Gary Johnson position of the 2A
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barnbwt
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Well, if they could personally articulate in any manner at all that they have some understanding of the issue (and not simply regurgitate the media-invented narrative of us as murderous terrorists ready to axe our leaders if we don't get our way), I might could agree with you there. Might also help if they weren't dutifully pimping gun control as a curative after multiple terror attacks, after a lifetime of supporting gun control pimps nationwide.
Yeesh, someone work up a GIF from the old Eastwood movie into The Amoral, The Anti-Intellectual, and the Intoxicated (sounds kinda crummy when you put it that way
). Green Party, you don't get a screen credit this time.manithree, replace that baby with RKBA and that's where I am at this point. All three candidates/running mates are on board with some kind of terror watchlist ban authority, all three make it plainly clear they have no intention of promoting our policy goals once elected, whether they care to have us support them or not. I guess one of them claims to be antagonistic toward us, but these fools are so fickle and unreliable you could almost claim it to be some twisted reverse psychology.
TCB
If enough people think like you then there's a good chance we'll all get Hillary's choice to replace Scalia. I hope that's worth it too...
manithree,
The cartoon is not a good analog.
1. In the cartoon the person can presumably make a third choice and carry it through. In this case, there is no viable third choice.
2. In the cartoon, both of the two choices kill the baby. In this case, the "baby" is almost certainly dead with one of the two choices but has a reasonable chance of survival with the second choice.
Couldn't agree more. But that doesn't mean that it is going to end any time soon. In the last 150 years, the only thing a third party candidate has managed to do is to get liberals elected--and that's not even a likely outcome. Mostly they're just totally irrelevant.
Except that it's the conservatives that are splitting their votes, not the Democrats. And there's a difference between what "could" happen "if" hell freezes over and what is likely to happen.
Well, you're on the right track. You're certainly not doing anything constructive and I suppose that counts as not continuing to participate.
THERE IS a person who mirrors your views 100% on the issues. YOU. Write yourself in as a candidate. Same difference as voting for a third party candidate and you're being much more honest with yourself (and everyone else) as to what the outcome of your actions will be.
If your goal is to speed the onset of armed conflict, you should vote for the person whose election is most likely to result in your goal, not for the person whose election will be the best chance to avoid it. Unless, of course, you're admitting that you're intentionally voting for someone you know can't win in hopes that you and people like you will help elect the worst possible choice by splitting the conservative vote.
I like how you started the paragraph--but then the rest of it was anything but reality.
For anyone who can't tell, I'm not really trying to change anyone's mind. This is one of those issues that people either get or they don't. The people who really don't get it aren't going to have their minds changed because there's a fundamental disconnect that can't be bridged. It's like trying to convince a person they can't inhale water into their lungs to get the oxygen they need when they absolutely KNOW that they can.
Of course, when the ship capsizes and sinks, everybody drowns, even the people who think they can breathe underwater.
The only chance everyone has is if there aren't enough people who think they can breathe underwater to capsize the ship.
You're intentionally missing the point and changing the focus of your comments to avoid addressing it. You claimed that anyone who didn't vote for the person that best represented them (regardless of their chances of winning) was shirking their duty to society and compromising their personal integrity. If the goal is to vote for the person who best represents you regardless of how that affects (or doesn't affect the election) then the ONLY proper course of action is to write yourself in since no one can represent your views better than you can.
Unless Gary Johnson's views mirror your own 100% in every regard, by your own argument, voting for him is shirking your duty to society and compromising your personal integrity since you won't be voting for the person whose views are closest to yours.
On the OTHER hand, if the goal is to vote for a candidate who actually has a chance of winning, the strategy is a little different. But that's not a topic for people who think that a vote must be a personal endorsement/moral statement/religious choice as opposed to a tool used to steer the government.
This discussion always walks the line between complete looney-toonery and the mildly amusing.
Here's the deal. The steering wheel in your car isn't how you express your views about street names and the directions right and left. It's how you get the car to go where you need to go. Trying to pull back on the steering wheel to go straight up doesn't work, no matter how good an idea it might be to go airborne at any given point in time. It's just a waste of time and effort and what it says about you isn't that you're amazingly perceptive because you realize that flying might prevent an accident nor does it say that you're a better driver than the person who hits the brake to make the inevitable impact as minimal as possible.
A vote isn't a statement about a voter's integrity or the moral purity of the candidate, it's how voters get the government to go in the direction it needs to go. Voting for someone who can't win is like pulling back on the steering wheel of a car in an attempt to take flight. It may sound like a really good idea but it doesn't work, no matter how critical it might be to take off to avoid an obstacle and no matter how pure the driver's intentions are.
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Arkansas Paul
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Statements like these are what causes any political discussion to be ended here, as I predict this one will be in short order.
I am not doing anything constructive because I'm not voting the way you think I should.
Pretty typical today for both extremes.
It's either your way or I'm not doing anything constructive or good.
Typical Republican BS. If you don't vote extreme right wing, you're not patriotic.
What I want to say to you right now is very "Low Road", and certainly not in the spirit of what we do here on this site.
I will vote for the candidate I choose to vote for, and you, and anyone else who doesn't like it can pound sand.
jmorris
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This is a step in the right direction of thought.
I don't think I have ever agreed 100% with anyone in the world, that's why we are called individuals.
However, the fact that you came up with the word "both" already precludes a third outcome. Or, a vote for a non contender is more or less an abstention.
If we can agree on that, it boils down to what is more important to you, again an individual choice driven by many different things.
If 2nd Amendment is a primary driver you would lean right. If it is something else you might go another direction.
Might try making a +\- list of how you feel and put an H or T down the list on how you think what direction they will force you.
If I ask my child if she wants chicken or macaroni for dinner and she says "ice cream", the choice is now completely out of her hands and she gets what I give her (and it's not ice cream).
Now, She can protest (abstention/tantrum) not eat anything but that only has Her eating cold chicken or macaroni after the decision was made without Her input.
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1KPerDay
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Amen to that.
Ed Ames
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That is nonsense based on a faulty (or deliberately misconstrued) understanding of the meaning of representation.
Most people are far from their own best representative. Representing takes skill, innate traits, and time that not everyone has. That's why entertainers have agents and litigants have lawyers... because those agents and lawyers are better at representing a person than the person herself would be.
Not everyone is a candidate, and not everyone has the skills and talents to represent ideas or points of view. To say that they are is...well it is just silly.
And here we see the heart of your mistake. You see, voting absolutely IS a tool used to steer the government. It isn't some religious thing or a sporting event...it is a way of communicating the direction you want the republic to go.
Your vote is like currency, and politicians want you to spend on them. They track what positions earn them votes. When you vote for a candidate, you signal that there are votes available to candidates like them, or candidates who express the ideas that they express... just like if you spend money at Starbucks you signal to everyone else that there are people who will buy $5 cups of coffee. Next thing you know, everyone is selling overpriced coffee. If the candidate says that torture is OK, and you vote for her, you are telling all the other politicians that there are votes on the table if they support torture. You are showing there is a market for pro-torture politicians and you are inducing politicians to support torture.
In that light it is crystal clear that the goal is not - cannot be - to "vote for a candidate who has a chance of winning", because doing so when the candidate doesn't represent the voter creates a situation where the voter always loses. If the candidate wins, it signals that ideas abhorrent to the voter will attract votes, causing those ideas to flourish. If the candidate loses, they not only don't get their pseudovictory of being affiliated with a winner, but they STILL have used their tool for steering government to steer it towards positions they oppose, because politicians look at the votes of losing candidates too.
That's why it is so important that you vote for candidates that accurately represent you. By doing so, you steer the government towards your actual goals instead of towards your lies.
And that's where the ethical dimension of this comes from. By lying about your preferences to your republic, you create real consequences for your fellow citizens. You may end up getting them, or your own family, tortured.
This is realpolitik. You can call that looney tunes if you like, but it doesn't change the cold logic of the situation. Your religion isn't a factor. The incentives you create, and the market forces that steer the republic, are not religious in anyvway.
Voting isn't about winning, it is about communicating. And a voter can only "win" if they are honest with their votes. A politician winning does not mean that those who voted for her also won.
Arizona_Mike
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Precisely but it is right on point to what the OP was discussing. The reason why Libertarians' position on the 2A does not get more exposure is because of their other positions and bizarre behaviour. I would not start a thread here about a different policy question but the fact is that most voters, myself included, are not single issue voters.............have absolutely nothing to do with RKBA
No, that's not it at all. It's not what I think about it that makes it pointless, it's the fact that it's pointless that makes it pointless.
It's pointless in the same way that pulling back on the steering wheel to try to get a car to fly is pointless because it doesn't work--not because of what anyone thinks about it.
Not a real chance. No chance at all. Even at the local level where party affiliations are less critical, libertarian support is generally insignificant. The idea that there's a huge reservoir of libertarian voters who are constantly voting republican because they're afraid of putting Democrat politicians in office by splitting the vote just is pure fantasy. Look at the election between Romney and Obama. Johnson got less than 1% of the vote and no electoral votes. And Romney certainly wasn't a pillar of conservative values. I expect more third party support in this election given the unlikeability of the two main candidates. Maybe enough to affect the outcome of the election, but not anywhere near enough to actually elect a third party candidate.
Don't take my word for it. Here's what an informed libertarian has to say on the topic.
https://alibertarianfuture.com/2016-election/percent-libertarians-vote-libertarian-party/
"Unfortunately, even if the entire big tent of all 31 million libertarians voted for the Libertarian Party, that still wouldn’t be enough to win the election."
"Sadly, it appears the libertarian voting bloc is nowhere near large enough to win an election...
...
Given this, it’s time to consider other options as to how we can best achieve liberty."
"Sadly, it appears the libertarian voting bloc is nowhere near large enough to win an election...
...
Given this, it’s time to consider other options as to how we can best achieve liberty."
First of all, I'm not telling you who to vote for. Second, even if I were, I have no control over you and therefore what I told you to do wouldn't make any difference at all.
What I am trying to do is to help you understand that your stated goal (best possible real-world outcome for this election) and your stated strategy (vote for someone who can't win instead of picking the best of the two viable candidates) are contradictory. You're certainly free to do as you please, as is every voter.
That's MY point. You're the one who wants to pretend that anyone you feel represents you best IS a viable candidate even if they can't win.
That's not what I said. It's not about making a statement--about "communicating" what you want to happen. It's about actually DOING something--it's about steering the government--MOVING it in the direction it needs to go.
That's the fundamental disconnect. Trying to make a vote into a statement, artificially introduces an ethical component into what is purely a practical matter.
It becomes like saying: "I won't turn my steering wheel that direction because I disagree with the reason that street got its name and I won't turn my steering wheel that way because then I would be driving in a direction that's bad. So I'm going to pull back on the wheel to fly over the problem."
But steering isn't about making statements. I don't drive on a street because I endorse the person who built it, the bond program that funded it or the person it's named after, I go that direction to get where I need to be. It's about actually moving something in a direction. And just like it's pointless to try to make a car fly by pulling on the steering wheel, it's pointless to vote for a candidate that can't win.
Surely you can see that this only makes sense if there is a candidate that 100% represents your views in every respect. It is clear, or at least it should be clear, that it is tremendously unlikely that could happen and that it's totally impossible that there could be a candidate that 100% represents the majority of the population.
Which means that virtually EVERY vote MUST be for a candidate that is a compromise. And therefore a lie, a shirking of duty, an unethical action by your creative standards.
That simple observation gets us back from the fantasy world where there are perfect candidates into reality where virtually every vote (barring the very rare situations where a candidate really does fully represent a particular voter's views to perfection) is a compromise.
If you want to communicate, make campaign donations, write books, make speeches, start a blog, take out advertising, etc.
Voting is ONLY about winning and losing and it's virtually ALWAYS about compromise. Those who understand that truth may not win, but those who don't understand it will always lose.
And around and around we go with repeated positions arguing the idea that a third party may fit a personal position the best, but they're either a spoiler or irrelevant or the only right decision. Nothing new in those positions, but we've reiterated them here and people on the sidelines have been reminded of them.
We already knew Johnson's solid history supporting RKBA and the 2A and Clinton's devotion to restrictions on law abiding citizens and banning entire classes of firearms and and we'd talked about Trump's relatively recent "conversion" to support of the 2A in the primary positions thread. Little, if anything, new to anyone that can use Google.
Unfortunately we're now sinking into attacking each other instead of staying to the principles of the forum and pruning the thread is becoming too common. We'll close this as a result.
We already knew Johnson's solid history supporting RKBA and the 2A and Clinton's devotion to restrictions on law abiding citizens and banning entire classes of firearms and and we'd talked about Trump's relatively recent "conversion" to support of the 2A in the primary positions thread. Little, if anything, new to anyone that can use Google.
Unfortunately we're now sinking into attacking each other instead of staying to the principles of the forum and pruning the thread is becoming too common. We'll close this as a result.
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