Did you vote in the general elections? Please explan your decision.
No. I refuse to waste my time voting when I will never effect the outcome of an election that large.
I voted no confidence in the election process by staying home. Every party is for coercion, and going to the polls legitimizes them, since voting for someone says that you want them in office. I can also criticize those in power and anyone who voted for them, or really anyone who voted at all. They support coercion that's used on me.
My parents wrote in Paul...and after that I found out that a Paul write-in in my state doesn't count.
Wonderful.
Nope. Waste of my time, and I wouldn't vote for scum.
I refuse to even register to vote. In my opinion voting is showing my consent to the system.
I voted Gary Johnson. I just wanted to add an increment to his total vote.
Is it possible to de-register from voting?
If you had come to the Students for Liberty meeting in Philadelphia you would have heard an awesome disciple of Bryan Caplan preach about exactly this topic.
I voted for Gary Johnson. Would have loved to vote for Ron Paul, of course, but it was never really about expecting either one of them to actually get elected. More important to me just to get libertarian ideas some attention.
I voted for "V" for president. in 2010 i voted john may...
I'll probably just write in Murray Rothbard from now on :P
I wrote in Ron Paul, voted for two or three Republicans, and as many Libertarians as I could.
Yes. And wasted an hour of my time. My state is too full of retards. Their brains are kasha (soggy oatmeal). But then again, what did I expect?
hell no, lol
My concern is that in a decade or two when hopefully 10% of the public will be true libertarians, if we don't vote then, we will not be able to reduce government aggression. It is possible to affect democratically the government when you have big numbers, we know that. For example those people who elected Obama now got their Obamacare plan. Those who elected Bush got their Iraq war. So voting does make difference in some significant areas.
I personally don't think that we can abolish the government by voting. Agorism and secession make more sense. However, we can limit the damage the government currently does by going to the ballot. Shouldn't we do this?
10% libertarian in a decade?
Not hardly.
Libertarianism began organizing mainly in the 1970's and just now has reached 1% of the voting population. Who knows what the actual figure is, maybe 3% of the public tops. I'd say libertarians are generally more likely to vote than the average population, meaning slightly more than 50% of them will vote, giving us a 2% figure roughly. Even those who think voting isn't a valid strategy for gainig power and achieving change, like myself, still may vote for other reasons, as an educative strategy, ala Ron Paul and the like.
In any case, to see a massive uptake in libertarianism something extremely dramatic would have to happen. A tipping point would have to be reached.
I can't imagine a scenario where that's likely however. Good luck with that.
Maybe 5% libertarian in another 40 years in the USA.
People think politically in reactionary terms, naturally, and the two general camps and liberal and conservative. These are self-replicating camps.
Libertarianism is not self-replicatiung and not reactionary--indeed it takes a great deal of thought to enter into. Even socialism becomes reactionary when someone accepts certain premises, like the idea of employment being exploitation. If you can get someone to accept that, you change their value structure and radicalize them.
Even something like a financial crash is not likely to mean a shift to libertarian ideals. You have to understand that individualism is a product of the most peaceful, secure, and wealthy societies, which is why individualism first flourished in Europe and then in America. Only after one has all their real needs met can they think about existentials like freedom and political philosophy, and take the time to master several disparate field from economics to ethics required to build a coherent libertarian world-view.
And even then, it takes a great deal of conceptual integration and imagination, not to mention intelligence in the first place to understand some of the economic concepts.
Libertarianism is a product of much thought and personal development.
That's what makes us, we who get it, the vanguard. And we've got to lead the way. There are many liebrtarians whom are just like 'yay freedom'! who have no interest in the theory of it. They simply know on a guttural level that they don't want anyone interfering in their life; they are natural rebels that bristle against the idea of government generally. But they are not principled and would flounder in a free society in some ways, because they wouldn't know what to build, they only know what they're against.
No, I tell you, there cannot be a large-scale libertarian society until the vanguard builds a free place and raises a generation in that place. The children born into the first true freedom the world has ever known will be the first real libertarians, the ones raised to it since birth, living it as a system, breathing in free air for the first time in human history, without even the claim of a political owner like some nearly free past-historical epochs and places had (ala the colonies).
For these, libertarianism will be natural, will be the default set, and they will find it weird that others accept their chains merely for being born into them.
Yes I voted Gary Johnson. Should a slave refuse to vote for less beatings in order to avoid legitimizing beatings? I think being overly idealist will make it very hard to convert people to our side and even harder to ever win any major victory for liberty. Ron Paul, after all, won me over (and many other libertarians) by working within the confines of the system that represents everything he despises. If Johnson had enough votes to win a spot at a debate, who knows how many thousands of people who simply knew nothing of libertarianism beforehand that he could have converted?
I voted Johnson, but very grudgingly. I left feeling dirty, like I had violated my principles, heh. Really the only reason I did was that I had a few friends tell me that they were "really worried" that I wouldn't vote after conversations on Facebook. So I went ahead and did it so that they wouldn't turn me off as a heretic. It was like going up to take communion at mass even I'm an atheist/agnostic, it makes everyone else feel better and avoids awkward moments at no real cost to me.
No, I normally would vote for someone like Johnson although he was more impressive in the primary and became more statist as the process went along. The reason I did not vote was that I was angered by two things:
1. The corruption around preventing Ron Paul from speaking at the Republican Convention and their refusal to acknowledge that the who party was not behind the left wing socialist-lite candidate Romney.
2. That so many would entertain the fantasy that Romney was some kind of conservative who shared their interests in smaller government, less regulation, a more humble foreign policy and would end the government spying on its own citizens (And Romney stated in each case that he would do the opposite). At least Bush 2 paid lip service to a humble foreign policy.