Why I didn’t Caucus

A lot of people got upset at me when I mentioned that I wasn’t going to caucus in the republican or democratic party. I got personal messages and even text messages from people urging me to caucus in an attempt to stop Trump and/or Clinton. I want to explain why I chose to abstain from voting in either party.

First off, my principles are important to me. They define my actions. If I don’t stand up for my principles when it is difficult, what is the point? If I abandon or ignore my principles to accomplish a different end, that defeats the purpose of them. Many of my friends are Sanders supporters or Cruz fans, who are currently the runners up of each party. Would they want their candidate to abandon their principles to stop Trump or Hillary from getting elected? Would they want Sanders to abandon his mostly limited military intervention, or Cruz to abandon his staunch support of the Second Amendment, to appeal to a larger base? I would go as far as assuming that the majority of those supporters would not want their candidate to ignore their principles just to stop a candidate from getting elected. I won’t ignore mine either.

So what are my principles? I am a firm believer in a laissez-faire system (the word ‘system’ of course being ironic). I believe the initiation of force on individuals is immoral. I believe that individuals have the right to their life and earnings. I don’t think any of the mainstream candidates align with that. From the perspective of my values, they are all different forms of authoritarian. Many classic liberals don’t believe in voting at all. They believe it is using their vote to attempt to dictate other’s lives. Others believe that if you vote for a candidate who supports the rights of the individual, then voting can be an act of self-defense. If there are no candidates in the main parties who truly support the individual, I cannot, in good conscience, vote for them.

Shouldn’t we vote the lesser of two evils? People argued this same thing to me in 2012 with Obama v. Romney. In fact, every election season people argue we ought to just vote the lesser of two evils. I’m not so sure how effective that is. It seems to just perpetuate evil. It tells the candidates it doesn’t matter how authoritarian you are, just as long as you’re a little less than the next. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Morally and ethically, I can’t put my vote behind someone who is ‘evil’ (evil of course being an opinion based upon one’s principles).

“No vote is a vote for” I get this one a lot. The funny thing is, this logic comes in different forms. Sometimes it’s “no vote is a vote against”. It seems to change depending on what position the person wants me to take. It starts with the assumption that I would ever vote for the opposition in the first place. Every election season, both D’s and R’s claim that they could have accomplished x, y, and z, if only the libertarians had voted for their candidate, and not split the vote. What many people fail to see is that those candidates are against practically everything libertarians stand for. They say, “We must vote for the pepperoni candidate because there’s a crazy candidate who supports cheese!!” Meanwhile, the libertarians want sushi (although I guess a more accurate comparison would be a buffet). Both statists are vying for the libertarian vote in an attempt to stop someone, but they miss what libertarians stand for.

A lot of this sounds like blind idealism. It’s not. In the past century, the free market has given the greatest amount of human flourishing the world has ever seen. We have seen advancements in medicine, poverty, and global hunger. We’ve seen huge increases in standards of living and technological advancements. Many attribute it to ‘just the right amount of government’, or ‘having the “good” bureaucrats in power’. I believe it is free human interaction that leads to peace and prosperity.