Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
First of all, NO vote, that is cast, is a "wasted" vote.
Second of all, why do you "know" that the Libertarian is going to loose? Simply because they always have? I have heard over and over and over again that "Well, I'd have voted for Badnarik...if I thought that he had a chance to win.". Seems to me, that perhaps, just perhaps, if everyone had voted their true conscience, and how they truly believed, then Badnarik may have actually made quite a respectable showing.
That's kind of high schoolish, isn't it. "Well, I know that the "band geek" would make a much better student council president than the "jock", that he's running against, but he doesn't stand a chance of actually winning. Ahh, I'll just vote for the "jock" because everyone else is."
/me steps off of the Libertarian soapbox.
|
The school example does not fit this model because there are only two candidates. In a case where there are only two people running, it obviously makes sense to vote your conscience. The addition of a third candidate makes things more complicated.
In 2004, I decided that I would rather elect Bush than Kerry. Because of this decision, and because it was going to be reasonably close, I felt it would be irresponsible for me to refuse to help Bush prevail over Kerry. And that, in my view, is what a Libertarian vote would have been. The man had no chance of winning, whereas both Kerry and Bush had a significant chance of winning. My obligation under those conditions was to select amongst the two potential winners.
I'll also second what everyone else has said about the problematic nature of Libertarian calls for the destruction of the regulatory state. Not all governmental regulations are bad ones...
__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
|