Vote Third Party, Waste Your Vote

This is a re-post from 6 November 2012. Since then, I have found no reason to alter my position. Perhaps you can supply me with one.  

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Did you perchance vote for Gary Johnson for president? Then you wasted your vote on an unelectable candidate and helped Barack Obama's re-election.

The truth of a view does not depend on its popularity.  But the political implementation of a view does depend on the electability of the candidate or candidates who represent it.  If politics were merely theoretical, merely an exercise in determining how a well-ordered state should be structured, then implementation would not matter at all.  But politics is practical, not theoretical: it aims at action that implements the view deemed best.  Someone who votes for an unelectable candidate demonstrates by so doing that he does not understand the nature of politics.

Even if Johnson is electable in the sense of (i) satisfying the formal requirements for being president, and (ii) being worthy of the office, he is not electable in the specific sense here in play, namely, possessing a practical chance of winning.

When one votes for any unelectable candidate one merely squanders one's vote.  If you are a libertarian, then your views are closer to those of Romney than to those of Obama.  By voting for the unelectable Johnson, you help someone win whose views are diametrically opposed to your own instead of helping one whose views are partially consonant with your own.  Now that is stupid, is it not?  It shows a lack of practical sense.

If you won't vote for an candidate that does not perfectly represent your views, then either

A. you are a utopian who fails to understand that politics is about action, not theory, in the world as it is, as opposed to some merely imagined world; or

B. you falsely think there is no difference between the major party candidates.

The same reasoning applies to those who vote for Jill Stein.  You are wasting your vote on an unelectable candidate.  You are making a statement all right, but nobody cares and it won't matter.  But I hope you lefties do vote for her: you will be helping Obama lose.

Addendum 10/28/2024.  As you may have noticed, Jill Stein is back! And so once again I hope you lefties do vote for her: you will be helping Harris lose.  

Ten Reasons to Vote Republican

By Peter Kalis.  This list, reproduced here verbatim, receives the plenary MavPhil endorsement. I will only add that the first item in the order of listing is also the first in the order of importance.

1. I believe a nation that doesn’t take its borders seriously doesn’t take itself seriously.

2. I believe in a Reaganesque approach to foreign policy. That is, peace through strength.

3. I believe in an independent Supreme Court whose decisions are grounded in the Constitution and statutes it is asked to apply. From the ascension of Earl Warren as Chief Justice in the mid-1950s and for a half century thereafter, the Court acted as a super legislature and handed down a continuous thread of left-leaning decisions with little or no foundation in the Constitution. In response, Republican leaders did not seek to pack the Court or impose term limits on its Justices, as Democrat leaders routinely do now.

4. I believe that merit, not immutable characteristics like skin color or gender, should drive personnel and admission decisions and the distribution of governmental largesse.

5. I believe that biological males, however they might identify, do not belong in girls’ and women’s sports or in their locker rooms or restrooms.

6.I believe that excessive government spending results in burdensome taxes, mountains of debt, bureaucratic bloat and inflation.

7. I believe that overregulation imperils innovation.

8. I believe that many institutions of higher learning have dangerously replaced an emphasis on critical thinking with ideological conformity.

9. I believe that toleration of anti-semitism on American campuses and elsewhere is a stain on American history and that aggressive support of Israel against its enemies is in our national interest and is justified by an informed view of the history of the Middle East and the Jewish people.

10. I believe in a growth economy and that the “secular stagnation” heralded by the Obama Administration undercuts opportunity for all Americans.

Long live the Republic! Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. This an excellent time to be investing in precious metals in the broad sense of  the term.  Au sits at $2738/oz at the moment. But Pb has come down in price. Stock up. Catacomb Joe reminds us of the old Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared."  

Auschwitz Survivor: Trump’s not Hitler, but a Mensch

Here:

Jerry Wartski, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, says that Kamala Harris comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler is "the worst thing I have ever heard in 75 years living in the United States."

"I know President Trump and he would never say this, and Kamala Harris knows this," he told the New York Post.

“Adolf Hitler invaded Poland when I was 9 years old. He murdered my parents and most of my family," he said. "I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes."

"She owes my parents and everybody else who was murdered by Hitler an apology for repeating this lie."

"He's a mensch," he said about Trump.

Kamala Harris is a contemptible, truth-hating know-nothing, and anyone who would vote for her is a contemptible, truth-hating know-nothing. I hope we can all agree on that.

For more on this delightful, heart-warming topic, see J. D. Vance's response to CNN's Jake Tapper.

UPDATE 10/28

Sasha Stone, Meet the Real Fascists

 

Two More on Politics

It may be a bit OTT in places, but I agree in the main with Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano's Open Letter to the American People on the eve of the 2024 presidential election. (HT: Catacomb Joe)

And here's Tucker Carlson to get your blood up. (HT: Vito Caiati)

WARNING:  Should our side win, expect violence from our political enemies. Never underestimate the depths of the Left's depravity. 

Trump softened his stance on abortion: so sit out the election?

Abstaining from voting would be consummately stupid and would amount to the old mistake of letting the best become the enemy of the good. I'll say it again: in the politics of the real world, the choice is between better versus worse, not perfect versus imperfect. 

A columnist at The Remnant gets it right (edits added by BV):

The basic (and fallacious) argument for why Catholics [and other Christians] should not vote for Trump is that he has softened his opposition to abortion. The stated principle [assumption] here is that a vote for Trump could [would] be wrong because it is [would be] a vote in favor of abortion. The proponents of this position know that a Harris presidency would mean countless more abortions, and likely many more late-term abortions, but this does not matter to them — all that matters [to them] is that Trump does not oppose abortion in some instances.

The folly of this position should be self-evident, but we can see its true wickedness if we apply the reasoning to an extreme fact pattern. On the one hand, we approve of Trump’s positions on many issues that Christians care about, including that he: supports families; wants to protect our rights to freely practice our religion (Catholicism); opposes crime; opposes the weaponization of the government against the American people; opposes globalism; opposes woke indoctrination in our schools; and wants to keep men out of women’s locker rooms.

Suppose, on the other hand, that Trump’s opponent is so terrible on all of these positions that she actually wants to do the opposite. Not only that, but she makes a virtue out of abortion, such that she champions it rather than simply condoning it in limited circumstances. Even worse, her dedicated opposition to Christian values would make it almost certain that she would persecute Christians like they have never been persecuted in America. America could feasibly become one of the most anti-Christian nations in the world outside of Muslim and Communist nations.

In such a case, it would be absolutely preposterous and wicked to argue that a Catholic should not vote for the only candidate who has a chance to beat the anti-Christian candidate. If anti-Christian persecution comes, then we hope God will provide what we need to persevere; but it seems that we cannot effectively petition God’s mercy if we do not do our part to oppose one of the most anti-Christian presidential candidates in history.

There is no such thing as neutrality at this phase of the battle over traditional morality and the rights of families. Those who oppose Trump are, as a matter of indisputable fact, making it more likely that Harris will be able to impose her anti-Christian views on America. Many of her supporters enthusiastically support this prospect of an anti-Christian president, and she has obviously not tried to do anything to meaningfully mitigate this reality. Those who detest Christianity should definitely support her; and those who do not want to increase the level of anti-Christian hostility in America should instead vote for her opponent. And even if we convinced ourselves that Trump would not win, we show God that we want to prevent a dramatic increase of anti-Christian evils in America if we vote for him as the only candidate who can defeat Harris.

With these considerations in mind, Catholics have a more compelling case to support Trump now than we did in 2016 or 2020. Of course we wish Trump would be more perfectly aligned with our interests, but his task at this moment is to try to win an election rather than try to be the ideal candidate for conservative Christians. Even so, he is arguably “more Catholic than the pope” and those who tell Catholics that we should not vote for him are either deluded or trying to manipulate us to serve Harris. 

RFK Jr. on WWIII

Pay attention to his endorsement of DJT.  I am assuming you want to live a few years longer.  

For historical context, listen to JFK's 22 October 1962 address to the nation on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I shudder to think what might have happened if any of the following had been in charge in those dark days: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden.  Kamala Harris is worse than all of them put together. Vote wisely. It is not just our republic that hangs by a thread.

Legend has it that Dylan penned Hard Rain during (and because of the events of) those days.  I remember them well and still have the newspaper clippings from the hometown rag, The Post Advocate.

The Journals of John Cheever

Arrived yesterday. I open to any page and find good writing. How can such a decadent booze hound write so well? And why is the sauce ink to so many literary pens? One of the mysteries of life, like why so many Jews are leftists. Whole books have been written about this. Prager wrote one. Podhoretz wrote one.

Cheever lets it all hang out with brutal honesty. Auto-paralysis through self-analysis  on the rocks of self-loathing. I open at random to p. 96:

I am a solitary drunkard. I take a little painkiller before lunch but I really don't get to work until late afternoon. At four or half past four or sometimes five  I stir up a Martini, thinking that a great many men who can't write as well as I can will already have set themselves down at bar stools.  [. . .]

He's thinking about Kerouac, I'll guess. The entry is dated  1957, the year On the Road was published. Two pages later, Cheever lays into Jack in a long entry which begins, "My first feelings about Kerouac's book were: that it was not good . . . ."

Who is the better writer? Cheever. Who cuts closer to the bone of life and left more of a cultural mark (for good or ill)? Kerouac.  

Too much of the preciosity of the Eastern Establishment attaches to such  superb literary craftsmen as Cheever, Updike, and Yates, phenomenologists of suburban hanky-panky, auto dealerships, and such.  Social climbers like Cheever look down on regional writers such as Edward Abbey, whose journal is entitled Confessions of a Barbarian.

I read 'em all, even boozer Bukowski whose novels I consider trash. Some of his poetry, though, I think is good; Bluebird for example.