The Republican Party has not given African Americans a good reason to vote for the party, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said Tuesday night.He's right -- there's no good reason for black people to vote Republican. Very true. But he stopped far short of completeness. He really should have mentioned that there's also no reason for white people to vote Republican. Also left unreported was the fact that there's no reason for people of whatever color to vote Democratic; nor is there sufficient reason for anyone to vote big-L Libertarian.
"You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Steele said at DePaul University, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Indeed, there's no good reason for anyone to vote at all -- and there's quite a good reason not to. Voting implies your consent to the outcome. Voting, by large numbers of people, lends a spurious patina of legitimacy to the clownish gangsters who infest public office. Just say "no" this May, and thereafter.
4 comments:
The maxim in law is, "Qui tacit consentit" - Silence implies consent.
And voting implies active desire.
Also, that maxim doesn't apply, for instance, to a contract. If someone hands me a contract, and I abstain from signing it, I have not consented to its terms merely because I neglected to tear it up. Voting is much closer to signing a contract, although as Lysander Spooner points out, even that is not a valid legal means of consenting to the government... it just looks like one.
Something about avoiding the appearance of evil...
Well, Harl, I'm minded of Mr. Bumble (from Oliver Twist): "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass, a idiot."
Great post and good advice, Jim. Your thoughts are something like mine when people ask if I think women should be allowed in combat zones: "Certainly not. And neither should men."
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