by Chris/Information Liberation Opinion
One of the most common sayings among statists and government people is “you can’t complain if you didn’t vote.”
The idea is, if you didn’t try to influence the machinery of the state, then you have no right to complain about what the machinery of the state does to you against your will.
The idea is, of course, laughable on it’s face.
As with all statist memes, the reality is the opposite. You can’t complain if you *did* vote!
Why? Because, *gasp* you voted for it!
By taking part in the state’s voting ritual, you affirm the legitimacy of the system, you tell the government how you want the state’s machinery to run, you say how you want to force people to live.
By not voting, you are voicing your displeasure with the system, you are showing it has no validity in your life, you’re showing it’s irrelevant and the system is an illegitimate fraud.
The biggest constituency in America is not republicans or democrats, the biggest constituency is non-voters! Whether it be because they don’t care, don’t have the time, don’t think their vote counts for jack squat, or think voting is inherently immoral because it involves telling strangers how to live, the non-voter is the largest voter! They’re voting not to take part in the state’s charade!
Certainly an argument could be made, “I don’t want the state to rob from me etc., so therefore I try to minimize it’s damages.”
That’s all fine and dandy, but for the average voter, I think it’s likely they go in the booth with the intent of trying to tell other people how to live. Of course, they get the oppressive nanny state they ask for, and when it comes to burn them, all the sudden they start to complain. Not enough to actually question the system, just enough to go back next election and vote for some other clown who tells them everything
they want to hear and talks to them like an idiot. While I would never actually say they “can’t complain if they did vote,” the fact of the matter is, if anyone has any less of a right to complain, it’s voters, not non-voters. You don’t grant someone the right to rule over you and then complain because they don’t do everything you want, that they would act in their own best interests, and not yours, is to be expected. If you only did the same, we wouldn’t be in this horrible mess.
I did not vote in this election out of principle, previously I never voted because I just didn’t care, the reality is the same regardless. I do not grant the system any authority, nor do I grant the goon-squad government any legitimacy.
The state is a gang of robbers and thieves writ large, they have absolutely no right to tell anyone else how to live, they have absolutely no right to expropriate their neighbors wealth, and they have absolutely no continuright to threaten their neighbors with guns if they don’t comply with their arbitrary dictates. That a group of strangers voted for them to do it changes nothing.
(Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com. He doesn’t believe in government by goon-squad and instead wishes to live in a free society. You can read more of his commentary here).
