Vol. 42, No. 10
From the Publisher | Voting: A Solemn Responsibility
Election season is upon us once again, and with it the usual national soul-searching and hand-wringing, the pronouncements of impending doom if the wrong side gets the upper electoral hand, and the widespread narrative that this time things are different, and these elections are the most important in recent history. No American can afford to shirk his duty at the ballot box this time around, we are told almost daily by media and political party hacks alike, lest our fair country be lost forever.
It is true, of course, that every election is consequential in a self-governing republic. Voting is an important franchise, although it has been elevated from merely one rather selective element in the early American Republic to a nearly universal political sacrament. We do not want to return to the days when entire classes of people were denied the vote, but neither do we believe that voting should be made as painless and easy to accommodate as orders at a fast-food restaurant. Voting is a solemn responsibility, and being properly informed should be just as important for voters as participating in elections; otherwise, American politics becomes a mindless game of spoils contested by factions of an ignorant, rudderless mob. As our editor-in-chief, Gary Benoit, makes clear in his cover story "Don't Vote... Unless You Know What You're Doing!", voting should be the handmaiden of both wisdom and understanding. It is better not to vote than to cast an uninformed ballot.
The fetishization of voting as the end-all of popular government is a dangerous illusion, fostered in part by those intending to sabotage our Republic and replace its carefully contrived checks and balances with the chaos of pure democracy. Hitler’s National Socialists, be it remembered, were voted into power, and so was the late Venezuelan communist dictator Hugo Chávez. Voting and majoritarian approval by themselves are no guarantee that freedom will be preserved; indeed, wielded by a maleducated public, they can be deadly weapons in the service of would-be despots. As Theodore Roosevelt once observed, “a vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
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