Don’t vote for president in the upcoming election. Don’t join Libertarians for Trump or Libertarians for Clinton or Libertarians for Anybody. Don’t vote Libertarian. Don’t vote at all.
I have the utmost respect for Walter Block and his work. This blog is not against him or even motivated by Libertarians for Trump. If it were, I’d have commented long before this. No, this was elicited by an e-mail I got that made me realize that the Do Not Vote position needed to be articulated again. I also read a very good recent article against voting that reminded me of my own position. Finally, I felt that I did not have a powerful counter-argument to the argument that Clinton may start a world war while Trump won’t. Even after writing what appears below, I still am not fully satisfied with my argument.
Many articles and arguments against voting can be found here. I will not recite these or review these, but they are what inform my thinking in terms of principles. I will offer a few mainly pragmatic thoughts directed at the current situation.
Instead of voting for someone to run the existing government, one might think about and promote its polar opposite, which is selecting the government of one’s choice. That’s explained here and here.
Voting vs. not voting is a judgment call, even if principles are involved. The decision comes down to what you think is better based upon some criterion or criteria. The main criterion in this election is the probability of igniting a military conflict with Russia or perhaps Russia and China combined. Those who think that Clinton certainly (with probability 1) will bring this about, and Trump will not, advocate voting for Trump. They think that the good of avoiding such a war exceeds the good that not voting brings about. Their prospective voting, however, is useless in affecting the election outcome, as far as I can tell. Trump has only a small chance of winning the election.
After the election, if someone believes that Clinton will surely start a war that will kill many millions and destroy large portions of Earth, voting will have proven useless to prevent this. Other courses of action will have to be appraised by those who believe this and who wish to prevent what they consider to be a certainty.
But what Clinton, or Trump for that matter, might do and what other world leaders might do are not certain. Time and again, voters have faced similar uncertain situations and their votes have proven meaningless. Presidents and other leaders have done about faces. Candidates promising peace and amicable foreign relations have switched to making war. Maybe I can find the opposite case, where warlike figures have switched to advocating peace-producing measures.
It is a fact that the election of ANY powerful person like a president of this country, be it Trump or Clinton or other, presents them with the keys to the black boxes and powers that spell nuclear catastrophe; or, failing the use of nuclear weapons upon major cities, spells the devastation of mass conventional warfare. However, we do not know what they’ll do or what will happen to affect their decisions. An election doesn’t change the broader forces that bring about and support wars. These influence leaders too.
Wars have complex causes. While a single leader or small set of leaders matter, so do many other factors. Voting has not prevented or avoided a long series of wars, including two worldwide wars in the 20th century. If another large war is in store for us, it won’t be just because Clinton was elected and not Trump. It will owe also to other strong factors that are at work. Trump is less anti-Russian than Clinton, for sure, based on some of his comments; but it’s far from clear that he would not become strongly anti-Russian if Putin did certain things he didn’t like. It’s not clear that Trump, placed amid an array of forces, will not make a decision for war, even a major war. There are numerous scenarios that can be imagined where Clinton will be less hawkish in office than Libertarians for Trump may conceive and where Trump will be more hawkish. The whole matter is shrouded in uncertainty. Voting doesn’t really penetrate this darkness surrounding the course of the future. Voting doesn’t really make an attempt to analyze the forces leading to war, exposing them and battling against them. Voting is a hugely-diluted attempt at some kind of futile self-defense against a possibility. If that possibility (of a major war between major nuclear powers) is really close to 1 in the minds of Libertarians for Trump, I submit that voting is an extremely weak and ineffective counter-measure. Surely a person with this belief who wishes to save mankind can think of something else than the meaningless gesture of scratching an X on a ballot or pulling a lever.
My argument here is pragmatic. A few ballots cast for Trump are a weak, meaningless and futile gesture. They do not accord in effectiveness or strength with the strong anti-war reason for voting for him or anyone else that is the main reason for Libertarians for Trump. Anyway, war is by no means certain. The behavior of anyone who is elected is uncertain and can shift in either direction. Voting doesn’t get at the deeper forces that are increasing the chance of war. Neither does voting get at identifying and supporting the deeper forces that are against a major war, even within Washington and the deep state.
9:03 am on October 21, 2016
