Political Ramblings

This morning, in the course of my normal pot of coffee and waking up period, I read Gene Stone's recent book, The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program. It had its charms though it fell foul of one of my pet peeves – constantly using propaganda to denounce propaganda. On the plus side, it got me thinking of the election and an argument that I had with almost all of my friends in the United States. As almost everyone who reads this blog will know, I am an American citizen. When it comes to election times, I have something of a novel approach to voting. I actually vote for the candidate that best expresses my place on the political spectrum. What has constantly astonished me is that many individuals do not. To them it is a two party system and their choices are entirely limited to whichever candidate they decide is the lesser of two evils. Some call this a cynical form of Pragmatism. I consider it the greatest marketing job of the last century. From my, rather informal, conversations with any number of Americans I feel safe in saying that a third party could quite happily arise if such a fallacy could be dispelled. Although interesting, that is not the question I intended to address. What I have been wondering for the past few months is whether individuals have a moral obligation to vote for their beliefs, or alternatively whether they have a moral obligation to vote negatively (against the candidate they feel will do the most damage).

My problem with negative voting, a symptom of many Republicans and Democrats, is that the true will of the people is not being expressed. In the short term, it causes candidates to be elected who have a small genuine mandate and who are extremely centrist. It distorts the political spectrum by allowing candidates who stand for very little or who differ from their opponents in comparatively minor ways a very good chance of success. As an end result, the will of the people is only shown in terms of denial. Rather than candidates that the people want, they simply ensure they do not get what they do not want. This has the further disadvantage of stifling the range of political debate, leaving the national conversation of where America should be heading stilted and with most of the electorate ill-informed of its full range of options.

On the one hand there is a strong moral case for avoiding the worst case scenario, that is for the prevention of harms. On the other, there would seem to be an equally strong case for the promotion of good deeds and the even greater prevention of harms. I suppose it becomes something of a gamble. Do you want a fairly good chance of avoiding harm, or do you want a slimmer chance of promoting active good? Personally I have always chosen the latter and hopefully my vote as one that they didn't receive has caused the two main political parties to examine their positions on various issues and understand that they did not do enough for my vote and that therefore I am not willing to cast it in their favor. I can only hope that some day more of my compatriots are willing to do the same and encourage a genuine political spectrum and therefore genuine political debate to develop.