The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Daily Pundit: Let’s Think This Through

Posted on | January 28, 2012 | 23 Comments

by Smitty

I said I care that people vote, but not for whom they vote. You reply:

Man, you can’t really mean that. You don’t care for whom people vote? You talk a lot about your knowledge of history, and yet you’ve forgotten all those cases where people have voted themselves into the most atrocious tyrannies in history? The election of one Adolf Hitler springs to mind.
I care who people vote for.

Wow. Talk about mis-communication, and efficiently asserting a maximally bad result. Of course my studied disinterest in the details of other peoples’ voting entails risk. This is precisely the meaning of Franklin’s remark: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Liberty means the possibility that everything can go pear shaped. Creation can reject God. Men can mistake the lower end of the digestive tract for a sex organ. Free people can vote for debt slavery.

I either respect liberty, and the possibility for inefficiency, stupidity, evil, and the like, or set myself up as some painful know-it-all. Blogging is bad enough, where I go out on the internet and attempt to persuade. But persuasion only goes so far before becoming coercion, and corrupting liberty. And, yes, to auto-Godwin myself, becoming Hitler.

Hence the deliberate mental discipline of saying: “I care that you vote, but not for whom you vote.” Maybe you can suggest some better location for a line.

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Category: Bill Quick

Comments

  • Anonymous

    We obviously need a conservative alternative to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.  http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/amazing-animals-pikas.html I thought it was a joke when Joe Scarborough was claiming to be more conservative than Newt, but then realized he was really serious. Darn, I did not realize Morning Joe was a regular conservative bastion! How could I have missed that? Okay, if Newt does not please him…how about a pika? No not Mika, pika.
    But given we only have two choices, I have to go for the pika…  wait, there is an alternative conservative choice (beyond a short eared mountain rabbit?)

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    I may gag and die, but I have to agree with Quick on this one.

    I am 100% AGAINST all the “voting is your duty” and “rock the vote” campaigns which shame people into registering and voting.  Many people have no interest in politics, economics, national or foreign affairs and policies.  They don’t read the news, they don’t follow the issues, they haven’t educated themselves about it.

    What possible benefit can it be to berate these gentle apathetic folks into tossing a coin in a voting booth every couple of years.

    ON THE CONTRARY:  if you don’t give a rip about policy or politics and do not follow the news or the issues, it is your patriotic duty to NOT vote until you educate yourself.

    To believe it can possibly be of service to our polity to encourage the disinterested to vote is frankly idiotic.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I believe in the Constitution. To hell with democracy. I say enforce the Constitution and the Bill of Rights according to the precise language they are written in. If you do that, then you maximize the life, influence, and prevalence of liberty. If nobody likes that-fuck ‘em. It was written precisely because the founders knew fully that most people don’t have enough goddamn sense to come in out of the rain, much less govern themselves. They wrote it to maximize the ability of good leaders to rise to the occasion and protect liberty, not so the mass of people could exercise some non-existent God given inherent wisdom and rule themselves wisely and well. How well has direct democracy worked out in oh so progressive and advanced California?

  • Anonymous

    Heinlein had it right in Starship Troopers.  Full citizenship through service.

  • http://katypundit.com/ David – KatyPundit

    I’m with both of you.  I could care less who people vote for as long as they don’t vote for Mitt Romney.

  • http://dailypundit.com/ SteveF

    Men can mistake the lower end of the digestive tract for a sex organ.

    Barack Obama’s father apparently did. 

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    When it comes to voting, most people need to turn to trusted leaders, whom they admire and respect, to guide them in their voting decisions.

    For example, some people might look to and take the advice of Herman Cain, in his endorsement of Newt-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70Lla1wDSZs&feature=youtu.be

  • Pingback: Godwin Be Damned, I Still Care Deeply How People Vote | Daily Pundit

  • http://rightnetwork.com Jack Reno

    If only he actually had.

  • http://rightnetwork.com Jack Reno

    In which we find, once again, that inside every true believer is a little fascist struggling to get out and get his way.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    God bless the children:  http://tinyurl.com/72ethy6

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    One lying horn-dog endorses another worse one.  Film at eleven.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UNZU74NIXQBSAAC5PR2B36VMWM Edward

    Ok you’re going to have to explain why Adjoran is supposedly “fascist” for his comment.

    His point is blindingly simple.  If you are so completely uninterested in the issues that you can’t be bothered to be informed and so apathetic that you can’t be bothered to register to vote then perhaps the Republic would be better off if such people didn’t actually get shamed into registering and voting.

    And how is that fascist?

    Or is your use of “fascist” just a puerile bit of overblown nonsense thrown out there without anything to support it?

    Uninquiring minds really don’t give a damn.  But since you’re out on that limb all by your lonesome, go right ahead and defend your position if you can.

  • http://twitter.com/Weirddave0 Dave

    Curious. Just curious, mind you, not endorsing anyone. Got any proof that Cain actually is a horndog? All I’ve seen is unsubstantiated rumors that were enough to take an unprepared or possibly not serious candidate out of the race.  Or are you subscribing to the “where there’s smoke there’s got to be fire” theory of acquiescing to the preferred narrative of the  media? Inquiring minds want to know.

  • Bobbymike34

    At one point in our history when politicians adhered to the Constitution it kind of, sort of, didn’t matter how ignorant the electorate was.

    But for the last 80 years or so, starting mainly with FDR, leftist politicians have ignored, twisted and generally abrogated the Constitution in order to appeal to the ignorant masses.

    Today the ignorant voting is a very dangerous thing.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    It would only be fascist under two conditions: 1) there is no desire to inform and fire up these limpid voters; 2) the person making the comment thought it would be good public policy to keep these people always in such a state and not voting.

    Actually, from what I’ve seen and read of fascist states, they seem to come about when the populace is all fired up, so there’s that.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    Ah, I forgot to add this to point 1): fire up these limpid voters with more demogoguery (the only thing that probably would fire them up after all) and turned them loose

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    yes and comrades Stalin and Himmler would love this from you

    Heinlein and Rand had some interesting ideas, but the problem for them both was that they both read Nietzche and fell under the spell….just like the collectivists did.

  • Pathfinder’s wife

    But the big question is: what constitutes “the ignorant”, ah there’s the rub!

  • Tennwriter

    I do believe this lad thinks Fascist=Bad, and has no thoughts beyond that.

    Fascist= Obama’s takeover of GM.  And yes, that was Bad.  But I’m certain Adjoran was against that, unlike you.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Give him time, and he’ll be saying Callista gave Herman a hand job in return for his endorsement.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    This ‘everyone must vote’ bromide is nothing but a Leftist scheme to accumulate more votes. Uninformed voters are Useful Idiots for the Left because they can be emotionally manipulated – something at which the Left are experts.

    So, if you won’t take the time to stay informed, then stay home on Election Day ? that’s your duty, dammit.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    -Actually, more like the last 110 years.

    -For the first fifty years of America’s existence, usually on property owners could vote [women, of course, could not] – ahh, the good old days [I'm serious].

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