I was going through some old files today when I found some notes from 2016 that eventually became this post during my early days on Steemit Hive 1.0. I know the idea of statelessness is contrary to what we have all been taught to believe about the virtues of democracy, but my views have not changed over the past four years. If you are a Christian, remember that while you are in this world, you are not of it. Our kingdom is not here, and the vanity of men is not where our energy should be spent.
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Many people reject the current President, and insist that he does not represent them. However, if you still believe there is some fundamental legitimacy to the office, it is the presumed authority of the office that justifies the wrongdoings of the president you oppose.
What I find even more perplexing is the willingness of both parties to justify or even celebrate the expansion of power under the party they support. Every department that grew under Clinton was retained by Bush. Every expansion of power under Bush was built upon by Obama. Every authority Obama claimed has been abused by Trump. If Trump is voted out this November, the excesses the Republicans have celebrated for the past four years will immediately be condemned once Biden seizes power.
Some say the Democrats better represent Christian virtues of charity. Others insist the Republicans better represent the virtues of Christian religious freedom in general. Any critical examination of both can only conclude that politicians worship power and wealth, and no veneer of righteousness can withstand scrutiny. of course, there are third party alternatives running this year, as always, but we still face the problem of participation in a system built on a foundation of lies.
For a secular rebuttal to electoral legitimacy, look no further than Lysander Spooner's Letter to Grover Cleveland, from 1886. It deconstructs all the presumptions built into voting, representation, and political authority. We cannot grant to some stranger a power we do not possess ourselves. To claim authority to tax our neighbor, impose rules upon the use of his own property, demand he beg permission to travel or trade, or any of the other things governments routinely do would be bare usurpation.
Society exists in spite of the State, not because of it. Politics is a death cult religion. If you disagree, feel free to comment below. If you are not yet on Hive, you can join through my referral link on PeakD here.
No man can serve two masters.
You'll know them by their fruits.
Precisely. Government encourages us to hate our neighbor and bring harm upon him if he will not grovel at the altar of the State in all things.
When reading the Federalist Papers and the foundational materials of the country, it is clear that the US Founders did not ascribe the same magical powers to the vote that politicians do today.
It appears to me that the primary aim of the Constitution was to limit the size and scope of government.
Voting in the US was not meant as a means of legitimatizing government excess but was intended to be a means of checking such excess.
The Founders clearly failed to see the rise of the two party system. The great corruption of the day lies in the way that we choose our partisan candidates.
IMHO people should vote, but they should point out the skewed nature of the partisan system as they do so.
If people stubbornly continue to limit their voting options to one of the two major parties, nothing will change. However, in the age of the internet, there exists the possibility for a non-establishment or even anti-establishment candidate to bypass the political gatekeepers and ruin the two-party oligarchy. There hasn't yet been an "internet candidate," but anyone famous enough to be considered a social media influencer could easily fill that role.
Trump, while still a product of the old system, was at least a step in the right direction - he was not part of their plan. I don't see him as fundamentally different from any career politician, but he certainly fills the role of "human hand grenade," as Michael Moore called him, quite well.
The internet is still young, but it never forgets. Most US voters are still getting all their information from legacy media, but as the establishment continues to screech in agony instead of learning their lesson, it will inevitably die along with all the shrivelled-up career politicians and bureaucrats who are currently keeping it running.
I could go on, but then this would turn into a rant.
I've voted for third parties for most of my life.
Unfortunately, it is not just the stubbornness of the electorate. The parties have contrived extra Constitutional structures to secure their dominance.
BTW, I wish that pundits would spend more time pointing out that neither Clinton nor Trump got the majority of the vote in 2016.
I know, it's an absolutely byzantine system. To point out every single problem with it, we'd both end up writing pages on the subject. Luckily, I think it's collapsing under its own weight. Remember, an animal is most dangerous when wounded, hence the recent increase of p00-flinging, both figuratively and very literally.
Personally, I prefer to sit back and laugh, since political theatre is the greatest farce ever conceived.
The Constitution has proven wholly inadequate as a framework to restrain the ambitions and avarice of the political class, and partisanship built on false choice fallacies is not a surprise. While I would like to see Jo Jorgensen make waves and disrupt the duopoly, I don't think her election to the presidency can really defeat the deep state of bureaucracy and perverse incentives. It is far more likely hat she will be corrupted than that she will manage to start draining the swamp.
The Constitution is simply the articles of incorporation for the Federal Government. That, in and of itself, is not enough to assure liberty.
What really matters is the rational system behind the Constitution. Partisans have rejected the rational style of the founders. So, even with a decent Constitution, we are on a negative path.
BTW, the same thing applies to the Bible. Even though the Bible is a good book, people with a corrupt system of reasoning can turn the work inside out.
I'm not so sure about your premise. The people who created the Constitution did so under dubious authority. Their job was to amend the Articles of Confederation.
My premise is that the US Founders received a classical liberal education founded on Aristotelian logic (as presented by the likes of Antoine Arnauld and Isaac Watts). They had a conciliatory approach to rhetoric influenced by Cicero and the likes.
It was because the founding generation had received a classical liberal education that they were able to create a functioning government.
Modern Progressivism and Modern Conservatism were created by European states. These modern ideologies were founded on an oppositional mode of thinking that some call Hegelian Dialectics or Modern Logic.
The Constitution was simply the articles of incorporation for the Federal Government. It is not the outline for a society.
What really matters is the mode of thought behind the society. A society with a solid basis in rational thought can thrive even if it has an imperfect constitution.
A society that has adopted an oppositional mode of thought will fall apart even if the society had a perfect constitution.