eventually went off, and got stitched up, but undoubtedly he was unhappy about having to do so!

Another thing I really dislike about watching hockey in Canada is that the majority of the games are shown on the Government TV station, CBC.  I wince every time I have to turn to the government propaganda channel to watch hockey - and especially when they "salute the troops" each game - usually with Don Cherry, one of the hosts, actually going into tears every time he talks about "one of our boys" who has fallen in our great occupation of Afghanistan!  What, exactly, are Canadian soldiers doing in Afghanistan?  What is a Canadian military general doing conducting bombing raids in Libya?

In case you haven't noticed, Canada is becoming very militarized, in the footsteps of the US.  Thank goodness it's such a small country, population-wise, and likely won't wreak too much damage on the world.

Hilariously, because Canada doesn't really have any enemies, they need to make them up for the Canadian military television ads.  Just look at this one.  "Fight Chaos"?  What chaos are these thugs and murderers fighting?  According to this commercial, the chaos is a ship that has something on board.  Probably some plants, like the healthy and much better, in almost every respect than alcohol, marijuana leaf.

Go get 'em!  Attack! Attack!  Phew, good thing they killed those guys or threw them in some cages (jail).  That was almost chaos!

So, besides the usual Government propaganda and the disgusting "support the troops" rhetoric I have to sit through just to enjoy some playoff hockey, this year we have the unfortunate luck that Canada has a national election on May 2nd.  And, par for the course for any election, every second advertisement on TV is for one of the political parties.

People are usually surprised to hear that I don't even, normally, know who the Canadian Prime Minister is.  Why?  Many reasons.  For one, Canada is a small player on the global stage.  I can't keep track of every little countries vile little political theater.  Secondly, all politicians, by definition, are criminals.  Not by the laws they make, of course.  But by natural law.  They all use force (taxes/police/guns/jails) to do things they want to do.  I, and everyone, should consider that immoral and these people should be shunned.

So, while I don't even really know who is running, I have seen them all make their case in their commercials.  They all, as usual, have their own great plan for how they are going to steal money (tax) and use that money.

Not one of them is running on a platform of "shutting down the government", that I can guarantee you.

I had a friend on Facebook, proudly post, "I just voted!" (in a special early voting station, or something). Of course, she has been brainwashed into thinking that the government is good and that voting is a privelidge and an honor where you get to pick your slave owner.

What she just did, in fact, is publicly admit to her involvement in a grand criminal enterprise.  And so will you, if you vote.

So, don't vote, eh.

Comments

[Ed Bugos]

Great post, Jeff!

I would like to underscore your point.

I agree -don't be afraid to exercise your right to abstain from the political process altogether. Don't vote. That is a right too. The objections to this idea typically fit into one of the following categories,

1) it is our duty -our forbearers and contemporaries have died for the right to vote
2) if you don't vote you can't complain about who is elected
3) if you don't vote you don't care

In practical terms it is irrelevant. Your vote does not count. How many times do we have to see politicians push unpopular legislation through to realize this. Unless you have influence over more than your vote, whatever you say at the ballot box is inconsequential -and this is most true where, like today, the options are all nearly the same…and you are simply voting for the lesser of evils…the one that, as someone once said, "charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone." It would be downright awful if our forbearers and contemporaries fought and died to uphold the right to vote. For as F.A. Harper wrote in contrasting freedom with democracy,

"Willis Ballinger's study of eight great democracies of the past — ancient Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, the First and Third Republics of France, Weimar Germany, and Italy — reveals… …that liberty perished peacefully by vote of the people in five of the eight countries" -http://mises.org/mobile/daily.aspx?Id=5173

As for not having the right to complain about who governs me without my consent? C'mon.

Not that we should run from our problems. In matters of politics one often can't.

But it need not be through the ballot box. One can exercise more influence with the stroke of a pen or by uploading a video these days…or even by changing just one person's mind one exercises more influence.

There is something intrinsically wrong with voting for something you don't fundamentally agree with just due to a strategy, like the lesser of evils -unless you can organize other votes around the same aim. But then you are trying to deal with the world's problems via political means -an avenue that has only corrupted the best of us.

So go out there and change the world by abstaining from the political process altogether.

Exercise your right not to vote. It is not a privilege (to vote)…it comes with no real perks.

Voting is at best a form of consent to whatever your rulers happen to be doing, which makes the voter the one who should not have the right to complain -especially the voter who voted in the winning party.