Here's a quick thought I'd like you to consider, which will double as my question of the day. If you're a
Republican living in
California or a
Democrat living in
Texas, you
know how your state is going to go in this upcoming presidential election -- here's a situation where your vote really doesn't help your party's candidate after all -- so why vote? I put it to you that if you actually want to make a difference in this election, you'd be best served voting for
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
Look, we all know
Obama is not going to win Texas, or
South Carolina or
Idaho for that matter. We all know
Romney has no chance in
New York and
Illinois, nor in his home state of
Michigan or his governorship state of
Massachusetts. None of these states are being contested at this point; that die is cast. So if you don't care for the status quo, if you wish to oppose the person who you
know is going to win the state in which you live, make a statement against the state of the system itself with a vote for somebody other than one of the cookie-cutter conventional candidates. I would go so far, even, as to suggest that if you're a Democrat living in deep blue
Rhode Island or
Hawaii or
Washington, or a Republican living in a solidly 'red' state like
Utah or
Missouri or
Indiana, your preferred candidate's chances of winning your state won't be dented if a few tens-of-thousands of you here and there vote for a third party candidate. But what will be dented, then, is the confidence that the Republicrat duopoly have that their hold on the populace is such that they can carry on their hyperpartisan squawking instead of really seeking for solutions.
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Afterthoughts:
wertperch says re October 2, 2012: This is in fact how the Social Democrats in the Uk eventually came to be taken seriously.
And to my dear friend
Jet-Poop's comments below, I would counter, firstly, that the prospect of Texas 'turning blue' in a decade is of no moment to the current election; as of today and right now, the Democrat simply has no hope whatsoever of winning Texas, and isn't aiming to do so. If every Dem in the state voted Lib in this election, it wouldn't make Texas one whit less blue in the future. And secondly, I would propose that there is far more variety in Libertarian thought than the
caricature presented; the fundamental notion of Libertarianism is that our government ought not do more than is needed, and many consider the prevention of violent crime to be such a necessary function -- with a police force given only enough power to accomplish this. For, you might notice, when we have a large and powerful policing power, we often find the police to be the lawless ones, corruptible, violent. How many deaths in custody, how many innocent 'suspects' handcuffed or pepper sprayed or strip-searched in front of their families, is too many? I would defend those I love from a state capable of such things, as well as the million other corruptions introduced by petty bureaucracies in every other field into which it reaches.
But I will concede that, purely from the perspective of the typical ideological spectrum, it probably makes a lot more sense for an Oregon Republican to vote Libertarian than for an Alabama Democrat to do so.
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In node auditing news:
etouffee is done
Jet-Poop --
on page 25 of 27. Almost there!!
iceowl --
on page 2 of 10.
teleny --
on page 2 of 10.
Blessings, all!!