In which I revise my presidential horserace estimate
Since I wrote a while back that Ron Paul doesn’t have a chance of winning the Republican nomination, it’s high time I announced that I’ve seen enough support for him to change my mind on that point. Ron Paul can win the Republican nomination and I’ll even go so far as to say that he’s the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton.
That, however, is a point of electoral analysis rather than ideology — and I advocate an anti-electoral ideology. Regardless of the particulars of the electoral horserace, I don’t advocate voting for Ron Paul or any other politician. The most the Paul campaign will get from me is an acknowledgement that, in the present political context, he is “progressive” (in a free-market libertarian sense, rather than a social democratic sense).
The occasion of my writing this is as a result of an article by Walter Block urging libertarian support for Ron Paul. Block makes some other points that I do wish to dispute, and will in a later post, but he first tackles the “Ron Paul can’t win” notion and I’ll grant him that at this point it does indeed appear false after all.
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[...] 9th, 2007 Brad Spangler writes: Since I wrote a while back that Ron Paul doesn’t have a chance of winning the Republican [...]
The principled approach to not participating in voting that some anarcho-libertarians take is irrational. It all stems from the irrational moral opposition to “initiation of force” or the “non-aggression principle.” Assume for a minute that there was an election taking place that was so close that only a few votes could decide between an authoritarian who would initiate some changes that resulted in you losing a little liberty and a libertarian who would make some small changes that resulted in you having a little more liberty. Now assume you and a few of your anarchist friends decide not to vote because of your principles, and therefore the authoritarian wins and you have to live your lives under a little less liberty. Because of following your principles, you now have less liberty than you had before. Therefore, your moral principles are worthless. It being morally pure results in an increase of your own suffering, what is the point? The only principle that really matters is the consequences of your action or inaction, whatever that action or inaction may be. That’s why I’m not an anarchist, but an egoist. Vote for Ron Paul.
Devon: the odds of an election being that close and meaning that much are astronomical. You’d have a better chance of being struck by lightning twelve times and surviving.
If one believes that nobody should run the State, then the only proper vote is for nobody. A government controlled by Ron Paul would be a clear improvement, but it would still be a government. Besides, there are ways of convincing people to at LEAST go towards improvement for now without giving material support to the current system.
Change the example then. Say 100,000 anarchists refuse to vote on principle, and therefore allow the election of a government official that makes some changes that decrease liberty. Your moral principles are worthless. Thanks to the negligence of you non-voting anarchists we have less liberty than we would otherwise have. The non-aggression principle is worthless other than possibly as a rough general rule for most human interaction, which is why anarchism is useless.
You say “A government controlled by Ron Paul would be a clear improvement, but it would still be a government.” So, you choose no improvement over improvement simply because “it’s a government”? Think about how irrational that is. What’s moral, or what ought or ought not be, is irrelevant, if being moral results in less liberty than more.
“What’s moral, or what ought or ought not be, is irrelevant, if being moral results in less liberty than more.”
Statements like that are the best arguments against libertarianism. My God.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Devon is a libertarian.
I am indeed a libertarian. I’m just not a deontologist libertarian. I’m a egoist/consequentialist libertarian. Don’t forget about us. I don’t subscribe to the non-aggression principle or oppose “initiation of force” as a moral rule. If there is a choice between refraining from aggression and having less liberty, and engaging in some aggression and having more liberty, I will choose the latter course of action. Because we consequentialists don’t subscribe to the non-aggression principle, we don’t have our hands tied. Liberty is more important to consequentialists than refraining from all initiation of force. I don’t care whether voting is supporting initiation of force or not. If it helps to provide my life a little more liberty, I’m going to vote.
“Perhaps the most persistent fundamental argument among libertarians has been between those who believe that freedom is a good thing because of its consequences  because it creates a more prosperous or a happier society  and those who believe that freedom is a good thing because it is entailed by objective morality, which instructs us that it is always wrong to initiate physical force or to engage in fraud. Generally, libertarian thinkers who hold the moralist view are led to anarchism because no government can exist without taxation, which violates the non-aggression imperative. Those libertarian thinkers who hold the consequentialist view are not boxed in quite so tightly, and some see justification for a state with minimal power.” From “What’s Right vs. What Works” http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2005_01/editors-right.html