By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound
Just a few of the excavated remains of the mass graves, of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia
One inclined to turn up his nose against “lesser of two evils” voting might consider a thought experiment. For the sake of clarity, consider what would appear to be a more extreme case than what we are currently experiencing in America. Want to consider evils? Let’s do.
What if you were one of the many citizen sovereigns charged by God to rule your nation, but it deteriorated so badly that the general election for president (or your senator) consisted of only two candidates who had a chance to win:
One of them is collectivist Pol Pot, who in Cambodia quite effectively fulfilled notions of evil by directing the systematic murder of up to two million of his own people, typically by starvation. That was approximately one-fourth of the population. Now there is someone on the “progressive” end of the spectrum who tends to clear the air. He did other evil things, but let us leave it at this.
The other is Josip Broz “Marshal” Tito, the relatively benevolent, however corrupt, communist leader of the former Yugoslavia, who set up buffers between his people and the brutal hegemony of the USSR.
You realize your vote is likely to make the difference in the murder of up to twenty-five percent of your fellow citizens in your country. What would you do?
Whatever you think of candidates who enable and enforce America’s own death culture, including the murder of over a million unborn children per year, consider the following. Please reflect that the comparative circumstances of our conditions now in the good ol’ U.S. of A. and this hypothetical may seem very different, but a critic of the direction America has been headed would say the difference is essentially by degree, not quality, would he not? And if it were a qualitative difference, that would still make the voting dilemma in the reality of our America a matter of dealing with candidates less evil, not more.
What would you do?
(I mean for the general election — besides becoming very involved in one of the two parties’ candidate nominating processes, while getting state constitutions changed to mandate the runoff electoral system — hints.)
For more on the subject, I would humbly suggest, “The Sting of ‘Lesser of Two Evils’ Voting; a Case out of Montana,“ October 18. Let us make the difference we can make and buy ourselves some time, in order to restore authenticity to the United States of America. At the very least, as we say in Twitter, #FlipTheSenate.
Assuming, of course, that in all races in all elections there will never be a true conservative Republican running. In my congressional district (in a blue state), we have been blessed with a God-fearing, church-attending, Christian man who regularly beats his Democratic opponents hands down. One of the things his opponents accuse him of is that he almost always votes to the right of most in Congress, including to the right of most Republicans. Please don’t paint all Republicans with the same brush.
As long as the political parties know you will choose a lesser evil, they know they can run evil camdidates. As long as people will vote for Tito, the political parties will try to find someone inbetween Pol Pot and Tito to run next time.
For most of the last century and all of this one the parties have played this game. Each has vilified the other party, while quietly cooperating with the demonized other to loot and destroy our society. Each has gotten away with it by claiming to be the lesser evil. Voting for that lesser evil has gotten us into the fix our nation is in today. Falling for the lesser evil line yet again is too stupid for words.
A vote for a lesser evil is a wasted vote. In most elections you can vote for a third party, and you can always write in a better candidate. Can they win? It doesn’t matter: if an electable politician wins, we all lose, because “electable” is how the news media identify candidates who are firmly committed to continuing the status quo, and the ongoing plunder and destruction of our society.
If we ever want to see a candidate that isn’t evil, we need to make it clear to the various parties that we won’t compromise our principles to keep the other party out of office. If a party wants my vote, they can run a candidate that is willing to start undoing the status quo, and is willing to follow the constitution. Neither the repubs nor the dems have done this in living memory. Until they run candidates like that, they won’t get my vote.
If you are a Christian, remember that you will someday have to explain your vote to God. You will explain that you voted for a lesser evil. God will tell you that it was still evil. That’s not a conversation I want to have. I’ll vote third party, or I’ll hand in a blank ballot, but I won’t compromise my principles and I won’t vote for a lesser evil.
Based on your premise only.. logic demands you eliminate the evil rather than vote. Anything else would be accepting the inevitability of the evil with no alternatives. There are always alternatives ..accepting them is your real choice.. theoretically speaking in every sense of the word, of course.
I have a tall glass of poison. I want you to drink the entire glass. You don’t want to drink any of it.
We’ll compromise and you can choose the lesser of two evils by only drinking half the glass of poison.
You may not die as quickly, but you’ll still die. Compromising with evil still begets evil.
Chris Mallory, George Bush put in place the TSA and Homeland Security, he was not conservative.
If you choose not to vote you still have made a choice. You have chosen to let others decide your fate. Because it doesn’t matter if 99% choose not to vote, that only allows 1% to decide for the majority.
So make your choice. Or someone else will for you.
You bring up the horror of abortion. The Republicans controlled all 3 branches of government from 2001 till 2007. What did they do to end abortion? They did start three unnecessary wars that lead to countless dead and maimed all around the world. They did put in place the TSA and Homeland Security. They did have lawyers advocating for torture and unlimited government power. McCain and Romney would have followed the same course.
Both parties are equally evil. PERIOD
Sorry. I’m just not buying it anymore. The choice isn’t Tito and Pol Pot. The choice is Pol Pot and Stalin. The choice is Hitler or Mao. When Mich McConnel and John Boehner ram through comprehensive immigration reform that will be the death of America all of you Republican Uber Alles types can reflect how proud you are that you made the Republicn majority that sold out America possible.