James Madison (1809-1817) – 5′ 4″

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) – 5′ 6″; known as “The Little Magician”.

William McKinley (1897-1901) – 5′ 7″; twice defeated William Jennings Bryan, 5′ 11″.

A social order will probably move much like the cloud of insects. Those that do not move within it, and thereby cause others to move, will possibly dropout, but the cloud will move and it will move because of the random individually directed actions of the members within the cloud. If not dropped out, the members will be moved along by the motions of others.

The analogy is also thought to be applicable to molecular motion of contained gases.

I think I pick up on the specific moral issue you are facing. It is one that I wrestled with for some time before resolving. When one is attacked by a collectivist entity, then any part of the collectivist entity is morally burdened to share the costs of defending it.

If you are attacked by a feral animal, you don’t confine yourself to counter attacks and defenses against just its teeth and claws, you justly attempt to disable its body as well. Even though the legs themselves are not doing you any harm, they support and launch the teeth and claws against you.

An individual defending themselves against a collective entity must treat every unit of that collective entity as one cohesive unit. That is the nature of collectivism. If any unit in the collective wants out, they are welcome to join the cause of individual LLP. So long as they support the collective, they are part of a monolithic enemy of liberty.

My recommendation to you, and to everybody else facing this question, is that you not project your individualism on to collectivists. They are collectivists by choice and they share in the spoils. Just as they do not recognize your individuality, you are not recognizing their collective identity.

Just to be clear, morals must always trump utility. Utilitarianism can turn the best of intentions into the darkest of evils. I am speaking of the moral burden that members of a collective must bear. Even if only at the ballot box, they are allowing themselves to be agents of evil. Actions have consequences. Their actions are causing consequences so they are responsible for those consequences.

But if the alternatives were a smaller government (lower taxes, less regualtions and so on) against bigger (indeed totalitarian) government, I think you would vote.

The problem is that after SO MANY BETRAYALS it would be very hard to win over your trust again.

It is like a Congressman or a Senator or the United States (or an MP in Britain) making a wonderful speech about how much they want to fight big government – with the tears rolling down their face (or whatever).

Then one finds they voted FOR TARP (the bank bailouts), FOR the auto company bailouts, FOR the recent tax increaes (and on and on).

One is tempted to say.

“Spare me your speeches – till your DEEDS match your words, I am just not interested”.

Not impossible though.

Some form of night watchmen government (it doesn’t have to be a democracy) governed by an inviolable constitution which cannot be amended and which clearly defines their sole task as protecting life, liberty and property, and expressly forbidden from expanding its remit – kept in check by fear of the civilian militia….

Something like that would suit me just fine.

However, despite my objections to the very concept of representative democracy, if I thought there was someone worth voting for who would neuter the state then I might be willing to put my objections to one side and vote for them.

Living as I do in NE Scotland, there is no such person. No vote I cast from here will ever make the slightest bit of difference. The candidates in all levels of election up here range from soft-left to hard-left. I tried voting UKIP at the EU elections a few years ago. There wasn’t much point.

If there were some Ron/Rand Pauls or some Herman Cain’s to vote for then perhaps I would view things differently.

Although all this talk of “You don’t vote for someone, you vote against them” got me thinking about a way to improve democracy (such as it is).

How about if all elections had 2 questions instead of one “Should we re-elect Mr. X? and if no, Who should replace him?”.

That seems like a good way to ensure every single election was a total bloodbath of all but the most popular politicians, and that can only be a good thing. If the pols were fighting among themselves, they’d have less time left for me….

One can get such people to vote – if a clear choice between a bigger or smaller government is presented to them.

However, the “alterative” of big government “compassionate” conservatives (such as George Walker Bush or John Major or David Cameron) so “turns off” voluntarists, that is is very hard to get then to vote again.

Now don’t get me wrong, refusing to vote can be an effective tactic – but it has to be that, i.e. a tactic in a war, most likely used in conjunction with other means. It is useless though as a means of escape from the war, which is what you seem to have been implying.

“I want nothing to do with this” is almost always a perfectly reasonable response to any demand for action and I don’t think it reasonable to then say that I was complicit in the harm caused by the system I refused to participate in.

To say otherwise is a bit like Homer Simpson when he says:

Lisa, maybe if I’m part of that mob, I can help steer it in wise directions. Now where’s my giant foam cowboy hat and airhorn?

Now that said, a person who has the capacity to act to save another and does not may legitimately be called a coward, but they are not the murderer. He still bears full responsibility for his conduct. I don’t think participatory democracy is that clear cut though, which is why I eschew it altogether.

Ultimately the point is I don’t want to see my dream government elected or my dream society built. I want to mind my own business, associate with those who I wish to, avoid those who I don’t and generally make my way through life neither molesting nor being molested. I still haven’t got that part figured out…..