Are you qualifed to vote? by Roberto Diego

One thing about the truth: Someone has to tell it.

Are you Qualified to Vote?

By Roberto Diego

It is my conviction that voting in a free society is a solemn responsibility. Having the maturity and thoughtfulness that enables you to make a correct voting decision is a high standard that everyone should seek. If you are not able to vote with the utmost of your intelligence, your vote would invalidate the vote of a person who has given due diligence to his choice. More than this, you might be contributing to the election of a charlatan or thief.

I have identified three reasons that, if they apply to you, should disqualify you from voting.

Reason #1. You may not be qualified to vote if you have never held a steady job.

If you have yet to participate in a productive job for a period of time, you may not be qualified to vote. Employed people generally have an interest in a strong economy and want governmental policies and laws that enable both businesses and employees to function well. This is because government has the power to restrict business activity through high taxes, burdensome regulations and government grants. Contrary to the opinion of many, it makes a difference whether a business is free or shackled by government regulations and endless reporting to the government.

What does it mean to “participate in a productive job?” It means living a moral life, using your thinking and skills to create values that other people want to buy. When you take a job, you must develop a sense of discipline in your life; you must build your life around the requirements of working. You must plan your life across a number of years. In short, it means that you accept the responsibility of providing for yourself.

If you were enjoying the benefits of having your own income, home and appliances, even a car, you would have an entirely different approach to voting than if you have never taken responsibility for your own support. If a candidate offered programs to help the poor and you need your income to survive, you might vote differently than if you were an unemployed person who might experience a short-term benefit from a handout.

Reason #2. You are on government relief

Government relief does an interesting thing to many of those who are its beneficiaries. It often encourages people to be satisfied with having their needs met by government. It establishes the idea in the minds of the beneficiaries that it is the duty of all other citizens to provide for their well being. Certainly, government does a lot to create this illusion and that is because it wants the votes of those beneficiaries. Although some people believe this idea is unquestionable, I think most people know that getting something from others while not earning it is immoral. Further, this premise encourages the growth of government and is antithetical to the principles of a free society.

A social progressive would disagree with me about whether you should vote because his/her political ideal is a society where the more able will provide the funds to support the less able. The people who would benefit from welfare programs are the very people from whom the social progressive would seek support. In my view, this is precisely why you are not qualified to vote. What gives any person the right to demand that another person should be forced to supply his support?

If you advocate such force, what is the difference between you and a thief? Does not the thief think he is justified in taking someone’s money? Does not the thief think that people who have money and goods do not deserve their money and that he does? Morally, there is no difference between a thief and an advocate of income redistribution. Both forms of redistribution are a violation of the right of every citizen to the pursuit of happiness. And the damage done to the provider of the funds by forcible confiscation is equally as bad as that which accrues to him from theft. He has to work harder because his time and energy have been expropriated (it takes time and energy to make money) and his right to pursue happiness is also thwarted…while the person who receives the money will generally squander it.

The one irrefutable fact regarding redistributed money is that it does not belong to the recipient nor does it belong to the government. It belongs to the person who earned it and no one has a moral right to take it from him. Money earned by an individual would not exist were it not for the choice (to work) of the person earning it. And since the person who receives the money from government as a beneficiary did not choose to make it, that fact makes the redistribution of money a crime. No point of altruism, no exploitation theory and no right can be mustered that gives anyone the right to take something from one person and give it to another. One thing is certain: the best way to ensure that production stops and society descends into group warfare is to make living impossible for the talented and educated.

Progressives never say they want to stop production or punish success. But their policies are not only immoral (as is theft) but impractical. You cannot expect the victim to continue to allow theft of his property. Eventually, he will tire of working hard for others or he will realize that the entire social welfare scheme is a fraud and a lie. In other cases, he will do what is his right and protect his property against the marauders of government.

One thing I notice about Senator Barack Obama’s redistribution plan is how utterly “copycat” it is. It involves sending a single check to individuals who pay no taxes. It is even called a tax cut which it is not because these people do not pay taxes. At least Bush’s stimulative program involved giving an actual tax refund. Obama is taking money from people who actually work and redistributing it to people who do not pay taxes.

You have to wonder about the power of the state on this issue. Just one check will be sent? Why just a few hundred dollars? Is that all that the government can muster? Why doesn’t the state just support these people totally? After all, to give to others is good according to this view. The more money you take from the rich, the more good you do for the poor, right? More than this, you should not give just what you can give; you should give everything to the poor.

How can Obama reconcile this moral lapse in his own view? Because he seeks, more than anything, to establish the principle of redistribution in the minds of people, originally in just a small way, in order to ensure that people buy into the principle. If he wins the election, he will know that he has succeeded in this purpose. The rest will only be application and you can bet there will be a lot more redistribution in many other ways. Whether it is through volunteerism (which is a scheme for stealing the energy of people for the sake of the government – and without paying them for the labor – a form of concentration camps), higher taxes (which is overt theft of the property of the able), the Fairness Doctrine (which is a way of destroying freedom of speech and stealing from people their right to think), to Foreign Policy (which is a plan to loot the American economy for the sake of George Soros and the developing world) to providing grants to local community organizers (which is an effort to loot the treasury and give it to people who will get rich on a number of “charitable” schemes that accomplish only a redistribution of money to community organizers and fraudulent real estate developers – See Fannie May and Freddie Mac), you can be sure that there will be no end to the looting and no end to the propaganda that promotes altruism. You can be sure that it won’t be long before we are totally bankrupt.

In another, even more cynical sense, Obama’s redistribution through tax policy is what he promises in order to "earn" the votes from those people who will get these checks. It is a cynical political trick. Yet, I can’t help but notice the emphasis Obama places on “service.” As Ayn Rand says, “It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”[1]

Reason #3. You may not be qualified to vote if you are in college

You may not be qualified to vote if you have been influenced heavily by the prevailing philosophies taught in our nation’s colleges and universities. Higher education today is supposed to be an open forum for ideas. Its goal at one time (a very long time ago) was to teach the student to think critically, to be open to new ideas and learn how to evaluate ideas in an unbiased manner. This is not the goal today. If you went to college to get a good education, you may have been cheated. Let’s look at some of the influences.

Hume/Kant Axis

David Hume and Immanuel Kant are two philosophers who have had devastating influence on the ability of our young people to think. Their ideas have poisoned the inductive process and have turned thinking and philosophical inquiry into an undertaking that rejects virtually every valid concept known to man. Concepts such as reason, truth and knowledge have been turned into their opposites and the result has been the establishment of a nihilist foundation upon which virtually any anti-man concept can be built.

David Hume has separated the human mind from reality by means of positing that impressions and ideas are opposed realms and that impressions are more powerful than ideas. This premise creates “out-of-context” thinking and separates man from his intellectual capacity, making knowledge and all decisions a matter of emotional choice. Kant took the foundation provided by Hume, and in an effort to save religion from the Enlightenment, taught that the (collective) mind created reality. This also separated man from reality. Kant went further to claim that morality was represented by an imperative to duty.

To understand the full impact of these ideas in our universities, we have to recognize that Hume’s ideas lead to pragmatism which holds that we can’t see the connection between cause and effect and we can only take bold leaps in action. As things go, the only kind of action that is usually taken, the safest action, is to help others, to be altruistic. Hume also created the foundation for the many pseudo-sciences that have dominated and decimated human thought and societies for the last couple of decades.

You may think that ideas do not matter; that action is more important than thought and that it is useless to spend time on subjects like philosophy because they have no application to life. That point of view is exactly the point of view of David Hume. In denying the value of philosophy, you have accepted Hume’s philosophy.

The key question regarding Hume’s influence is what his ideas amount to in practice and why adhering to them disqualifies you to vote. The most serious consequence that influences your ability to vote is that Hume leaves men without a method for understanding reality. It leaves men to depend only upon their emotions when making moral decisions...including political decisions. And because pragmatism defaults to altruism, all political decisions are based on socialist and progressive systems of government that enslave the individual to the collective. Literally, the entire culture is mired in altruism to such an extent that many people have no problem using government to solve a myriad of “social” problems. If you accept this blindness, you are not qualified to vote.

Marx/Rousseau Axis

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher who coined the term “social contract.” This view of government essentially justified majority rule wherein the minority was charged with accepting any impositions that the majority decided to impose. Rousseau founded his preferred government upon the idea that there was an implicit contract to accept majority rule whenever a person lived in a state. He also held that the will of the majority was somehow infallible and must be accepted as opposed to self-interest. Rousseau is very popular among progressives today because his ideas justify forcing the minority (that is often rich and ripe for exploitation) to accept high taxes and expropriation by the government.

Karl Marx is the champion of communism and socialism. Through his development of a mystical “historical process,” Marx invented a political philosophy that was attractive to many who hoped for the legalized nationalization and looting of the products and infrastructure created by capitalists.

Marx’s critique of capitalism is considered by many to be accurate. However, it is based on a faulty view of both humanity and the workings of the market system. Capitalism is based on the idea that man, when he engages in free trade (with no government coercion) uses his reasoning capacity and his ability to choose moral action. Marx thought that men are vicious predators seeking to exploit each other.

But the market system is not a system of exploitation. It is a voluntary association where men are released to act in their own self-interest. In a system of free trade, the only exploitation possible is when the government decides to interfere with free trade (such as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Under communism and socialism, peoples’ work, lives and property are to be used to achieve social goals; and inevitably, these goals require coercion (the result is market dislocations and corruption). In today’s universities, Marxist ideas are taught with little debate and they infest our students with the idea that capitalism is full of evil exploiters and that America is an imperialist country. If you are a Marxist, you are not qualified to vote...pure and simple.

The current economic crisis (September 2008) is an excellent example of how socialism is a failed system. Contrary to the advocates of dictatorship, this crisis is a failure of socialism, not capitalism. The basic principle of socialism, according to Karl Marx is from each according to his ability to each according to his need; and the two quasi-governmental organizations known as Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae were created specifically to advance this idea by lowering the standards for mortgage lending for poor people. This means that people who cannot afford to pay for homes are given money to buy homes. The theft takes place when the loans given to these people are then packaged, and sold in the private markets to financial institutions as secured loans. The money that paid for these loans is then put into the coffers of the organizations and the investors who are customers of the financial institutions are defrauded. None of this has anything to do with capitalism; the principle is the same as in a socialist system where the government decides every action that people are allowed to take and determines who gets loans and jobs and money.

The system failed, as does any socialist program, when the actual value of the scheme is seen by the market place and people refuse to buy the loans. The equivalent situation in the Soviet Union would be when people refuse to buy the inferior products of a given company and the company is then subsidized further by the government.

In a free market, loans are made according to the principle of transparency. The borrower must provide proof that he has collateral, income and the ability to pay. Only the government could invalidate this requirement. The government, in this case, said to financial institutions that it is ok to buy these loans because they are backed by the power and authority of the U.S. government. They did this by creating lending regulations and guidelines that were increasingly looser and without transparency. The financial institutions were the victims here and the peddlers of government pull, who pleaded with the government for the loose regulations, merely paid campaign contributions (and made low interest loans) to the politicians who looked the other way.

If the people in the government are crooks, the principle of socialism presents a perfect opportunity for them to loot the financial institutions and make off with huge amounts of money just as does the commissar in the Soviet Union who finds a way to skim profits from the company that he is charged with managing. Our current economic crisis is created by socialism and we are suffering from the corruption of socialist bureaucrats who call themselves businessmen. This is not a failure of capitalism. Please note: that this entire scheme was devised by liberals, proposed by liberals, managed by liberals, looted by liberals and then blamed on the free market – for the sake of creating more regulations and creating even more opportunities for looting by liberals.

Conclusion

As is clear from the above, there is one institution that is seldom questioned and that is the institution of altruism. To a great extent, we have established a moral precedence where it does not matter how much a particular goal costs; as long as it involves helping others or helping the poor, it doesn’t matter what the cost is or even that real harm is being done. A society could literally bankrupt itself (morally and financially) by the preponderance of government programs that provide benefits to one group or another at the expense of otherwise free individuals. The result is a caretaker society that runs against the entire grain of a free society.

Of course, ours is an age of skepticism and all concepts including freedom and individual rights are under attack by people who don’t hold any principles (but claim to). The conceptual corruption created by skeptics and mystics in our society has made discussion about a proper society into a naïve activity. If you argue that the principle of property rights should be inviolable, many will shrug as if you are stupid to think in such a pedestrian way. Social planners are busy trying to decide how best to allocate other peoples’ money for the sake of social goals. They do not care that what has been lost is the fundamental basis of a proper society; a basis that recognizes property rights as inviolable. Today, many scoff at such an idea as inalienable rights.

Yet, it is true that deciding on the proper government is not the responsibility of the average person. When the leaders and intellectuals in a society are corrupted by skepticism, one cannot blame the people for not knowing better. How could the average person know what makes up a proper society when his teachers don’t explain to them what it is. When altruism is the guiding principle and when most people in society think that altruism is the only practical way to run a society, can you blame people for voting for the most consistent and corrupt altruists? One can only hope that there are enough people left who actually hold principles and can vote out the corrupt politicians and disenfranchise the corrupt intellectuals by not buying their books. It has happened before that the people have taken things into their own hands (I’m not very positive about it happening this election cycle (2008) but I’m still hopeful).

Yet, it is the job of the intellectuals and philosophers to properly educate the people and today’s crop has failed miserably – otherwise we would not be arguing about absurd notions like income redistribution.

A careful reading of the Constitution will give you a better understanding of what they meant when they established our country. They sought, fundamentally, to restrict government and avoid tyranny. In practice it meant that every citizen was free to think, speak and act as he saw fit – without the possibility of influence from the government. The sum of his rights is what we call individual rights and the government cannot violate the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Its only mandate is to protect individuals from having their rights violated by anyone. This idea has created the most politically free society in the history of the world with the consequence that it is also the most affluent society in the history of the world. When people are free to make their own decisions about their lives and property they most often make the correct decisions and the result is a society where people are safe, trusted and successful.

Marxists have always argued that capitalism exploits the poor and steals from them for the sake of capitalist factory owners. The solution, for them, was to take the factory away from the capitalist (violate his right to property) and have the government run the company on behalf of the workers, decide who gets hired and fired and how much of each product to put out. This is called central planning where economic decisions are made by planners rather than the free choices of consumers.

When a business is no longer profitable because of central planning, the government subsidizes the company and the planners keep making the same decisions that made the company unproductive. Since a central planner has no market-based way of knowing how many products the factory should make, either shortages or overages take place. Shortages mean people are unable to buy what they need and overages mean that products not need are discarded. An entire nation made up of government-owned and managed companies creates corruption and inefficiencies like that found in the Soviet Union. Eventually, the entire stack of cards collapses.

We owe it to ourselves to ensure that we do not make a “light” or “frivolous” decision when we vote for important offices. The people who created our society and set its foundations studied philosophy, politics and world history for many years; they debated political and philosophical issues for hours and fought against a deadly British army for the right to live free of government coercion. It is incumbent on any American of voting age to ensure that he has the intellectual foundation that is necessary to making a rational choice about the people he chooses to hold power in our country. If you have not made that effort to understand the issues, you should not vote.

[1] The Soul of the Collectivist, For the New Intellectual, Ayn Rand

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