Voting Away the American Dream

The only winning move is not to play.

America was conceived as a great experiment: Can a nation of men be moral and upright enough to by-and-large govern themselves?

To call it an experiment and leave it at that misses another crucial aspect of the idea that was America: America was conceived of as not just an experiment, but as an aspiration. Samuel Adams envisioned America as a Christian Sparta, Boston as a city on a hill: a light for the rest of the world, a place where men rose to the occasion of self-governance, where people obeyed the Commandments and statutes of God and were responsible for their own affairs. As his cousin John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The very limited form of government drawn up could only stand as it was on a foundation of a moral, Christian citizenry.

From its conception, America was an aspiration to a better way of life. It was founded on the idea that a genuinely moral and religious populace could by-and-large govern themselves and had little need for the oversight of a large and powerful government. Yet, as this review of Dennis Rasmutten's Fears of a Setting Sun nicely summarizes, by the end of their lives the founding fathers themselves had concluded that the experiment had failed: Americans had not lived up to the aspiration of self-governance. The necessary implication is that in turn, the government would inevitably expand to meet the people where they were, so to speak. Continued expansion would, of course, eventually entail a government ballooning up to be too big for its briches, a central concern that framed most if not practically all of the political debates at the time.

As children, Americans are told that it is one’s civic duty to vote. Our civic duty as Americans is not to vote — in the early days, most Americans were not even eligible to vote — but to be moral individuals capable of self-governance, for whom government is hardly necessary. This is the aspiration of our founding fathers that their countrymen then and since —and perhapse even themselves — have failed to live up to. America won’t be made great by voting; it will only approach greatness when its sons and daughters, like its founding fathers, aspire to the dream of self-governance under God. That is the dream of our founding fathers, a distinctly American dream.

The American dream is fundamentally about ownership. What is infinitely more than what one owns is the responsibility for what one owns. The American dream is not just owning a house or a Yellowstone-Dutton style ranch, but being responsible for a house, a ranch, a family. In self-governance a man is responsible for himself, it is first and foremost his responsibility to manage himself and his affairs, keep himself in line, and safeguard what is his. A self-governed community or nation is necessarily one that takes responsibility for itself, has a hand in its own affairs, and is committed to benevolence toward and the safeguarding of its own.

As it stands, among the biggest threats to the American dream is voting.

A Strange Game

Where has voting gotten us? Nowhere good. Yet the boomers and Karens and self-proclaimed do-gooders will insist that if things are to improve, the way to see to it is to vote harder for the right person next time! Yet regardless of who assumes power, the same old wheels keep on turning. The wars continue, the outsourcing and debt continue to increase, and Americans continue to be assed-out of their own nation and its resources in the name of foreign aid and cheaper labor. Politicians may switch out like passengers at a station, but the train continues on down its track. Simply put: voting is not getting us anywhere good; why is it such a sacred cow then?

Voting makes people feel like they’re doing something, as if it is a means of accomplishing some good. Moreover, it is a ticket redeemable for the false hope that with the right result everything is really going to turn, despite the clear observation that the train continues to roll through elections unimpeded. At its worst, voting and clinging to one’s false hope is a way of shirking of responsibility, a form of throwing one’s hands up and giving explicit consent to abdicate responsibility and be led by elected officials, even over a cliff if that’s where the train is indeed going.

And yet—there is still something important we can do with our vote: refuse to cast it.

When over half of eligible voters go out and vote, the majority of the country has consented to the game. They’ve spun the wheel and they’ll get what they get. That’s the deal they signed up for and consented to. It doesn’t matter much who wins, what matters most primordially is that a majority or somewhere around half of people spun the wheel, thus giving their explicit consent to the game, and enough of them to effectively represent and give consent on behalf of the citizenry.

When people cast their vote, they are consenting to offload some amount of responsibility. The de facto amount changes in accordance with whatever the government’s current dominion encompasses, but the general idea is that voting is an affirmation of the authority of the offices held and appointed by elected individuals and an agreement on the general responsibility to comply with the issuances of those offices. Voting for government officials is explicit consent to be subject to the power of those offices, regardless of who occupies them.

There is also the idea of implicit consent, that by living in society and using the roads, the post office, etc. that consent to the established government overseeing these things is implied. While a vote explicitly says, “I consent to elected officials being responsible for making all sorts of decisions,” implied consent doesn’t have that; it is more akin to a peaceful coexistence. And that’s the beauty of it: implied consent alone is tentative, it’s an arrangement that appears to work for the time-being and while nobody is necessarily thrilled with the arrangement, nor is anyone up in arms, either.

Whether or not implied consent is real or normative or both is not of concern here; the relevant observation is that the phenomenon for which it is named is real and it works. Somewhere in between expressly participating in government by voting and being in open rebellion to it lies a peaceful place where things work well enough, individuals can live well and not be overly concerned with politics, and governments exist and function despite a disengaged citizenry. This sort of peaceful coexistence fundamentally changes the reasonable expectations that government and its citizens can have of each other. A disengaged citizenry pays its government little mind, and a government cannot expect a great deal of voluntary compliance with unpopular demands. While nobody is going to take issue with the post office, a draft might see significant noncompliance. A disengaged populace, likewise, can expect much less support from its government: while not voting won’t strip millions of people of the protection of the nation’s military, there is little or no incentive for career politicians to advocate for people who don’t actively contribute to getting them elected.

Consider the aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion after it was put down in 1794: Even after Washington raised and sent 13,000 militia to put the rebellion down, a show of force that ended it without firing a shot, the local populace by and large refused to pay the tax on distilled spirits or register their stills. For eight years the western parts of the country from Pennsylvania through Kentucky refused to pay the tax until it was finally repealed under Jefferson, leaving trade tariffs as once again the only source of revenue for the federal government. The government’s first major attempt at a tax wasn’t defeated by rebellion or taking on the government in court, it was defeated by people going on about their business and ignoring it. Life went on and, as a result of their indifference, the government ultimately gave in. The widespread indifference made collecting the tax futile, forcing its repeal in order to save face and not have its inability to enforce the tax flaunted any longer.

That is just a historical example of the effect of indifference, but ideally refusing to vote takes the form of dignified indifference: not just being largely indifferent toward politics, but allthewhile doing something better instead.

Daring to Dream

It’s the only honest thing to do, really. Voting for a lesser of two evils among a political class one has lost faith in is certainly not honest. But the American dream is honest work and it is within reach to any Americans who would live it.

It begins with being a moral and Christian people. If we are to take responsibility for ourselves, for our communities, and for our country, we have to be moral. We have to be honest people, we have to be people who take it upon ourselves to keep His Commandments, to live charitably, to be good neighbors and stewards of the land. We must even, as Aristotle says of the virtue of magnanimity, be willing to make large contributions to our community and nation if we have the means to do so. Virtue, not voting, is what will build a better nation.

The decline in industry won’t be solved until more people make things, and there will be a greater demand for American goods when more people commit to buying not just things made in America, but things made locally. The answer to the lack of healthy food is to go out of your way to buy directly from local farmers or to start growing and raising food of your own. The government isn’t forcing anyone to finance a new $45,000 car that will die at 150k miles or to buy a $400,000 townhome…large debts can be avoided by buying an old car, learning to maintain it, and living in a small rural home, complete with family time by the hearth. If the military isn’t being used for anything good, don’t enlist…do some sort of productive work instead. If Americans don’t want corporations and immigrants taking over all business and services, then Americans need to buy from and employ locals, prioritizing their neighbors and countrymen over lower prices and labor costs. Or, of course, “Cut your own grass, gringo!” as Owen Benjamin says.

These are things that Americans have to take responsibility for. They require initiative, commitment, and work. Voting requires nothing of the sort, nor does it deliver what initiative, commitment, and work do. Voting will not solve these problems, and casting ballots to the point of collapse is an exercise in futility and laziness. But taking responsibility for ourselves and our communities, living morally, modestly, and charitably and helping our neighbors — our actual neighbors out our door and down our street — that is how America becomes a stronger nation.