Why I Declined to Wear My 'I Voted' Sticker

Yes. These lapel stickers were handed out at New Jersey polling stations. In fact, my poll worker went a step further; she peeled off the backing and stuck the sticker on my shirt as I was about to enter the voting booth. But I removed it from my shirt before I was even out the door. Why? To protest the vote--specifically, the outsized importance that voting has come to acquire.

In its Founding principles, America is a nation based on the primacy of liberty--the inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights are regarded as guarantees to freedom to take the actions the individual deems necessary to achieve one’s goals and values. Rights are not an automatic claim on goods or services that others must be forced to provide. America’s government was instituted to secure these rights. Importantly, the right to vote is not among these fundamental rights. It is a secondary right derived from the need for free people to manage their government, and therefore strictly limited in scope. Voters could make certain political choices, such as choosing their political representatives. But the inalienable rights of individuals were outside the scope of electoral power.

But beginning around 1900, this republican orientation of government--first come rights, then comes limited government, then comes the vote--came under severe attack by the Progressive Movement. Instead of its primary function to protect individual rights, so-called Progressive ideology asserted that the government would represent “the will of the people” as determined by electoral victors. Thus began the radical transformation of America from a republic to a democracy, which increasingly subjected individual rights to the mercy of victorious electoral factions. As the Progressives’ democracy gained ground, more and more of our freedom gave way to electoral tyranny.

Today, the radical transformation of our individual rights-oriented republican constitution into a “will-of-the-people” democratic constitution is closer to realization than ever. The result is that elections now are pitched battles between opposing factions eager to force their values on everyone else. In this “cold” civil war, defenders of individual rights and limited government are caught in the crossfire.

Case in point: Consider Amy Goldstein’s Three deep red states vote to expand Medicaid, published in The Washington Post after the 2018 midterm elections. She “reports”:

Citizen power propelled the biggest expansion of Medicaid in heavily Republican states since the early years of the Affordable Care Act, with hundreds of thousands of poor and vulnerable residents standing to gain health coverage as a result of Tuesday’s elections.

Voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah approved ballot initiatives to include in their Medicaid programs adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line. The results accomplish a broadening of the safety-net insurance that the states’ legislatures had balked at for years. [My Emphasis]

Notice the generalization. “Citizen power propelled. . .” “Voters approved. . .” Which citizens? Which voters? Not all citizens. Not all voters. “Citizen power. . .” What is the nature of that power? The power of government; which means, the power of law; which means, the power of physical force--i.e., the gun. Which means, the majority of voters get to force their values on the minority who did not vote to expand Medicaid. Medicaid is a wealth redistribution program. Expanding Medicaid imposes additional costs on taxpayers--the citizens who actually pay taxes--whether they want to pay the additional cost or not. Medicaid is government-enforced “charity,” and the citizens who voted no are deprived of their moral right to judge for themselves whether to give. Why? Because other individuals voted differently, and their voting bloc outnumbered those who voted against.

These three “deep red states” did not “vote to expand Medicaid.” The simple, brutal fact is that a majority of citizens voted to impose, by force, their values on those who disagreed.

It’s not just about money. Forcing people to pay for something against their will can violate their freedom of conscience, as well. By forcing people to pay for public schools, you are not just imposing monetary costs of thousands of dollars a year. You are forcing people to support educational philosophies and curricula they may not agree with. There is no room for conscientious objectors.

These are a few examples. But the areas of voter coercion are expanding, especially considering the increasingly influential Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic Party, which is now openly calling for the full enslavement of the healthcare profession (single payer, or Medicare-for-All), “free’ college, “guaranteed” employment, and a host of other encroachments on our freedom.

What feeds this frenzy of statism? A hideous political philosophy that constitutes the ideological heart of democracy--the idea that society is above the moral law, meaning that citizens in their capacity as government officials are not bound by the same laws or moral restraints that private individuals must adhere to. This premise means that morality is determined by society, by way of elections, which means that morality is determined by government. This means, in principle, that whatever the politicians choose to do is moral because they chose to do it. It’s a modern reincarnation of the “Divine Right of Kings”--the idea that the King is representative of God’s will, who is the sole arbiter of moral action. The modern version might be called the “Divine Right of Majorities,” with “society” replacing God as the sole arbiter of moral action. Thus, if your neighbor robs you at gunpoint to pay for some poor person’s healthcare, hers or someone else’s, the neighbor would rightfully be arrested, charged with theft, prosecuted, and sentenced by government officials. But if that same neighbor votes for politicians who pass laws to rob you at gunpoint to pay for some poor person’s healthcare, it is right because of . . . an election. Instead of law protecting you from the criminal, the law protects the criminal.

We are approaching the point where whatever the government chooses to do is moral, for no other reason than that its elected officials chose to do it. This is wrong, with dangerous ramifications--and the reason for my symbolic refusal to wear the sticker. I don't mean to say that the vote is not an important procedure. I haven’t missed a midterm or presidential election in decades, if ever. But it is just that--a procedure for free people to select the political leaders and decide certain kinds of public issues. I protest what is essentially the weaponization of the vote, which placed our liberty and property rights at the mercy of elections. The right to marry whom you please and the right to freely express your political opinions—specifically, the rights of association and free speech—are fundamental inalienable rights that should be outside the scope of the democratic process. Yet they are major political issues, with marriage equality under attack from the Republican Party, and the second under attack primarily (but not exclusively) from the Democratic Party.

It’s noteworthy to observe that the one major area of our lives that is electorily out of bounds is religion. No one can force their religious beliefs on you, or force you to pay for others’ religious observances. Why? Because we have an explicit doctrine, laid out in the First Amendment--the separation of religion and state. We need to expand that principle to all of our fundamental rights; a fundamental right defined as freedoms that preceed government, and thus the right to vote. If government is to be pushed back within its proper bounds, we need more separations--the separation of economics and state; of education and state; of science and state; of healthcare and state; of charity and state--so no one can force their values in these and other areas of life on us, and force us to pay for them. Freedom is not the right to vote. Freedom is the right to live your life by your own judgement and values regardless of anyone else’s vote.

Related Reading:

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

What does it Mean to Say: "We'll Have to Agree to Disagree?"

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

F.A. Harper: The Greatest Threat to Liberty Is the Idea That Democracy Guarantees Freedom

[D]emocracy is not the defining characteristic of the idea that became America—liberty is. Democracy is important only insofar as it serves and defends liberty.

Are We Now a Nation of Moochers and Thieves?

Our Pick-Pocket Nation

Related viewing:

What Are Rights and Where Do They Come From? by Harry Binswanger