On voting

Yes another piece from my commentary at Hot Air, and it is pretty well self-contained as part of a Quotes of the Day thread, which can meander hither and yon on topics this one post-debate on Biden and Ryan.  I'm good at that hithering and yonning stuff and this time I wandered back to voting.  Again, as with all my commentary, it is in the 'as-is' format:

Just remember all the triumphalism on the Left is because of Joe Biden.

They are happy about Joe Biden, the least serious man in politics, who was sent out to rile them up.

No matter how happy the Left is, remember they are happy about Joe Biden… it is all they have left to show for their support of Obama and ideals that are bankrupting the Nation not just fiscally but morally and spiritually as well.

As Eastwood said – Biden the man who is a smile with a body behind it.

And the best part is that as people begin to see that Obama & Co. are tanking, the economy will improve. Remember what happened in OCT 2008? Gun sales went through the roof and small businesses began to pull back expansion plans, curtail future investments and set down to weather the storm.

The Left will attempt to claim vindication. Yet it is the course of events that the PEOPLE are doing that will change the course of the Nation. Not our freaking government. This the Left will never, ever understand, and they will attack you for the very idea that people should be free, actually CAN be free to lead a better life without the interference of government. Once this course begins to change this time, with the memory of what happened by not backing it fully under Reagan, this time it will start to sweep away all our notions of politics, education, energy, and production like no other time in history. The PEOPLE are about to declare the 20th century over and the 19th century ideas of the Left as done with. The Left wants Americans to be ordinary plebes, yet we hold the eternal truths as self-evident and we will be extra-ordinary citizens creating a better Nation so that all mankind will have a beacon to look up to and a standard to flock to.

That means holding ALL your elected officials to account: from dog catcher to President. We slacked off as a people and let our parties try to run things. That era not only can end but it must end and it is ending NOW. A Romney win is not something to then walk away from, but a reason to hold to your ideals and to keep on pushing at all levels of government to recognize your rights and liberties to be free FROM government and that we, the people, will take care of the rest of the stuff that we specifically do NOT hand over to government: caring for the poor, the sick, the elderly, the young, and our society. That is my job, your job and the job of all our fellow citizens, and we dare not let government even try to do them.

Why? Look where we are NOW that we HAVE let government even try to do them. This is the result.

An election is not an end goal but a statement from you of re-dedication to the cause of liberty and accountable government. It is the start of the process, not the end of it, which means it re-starts with each and every election.

Remember Joe Biden is all the Left has: the laughing spirit of derision against you, against liberty, against freedom, and meant to belittle our fellow citizens and our Nation to say that we are too stupid to lead our own lives freely. The man is an insult to us all.

You can’t get rid of stupid as it is one of the two infinites of the natural universe that Einstein coupled with space, and he wasn’t too sure about space.

But you can, assuredly, vote stupid out of office.

That task STARTS with an election.

And re-starts with each and every election at each and every level thereafter.

I am happy to vote in every election. It is my way to help safeguard freedom and liberty and it is my duty and job to do so. That doesn’t mean I have a light mood at each election and it is usually just the opposite: I keep my eye on the target through all the maelstrom so the deed that must be done is accomplished. Elections are too serious to get emotionally involved in. A duty, a job, and your means to safeguard freedom and liberty… a happy task but an earnest job not taken lightly.

ajacksonian on October 13, 2012 at 9:47 AM

I can remember the few times that I didn't vote, even in an off-year non-federal election, and those times revolved around a few topics.

First is too sick to vote.  I didn't have 'good health' at any point in my adult life and an upper respiratory tract infection could spiral from swollen glands to the awful green things from inner space in about two days and then leave me laid up for weeks recovering under antibiotics.  Other than that, with the onset of my catalepsy I couldn't really claim to track reality all that well, so that gets a hit.

Second is out looking for work.  When you spend the better part of a couple of years not at home, not in your home voting district and way before the Internet and world wide web, there was no way to keep up with what the local issues actually were.  To vote responsibly one must keep up with at least the basics, and distance killed that for me.  Also in my working life, I was in a major project that had so much time spent outside of town that I also lost track of local events as the project consumed my attention and spent my energy.  I was happy to do that project and it was worthwhile.

Third was still learning the political landscape for a couple of years out of High School.  That also was coupled with the first problem, too, and those were not happy years. 

Thus with 30 opportunities to cast my ballot, I have missed 8 of them and for only 2 of those instances can I say I was actually too unfamiliar with the topics to vote, which perhaps isn't good but there it is.

There have been times when I absolutely had no one to vote for by my own criteria, yet I voted on purely local issues and left a blank ballot for those races where nothing was satisfactory and I knew of no one, even myself, who would fit the job to write-in.  If memory serves I have written names in twice on local elections when the ballot system is set up for those things.

On the flip-side there are races when I had no clear idea of which candidate would serve better, because they would both serve about equally in my opinion and I let inspiration guide my hand.  And in one race, only, did I cast a vote that I could not in conscience give to either candidate, but knew that a third-party candidate would harm one candidate over another, and there is no long-form for explaining votes, so the short ballot must serve as a reminder to both parties to get their act together. 

After that I have generally voted down or against local spending of all sorts, save for sewer and water main upgrades: we need those as a civil society and those deserve backing to keep things running.  I've voted against school Olympic sized swimming pools, firehouses where there is already adequate coverage, parks where they aren't demanded by anyone, light rail, and other bits of crony spending that I don't see as gaining anything for the community.  Roads, bridges, sewers, water mains, electrical distribution stations... all of those get approval due to necessity.  New schools due to passing demographics, do not and I've been in schools run out of trailers that have been on-site for decades and see no suffering in the ability to teach in such places.

I am a member of a one-person party, who encourages each individual to be a one-person party and to reach out to all other parties (one and multi-person) so as to build a better way to run our republic by going across party lines.  If we must have parties, then it is best to have a fickle, non-partisan population willing to infest parties and then leave them when the louses show up, all the time stripping party structures of upper level power and prestige and putting power back down to the local and individual level.  Partisanship based on party will be the death of us yet.  I am devoted to my Nation and the liberty and freedom that we require our government to respect at all levels so that man can be free.  Good government has few things to do, short funding and is required to do the very, very few things it does in an exemplary way while staying within its budget which is what the taxpayers can afford... not what our government demands as tribute.  Government is the Punisher, that is its role, and only when that role is delimited to only that, can we keep government accountable to the people.  Anything else waters that down and is the basis for corruption giving the fertile ground of tyranny when it continues too long.

I am always happy to vote.

Yet, somehow, I never have a smile on my face when doing it.

It is a duty and an honor that my fellow citizens entrust this to me and I treat it with the solemnity it deserves because you have asked it of me via the means of Caesar.  If this is the form of which our Caesar takes, this republic with representative democracy to guide it, then I must render my judgment upon it to comply.  It is right and it is asked of me, and that rendering must take place.

I apologize for the times I didn't vote, I am not the best of all people to be sure.

I work hard to retain the recognition that we must self-govern and that your trust in me is not misplaced, even when I do not agree with you on the issues or candidates.

What happens inside that booth is between you and that which is all around us at all times.  Who and what you cast your vote for is only amenable to your conscience and, when all else fails, to inspiration in that solitude and let that be your guide.  You might be surprised that this does, actually, work if you but take the opportunity to listen to how you are spoken to alone with such a decision.

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote.

I ask it of you as a Citizen of the Republic of the United States of America.