[Peace-discuss] Quit the Party

[John W.]

At 04:35 PM 9/29/2007, Laurie Solomon wrote:

> >Nah, you weren't a spoiler if you voted in Illinois. But as I understand 
> it, Gore would have gotten in  -- even w/ the voter fraud giving FL to 
> Bush -- if Nader votes hadn't thrown election to Bush in those states. 
> Chomsky warned voters NOT to do that again in 2004 b/c things had gotten 
> too dangerous, and many others asked Nader not to run again for the same 
> reason.
>
>Trying hard to stay out of this; but I do have to make an observation.  To 
>tell people that they should not for practical political reasons follow 
>their principles when voting or supporting substantive positions because 
>they might be spoilers with respect to another candidate's or substantive 
>position's chance of winning  sounds like a very unprincipled stance and 
>very much political pragmatism as usual.  It tends to remind me of the old 
>story about the liberal southerners, who upon acquiring and holding seats 
>of power, authority, and position in the halls of government, sought to 
>pursue moderation and going slow with respect to reduction and elimination 
>of racial segregation and discrimination; they told the Blacks that they 
>should cease to protest and making demands for immediate action because if 
>they continued they would get the racist conservatives back in power.
>
>Maybe, just maybe, given the evidence of the establishment to maintain a 
>given policy despite changes in the power elites in government (i.e., both 
>houses of the Congress from republican control to Dem control) one might 
>consider attempting to organize a general boycott of elections period 
>until such time as the people can actually exercise some control over 
>their officials and effectively allow for proportional representation of 
>all political positions rather than being forced to move the middle ground 
>and support the establishment's notions of being moderate and going slow 
>in making changes.  Not to vote is a form of voting.


Just so.  The only problem with a boycott on voting is that politicians 
don't give a damn if they're elected with only 10% of the eligible voters 
actually voting.  A boycott on paying TAXES would be about 50,000 times 
more effective.

John W.