For my Libertarian friends -- why I won't be voting with you.

[xiphias]

See, I live in a "safe state", so I don't have to vote "strategically" and vote to make sure that the lesser-of-two-evils gets in -- we KNOW how Massachusetts is going to go for the Presidential election, so I COULD vote for a third party. But I'm not going to.

Here's how I think about it.

I believe that the modern Republican party is basically in the pockets of a coalition of religious extremists and big corporate interests. Now, people will argue that the Democrats are no better, in that they're in the pockets of their OWN special interests. And I'd more-or-less agree with that -- except that the "special interests" in whose pockets the Democrats are are largely interests that are largely societal goods. Oh, there are exceptions, but, on the whole, a country run under the principles of the "special interests" who fund the Democrats would be a relatively decent country. Perhaps it wouldn't have as hypertrophic an economy as one run by the Republicans, but it would be generally comfortable and survivable. A country run entirely by the principles of the corporate and religious interests who currently control the Republicans, on the other hand, would be intolerable to me. (Which doesn't mean "I'M MOVING TO CANADA!" if the Republicans win, of course. Those principles would not take utter control of the country, even if the Republicans picked up a huge landslide. We'd be much closer to that model, but I don't think we'd get UNLIVABLE. Not in Massachusetts, anyway.)

So, yeah. I DO believe that both major parties are run by special interests, including corporate interests. I believe that the corporate interests have a major hold over both parties, but the Republicans more than the Democrats. And the Democrats have their own interests to whom they're beholden.

And I DO believe that a third party would be less in the pockets of said interests.

And that's why I am even LESS inclined to vote for the Libertarians than for Republicans.

While the Republicans want to destroy the country because people pay them to do so, the Libertarians want to destroy the country in many of the same ways, simply because they want to. That's even scarier and more dangerous than the Republicans' venality.

The Libertarians and the Republicans both want to destroy social safety nets, allow corporations to destroy the environment, remove the tools that help promote equality, destroy our country's ability to fix disasters, and allow corporations and other powerful interests to run rampant over everybody else's rights.

But the Republicans want to do so because people pay them to think that way, while the Libertarians actually think like that.

And THAT'S why I'm not a Libertarian.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But it's going in the right direction. The line is not yet above zero, but it's going upward, and even the first derivative of the line is positive.