Voters can act more in their own best interests when they have foreknowledge of the ways their normal perceptions and anticipations get used against them.
Voters get misled by listening to gatekeepers, by focusing on near-term negatives, and by looking for positives.
Envision Best Actions
Even in the best circumstances, making sense of new information takes a lot of attention.
This human limitation gets exploited by media people, activists, and politicians. All of these gatekeepers draw our attention to their priorities and away from ours.
To get on course and stay there, we need to generate a stronger setpoint signal ourselves. We can do this by considering these fundamentals:
- What action would a government person take if he supported the Constitution on a given issue?
- How would this action impact what matters most: life, then liberty, then property?
- What overall course of action would best make our rights secure?
Legislators currently spend most of their time taking unconstitutional actions. They grab the executive power to allocate budget line-items. They grab the executive power to manage the faithful execution of rules and sanctions.
Executives also currently spend most of their time taking unconstitutional actions. They enact regulatory rules and sanctions. They interfere with our saving, working, and shopping. They command troops in undeclared wars. They enact tariff taxes.
We need legislators to spend most of their time formally repealing the many unconstitutional existing statutes. We need executives to spend most of their time closing the many unconstitutional administrative departments and agencies, and recommending formal repeals.
We can help ourselves get on course and stay there by making good use of a constitutionalist voting scorecard.
We can use a scorecard to help us appreciate how little government action gets voted on in a given session. We can read the positions taken in the scorecard to help us review our own thinking. We can gage how well a politician supports the Constitution based on his votes—in the most-recent session, and in past sessions when his party was in power and his votes helped decide what could become law.
A time-tested voting scorecard is John Birch Society’s Freedom Index. The Freedom Index explains constitutionalist positions on major votes, and scores the votes of congressmen and state legislators.
See Long-Term Negatives
In most counties, most voters strongly desire to live freer and to live better.
Progressives are the USA’s socialists. Some are business-crony socialists, and others are activist-crony socialists.
To the extent that there is freedom, producers are controlled by customers. To the extent that there is Progressive crony-socialist tyranny, producers are controlled by politicians.
Customers relentlessly seek more of what they value themselves. Politicians also relentlessly seek more of what they value themselves. But what one customer values, other customers value. What politicians value, customers don’t value.
Most voters naturally recoil at potentially having the most-openly Progressive politicians hold offices for any time at all. They naturally anticipate that this would cause serious losses. They naturally try to prevent those losses by voting against those Progressives.
But what they anticipate doesn’t match reality. Having the most-openly Progressive politicians hold offices for a term isn’t what actually leaves us stuck with serious losses.
During any given politician’s term in office, other officials are called on to limit what losses he can cause during his term. State-government officials are called on to legislate against and punish national-government officials who take unconstitutional actions. National-government officials are also called on to use their offsetting powers to limit unconstitutional actions.
Many losses could be prevented or mitigated if voters would choose each politician wisely, and if voters would call on politicians to use their offsetting powers to limit Progressives.
Typically, though, people don’t do their duties.
Even so, we mostly only get stuck with serious losses in the succeeding terms. In these later terms, the latest politicians are called on to not execute and to formally repeal any and all past tyrannies. We have plenty of time, but no representation.
The latest politicians don’t do their duties. That’s what does us in.
After tyranny has been advanced by openly-Progressive Democrats, Progressives protect those advances, ratcheting those gains into place—courtesy of Republican Progressives.
Seek Long-Term Positives
Misidentifying an openly-Progressive Democrat as a problem that’s urgent and that’s the most serious warps most voters’ perceptions.
Most voters decide that a Republican Progressive alternative is good, or see him as the lesser of two evils. They anticipate that they’ll see positives, they begin to seek out positives, and they begin to see positives.
After the Republican Progressive is elected, many voters keep anticipating that they’ll see positives, and they keep seeing positives. What negatives they see, they see as still being the lesser of the two evils, just like they had anticipated.
Governments exploit voters’ natural inclinations to collaborate. Likewise, the Republican Party further exploits voters’ natural vulnerabilities to getting flooded with information from gatekeepers, to focusing on near-term threats, and to looking for what’s good in their past decisions and current circumstances.
But armed with foreknowledge of these vulnerabilities, we can instead achieve the fastest gains possible, by refining our perceptions and by voting strategically.
We should practice keeping in the forefront of our minds how constitutionalist politicians would use their powers in all areas. We should prioritize life, then liberty, then property. We should make use of constitutionalist voting scorecards like The Freedom Index. And always, in Republican primaries and in general elections, we should vote for the most-constitutionalist candidates and let the chips fall where they may.
When enough voters stop electing Republican Progressives, in subsequent elections all voters will finally get to elect majorities of constitutionalists. This will bring a sea change for the better, a change we’ve been needing since before the last small-government major party changed for the worse in 1894.
Constitutionalists will severely limit governments, better than ever. Finally, suddenly, freedom will rise up, stronger than ever.
