Wading into the muck

I've broadly hinted, more than a few times, that I don't consider government to be a legitimate institution. The use of coercion to order human affairs has prevailed since the dawn of time and has invariably resulted in war, oppression and general bloodshed. Various forms of democracy, even assuming that they work as advertised, do little more than give people a share of responsibility in the brutalization of their neighbors at home and foreigners overseas. If you believe the hype, elections seem to mean we all get to feel a little guilty about the bombing of Dresden and the murder of Kathryn Johnston by Atlanta police officers, because the people behind those crimes "represented" us. More to the point, democracy means people get a bit of a say in who cracks the whip, but there's no doubt that the whip will continue to be cracked.

So, if I have such a dim view of government, why do I take any interest in the trite popularity contest now being staged by the two major political parties to pick their candidates for president of these over-governed states? If the ultimate winner is nothing more than a prettied-up tribal chieftain who will use political power to shed blood and crush freedom, why bother to pick a favorite?

Well ... because if you know that somebody will be cracking the whip, it really does matter who has the whip hand. Democracy may be no great shakes, but it does give us a small -- very small -- voice in who wields the terrifying and destructive power of the state. I may find government repulsive, but I also find it in my self-interest to try to arrange matters so that our slave drivers are drawn from the ranks of those reluctant to use state power -- even skeptical (as I am) about the legitimacy of the state itself.

In this, I draw from the reasoning of prominent 19th-century abolitionist, anarchist and writer Lysander Spooner, who disputed the legitimacy of the U.S. government and the Constitution on which it is based, but argued that voting could be a desperate act of self-defense rather than an act of allegiance to the state:

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, be finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former.

So my participation in the political process is not evidence that I drank the Kool Aid served in fifth-grade Social Studies class, but rather that I see electioneering and voting as a relatively low-cost way of trying to ameliorate the abuses of the government under which I am forced to live. And in attempting to ameliorate those abuses, it's easy for me to pick a favorite this time around. I'm supporting Rep. Ron Paul. As the Boston Globe, among other media outlets, has documented:

On the campaign trail, Paul articulates a philosophy that recalls the famous dictum often attributed to Henry David Thoreau: "That government is best which governs least." "I want to be president mainly for what I don't want to do: I don't want to run your life, I don't want to run the economy, and I don't want to police the world," he told a potential supporter at the Strafford County straw poll. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and the income tax, to end the war in Iraq and the war on drugs, to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education.

This is actually the first political season in a long time that's offered up a candidate who clearly is unenthusiastic about wielding that whip I mentioned. That doesn't mean he's a perfect candidate -- he's too much of a nativist, he's opposed to personal choice on abortion and he's much more culturally conservative than me. But compared to the major-party competition, it's a no-brainer: he's head-and-shoulders above the rest.

So if, like me, you have sincere doubts about the propriety of participating in the morally hazardous business of supporting political candidates, rest easy. Voting and electioneering don't inherently taint you with culpability for the worst abuses of the state. Participating may just be an act of self-defense against a thuggish institution that shows no sign of disappearing any time soon.