End the War on Freedom

[I wrote this in response to an email I received. The email is indented. My responses are not.]

At 02:10 PM 11/3/2000 -0800, you wrote:

Bill,

First, thanks for the weblog - I appreciate the list of links you keep fresh on there. As an employer, I'm really intrigued by the idea of doing no withholdings...I used to be a consultant, and when my 15% additional tax for being self-employed was enough one year to buy a car, I realized that if everyone had to go through this we'd have a world of conservatives...oh well.

Oh if only every employer would become more than intrigued with no withholdings and just stop doing it. That's how we can beat the socialists. Not by playing the game by their rules. Not by killing them. But by shunning them at every step. Refuse to do business with them. Don't sell them food or clothing. Don't rent them lodging. Refuse to pay their taxes. Etc.

Anyway, I understand your lack of faith in the voting process and the two-party system (I'm still trying to find some good founding-father quotes on why party systems are bad), but I'm really curious as to why, if you prefer Bush over Gore, even marginally, you don't vote for him. Are you voting for another party's candidate? That I can understand, as I was a huge Keyes supporter even when I knew he had no chance of winning.

When they kidnapped Elian Gonzales, at gunpoint, something in me snapped. His kidnapping alone would not have done it, but coupled with the Waco & Ruby Ridge murders, the Clinton death list, the war on freedom, er... some drugs, the year-after-year disappearance of a third to a half of my hard-earned pay into Leviathan's maw, and a host of other abominations, the kidnapping was the straw that broke the camel's back. I realized that I could no longer support a system that is corrupt to the bone. Holding elections is just a way to fool us into thinking we have some input into it. We don't. The state is a criminal enterprise run by very crafty criminals. Don't encourage them by voting. When we get to the point where only 5% of the eligible voters bother to go to the polls, how are they going to hide their obvious lack of a mandate to do anything?

But at this point in the election, don't you think there'd be some good in voting for a candidate that's less likely to infringe upon our rights as citizens? Even if he's far from ideal, we can probably agree that Gore would be an unthinkable president.

Yes, Gore is an unthinkable president. That's why it is important that he wins this election, so that more people will realize sooner that the state must die. Bush will slow the process, but the Union of American Socialist Republics will continue to grow under any of the current slate of candidates except Harry Browne. Mr. Browne is who I would vote for if I still believed in voting. If YOU still believe in voting, I encourage you to vote for him.

I tend to paint pictures in charcoal. Reality is much more subtle and complicated. But I'm shifting my energy to building a consensual society, a world where all human interaction is voluntary. The old world is built on coercion. Pay your taxes or die. The part of me that hates would love to shoot the bastards, but my rational self knows that this will not work. Instead, we must build a new world and leave the old one to whither on the vine. How could I possibly vote when the concept turns my stomach of a majority, no matter how large, telling a minority, however small, what they must or must not do.

Too much flowery language. Yuck.

-Bill