The radio is full of campaign commercials. The newspaper is loaded with articles about political candidates. The internet inundates me with reminders to vote. We all learned that voting is our civic duty in school, but I ask you to consider the full implications of electoral politics in a new light before you plan to cast a ballot.
Our rights are defined by our reciprocal spheres of authority as individuals, defined by life, liberty and property. I do not have the right to kill you, imprison you, or take what you have earned or produced. You likewise have the obligation to not commit such trespasses against me. The Golden Rule is the basis of such a philosophy of rights. However, politics is fundamentally about delegating to a complete stranger the authority to trespass against your neighbors.
If I do not have the right to tax you, impose license requirements upon you, dictate what you may buy and sell, grant permission before you build or travel, or otherwise govern you, how can I grant this power to someone else? Yet the political disputes in most cases boil down to bickering over who should trespass against whom. Partisan propaganda is used to promise trespass against rights as if people are not to be trusted to run their own their lives.
Strangely, we are nonetheless deemed sufficiently responsible on election day to choose who will govern our neighbors through the political manifestation of the bandwagon fallacy. According to democracy, I am incompetent to manage my own affairs today, but tomorrow, I am sufficiently competent to manage yours by proxy merely because a lying politician got enough popular support in an arbitrary zero-sum game. That makes no sense.
Liberty isn't something granted, it is something that is either respected or trespassed against. Government operates entirely through trespass. A politician who promises to give you liberty is necessarily claiming ownership over your freedom in the first place as a usurper. Every election is billed as The Most Important Election Ever, but if your vote really matters, it is a trespass against others and support for authoritarian busybody control freaks, not an exercise of your rights.
Don't vote. It is beneath your dignity.
