Beck: Notes On A Desperate Futility

From Billy Beck:
I was quoted, and then asked...

"We will not be voting our way out of this, ladies and gentlemen. This November doesn't matter." 

Would you condense your argument for this proposition into a post on here? I would like to understand your reasoning. I don't necessarily disagree - not as far along this trail as you - but I know you have explained this in a number of places.

Principally, it's an ethical issue, with several components.

In his book, "The Machinery of Freedom", David Friedman tells the tale of two economists, standing in front of the window at the Maserati dealership and drooling over some hot convertible. The first economist gasps, "I really want one of those."

The second economist looks him up and down, observes him not doing anything about it, and says, "Obviously not."

"Values" are things (material or conceptual, bear in mind) for which we act in order to gain or keep. Here's my own variation on the point of David's joke: I often hear people tell me that they would like to play the guitar. That never impresses me. What impresses me is someone who sits down with his axe at least an hour every day and sometimes four or six hours. That person is taking the value of playing seriously enough to act for it.

Freedom doesn't even have a place in the prevailing intellectual framework of this country right now, so it's not terribly surprising that it's not a value, either. Most people don't even know what it is, much less how to act for it.

The problem is compounded in the fact that more and more people in this country are in fact voting for a living. They would no more act for freedom than cut their own throats. (This is the vanishing American conscience to which to appeal with principled civil disobedience: that window is closing.)

This is a decadent democracy, which must be the route of all democracies. Elsewhere, I have been informed that the importance of this November is in things like preventing cap and trade, repealing the medical commissariat, etc. None of that will be good enough: it addresses none of the endemic rot that has brought us to these straits. (e.g. -- the destruction of medicine in this country has been in {cough} "progress" for at least a half-century, and the consequences of all that are things like HMO's and older people working for nothing but health-care; all the conditions driving the hue & cry for more government action.) The Department of Education keeps turning out morons, etc.

In brief; the problems that must be solved before this culture is driven inexorably to its knees -- and beyond -- are the products of democracy. Their increasing prominence into crisis cannot be halted by the long process of democratic and legislative accretion that got us here. This is a trap, in the same way that a spelunker can very nicely get himself down into a crack that he cannot get up and out of.

Reagan didn't matter. (We had that moron Francis Fukuyama screeching his completely ridiculous bullshit, after that.)

Newt Gingrich and his clowns didn't matter in 1994.

This November is not going to stop any of this.

"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority."

(Henry David Thoreau -- "Civil Disobedience", emphases original)

None of this will stop unless and until enough people in this country stop committing their productivity to it. As long as what we produce is taken from us and disposed as the looters wish, it will go on.

It's about the principles, Randell, and they're all wrong. It's that simple. Elections do not address any of that. 


This one won't, either.