Freedom Is Not About the Right to Vote, So I’m Voting Anti-Democrat Across the Board

Leonard Pitts, a Leftist columnist for The Miami Herald, ran a column claiming that America is in danger of being “lost” because of President Trump. The only way to “save America,” he says, is to vote. In We could lose our country, or save it, Pitts writes:

"What are these politicians going to do for us?"

A guy in Texas asked that question a few weeks back on "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," by way of explaining why he won't be voting in the most important midterm election in modern American history. His words have been playing on an endless loop in my head ever since. You'll seldom hear electoral apathy, ignorance and cynicism more concisely illustrated.

Moreover, he reflects an understanding of politics as solely a transactional process: Vote for this, get that. But for however much casting a ballot is a way to get, it is also, and perhaps even more so, a way to say. One thinks of Norman Rockwell's famous "Four Freedoms" painting of an ordinary guy standing up in a public meeting to speak his piece. That's what voting is.

He goes on to recite some of Trump’s more egregious antics, and concludes with:

If you are disgusted and appalled, make yourself heard.

Because we could absolutely lose America. Or, we could save it.

What do you say?

By which he means, vote. Pitts doesn’t say who to vote for. But since Trump is not on the ballot, it’s obvious who he thinks you should vote for--any Democrat. I left these comments:

And exactly what is America? America is the primacy of individual rights. Yet, the only real alternative to the Republicans is an increasingly totalitarian Democratic Party, now running under the banner of democratic socialism, which holds that government officials can do whatever they want with people's lives and property, so long as they are elected.

We’ve already lost America. The fault is not Trump’s, who inherited this lost America. The problem is the obsession with voting, an indication that too many people--primarily among Democrats--are more interested in running other people’s lives than in preserving their right to run their own lives. But freedom is not your right to vote. Freedom is the right to live your own life regardless of other people’s votes. Only when we realize this truth, and reign the power of government back to within the rights-protecting bounds of the Constitution, will we have won back America. That won’t happen with the Democrats. With them, it’ll only get worse. From a free America perspective, any vote for any Democrat is monumentally worse than Trump or the Republican Party, however repugnant some of Trump’s policies.

Related Reading:

Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty and Sovereignty of We the People--Randy E.
Barnett

Democracy Fundamentalism vs. Americanism

Democratic Socialism: The Rise of the Pigs

Democratic Socialism: If the Pigs Take Over