by Joe Siano
Going to the
candidates' debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose
Mrs. Robinson – Paul
Simon 1968
The song says - when you choose, you lose. Therefore, I choose not to choose. I choose not to lose.
They say that this an “historic election”. Americans will go to the polls in record
numbers to determine whether they will be governed by one of two old White guys
– both with hair issues and an aversion to truth.
One who spends public money like Imelda Marcos at a shoe
store and another who thinks that this in not nearly enough.
Both endorse a counterfeiting Federal Reserve to create
new money ex nihilo in absence of producing the goods to support our nosediving currency.
Both glorify mercantilist trade policies that stifle Americans’
ability to reap the fruits of skyrocketing global productivity, condemning us to pay monopolistic prices to domestic firms.
One is an architect of America’s “endless war” and global
empire, The other who has not done much curb it.
One whom the media tars as racist. The other with 40-year
history of befriending segregationists, sponsoring legislation targeted to “super
predator” Black men and unceasingly making insensitive ethnic wisecracks.
One is said to disrespect women. The other selected a
female running mate who openly slept with her political mentor to advance her
career.
Personalities and policies aside, I have chosen not to choose,
not to lose by withholding my consent from the farce.
By participating in their game, by voting for the candidate of
your choice – even the Libertarian – you validate their corrupt system by
implicitly accepting the outcome.
The secret ballot be damned.
I cast a ballot and here it is. I
voted the straight Write-In Column with the message of “Consent withheld”. I do not want to be counted as an apathetic,
lazy, lie-about lout. I want to be counted
as one who stood up and raised his electoral middle-finger to shell game called
“free and fair” elections.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that “governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed.” My consent is withheld.
As through this
world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
Pretty Boy Floyd – Woody
Guthrie
The 2 Percent blog is about pointing readers to leaders the realms political and economic thought. At his juncture, I yield the floor to the gentleman from Germany, Hans-Herman Hoppe , and the gentleman from France, Étienne de La
Boétie
In The
Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, La Boétie teaches:
“Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to
insist; for surely if they really wanted it, they would receive it.
You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of
the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed,
your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim
a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves
lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this
havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes”.
Get that? The enemy at home, in the Statehouse, in the
Capital is a bigger threat to your life, liberty, livelihood and wellbeing than
foreign enemies.
Who are these frightening individuals and where for the come
from? How do they come to such positions
of influence and power? In Democracy,
the God That Failed, Hoppe explains:
“Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider
human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many
are governed by the few, and the implicit submission, with which men resign
their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by
what means this wonder is effected we shall find, that as Force is always on
the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.
It is, therefore, on
opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most
despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and
popular.
In America, we boast that any kid can grow up to be President. Is that such a great thing. Hoppe does not think so. The 18th Century Tom
Paine noted that “the crown itself is a temptation to enterprising
ruffians”. In modern Demonocracy the threat to liberty
comes from amoral, ambitious liars seeking high office, power and position.
“democratic competition is indeed worse than bad……
by
freeing up entry into government, everyone is permitted to openly express his
desire for other men's property. What was formerly regarded as immoral and
accordingly suppressed is now considered a legitimate sentiment. Everyone may
openly covet everyone else's property, as long as he appeals to democracy; and
everyone may act on his desire for another man's property, provided that he
finds entrance into government.”
Hoppe quotes H.L.
Menken on this score:
“They will all promise every man, woman and child in the
country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all be roving the land looking
for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the
unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the
undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them,
and paying off the national debt with money that no one will have to earn. When
one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is
six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves from
their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and become simply
candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by
then, even supposing that some of them don't know it now, that votes are
collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense”.
Hoppe concludes that the antidote for oppressive government is
the withdrawal of consent.
“mass civil disobedience…... launching a transformation
of the system itself. It is also more elegant and profound in theoretical
terms, flowing immediately as it does from La Boetie's insight about power
necessarily resting on popular consent; for then the remedy to power is simply
to withdraw that consent.”
There you have it. The
powers that be are duly notified.
My consent is withheld.
How about you?
Related Articles:
Consent
Withheld – Election Day 2014
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"Half
the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong
direction."
- Paul Simon
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