Why I Don't Vote

 2012 was a watershed year for me. It was the last time that I stood in front of a voting machine and cast a ballot. It was also the first time in my life that I had voted FOR a presidential candidate instead of simply AGAINST his  adversary.  Since then I have been completely free and unfettered from the political process, and view it as a tragic sort of entertainment best viewed from as far away as possible. Since I know so many people who are once again convinced that this is The Most Important Election ever I considered it my civic duty to explain just a bit as to why I will not be participating this time, or the next time, or the time after that.

1) I wrote a book.  This is not so much a shameless plug as an explanation of one rather large step on my journey. I wrote a book called Swindled where I documented how the GOP on local, state and national levels tweaked , bent and in some cases broke federal election law to in order to secure the nomination for Mitt Romney.  Considering how that worked out for them, it's even more remarkable that they would go through so much trouble. The greatest candidate of my lifetime was  in that race, and with a complicit media ('conservative' and 'liberal'), they literally cheated him out of his shot. Writing that book, I became finally convinced that the GOP  cares nothing about liberty; they care about power. 
2) I helped a guy get elected.  I write this knowing that the individual I'm talking about will probably read this.  My family got heavily involved a few years back with getting a dear friend of ours get elected to a state-level office.  I was in his living room the night the campaign started. He was a man as committed to liberty and as opposed to the status quo as any of us. I remember disagreements with his campaign manager about how 'extreme' his views were. He was the underdog,  the libertarian who was going to take the system by storm, make everybody mad, and then come home after a single term. In fact, now that I think about it, this is the man who introduced me to Tom Woods book on Nullification.  Amazingly, we won. My friend replaced a useless , statist, GOP do-nothing who had all the money and we won.
  And then I watched my friend change.  He began to  refer to himself as a 'conservative'.  He championed some dubious legislation and broke at least one of his campaign promises. He ran again, and was re-elected. And again.  Now he's the insider who gets invited to the important fund-raising dinners with all his buddies at the Capitol.
  We love him. We love his family. He's still better than  what he replaced.  But we appear to have a whole lot less in common with him philosophically than we did before he got elected. 
3)The system is evil.  Now think about this for a minute.  Cast your mind back to, oh, lets say the last 3 presidential elections, although one could certainly  go back further than that.  The GOP nominated John McCain, a self-proclaimed 'maverick' who believed  pretty much everything depending on what time of day you asked him. He literally prided himself on his unpredictability on voting. Sometimes he was  for freedom, sometimes he was for statism.  You couldn't pin him down because he was a 'maverick.'.
  John McCain was touted to small-government types as 'the lesser of two evils' and even though he was obviously an unstable old man, we were supposed to vote for him because Barack Obama would be President if we didn't. This was the Most Important Election Ever. Hold your nose and vote! It's your duty! The world will end if Obama gets the White House!
  Now consider 4 years later, when the GOP snubbed Ron Paul to nominate Mitt Romney, a man who believed nothing.  His views, at least on things that the President can actually affect, were identical to his opponent, but he would gladly change them if it would get him 10 more votes. He was horrible and dull,and nobody was excited about him. But  the American people were told that this was The Most Important Election ever and that 4 more years of Obama would destroy the Republic. Sure he's a borderline statist, but he's the lesser of two evils. Hold your nose and vote! It's your duty! The world will end if Obama keeps the White house!
  Now it's 2016 and the GOP has nominated a man who wasn't even a Republican a few years ago. He believes, apparently whatever pops into his head. He's an unregenerate blowhard who openly admitted he'd like to have martial relations with his own daughter.  But hey, none of that matters because he's the lesser of two evils! This is The Most Important Election ever! Hold your nose! Do your duty! The world will end if Hilary gets the White House!
  How many times must you be sold the same stupid idea?  Every time the 'lesser' of the two evils is greater than the evil before it. It's a game for suckers.
4)The system is worldly. Now I want to  conclude this by talking to 'my crowd', the Christians. The GOP uses us, and has for pretty much my entire life.  They meet with evangelical leaders like Falwell and Dobson, and these  leaders slobber all over these politicians for a seat at the table. This is done because the politicians believe theses leaders can deliver them blocks of people who will support them, and apparently that works for them. But I challenge you to think for yourselves. Think about Donald Trump ( just as an easy example), and then consider these verses.
  The Bible says "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."
  The Bible says "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
  The Bible says "For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning."
The Bible says  "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."

  Christian, you are never commanded in scripture to vote. You are commanded to  preach the gospel.  You aren't commanded to 'save America', you are commanded to be part of the salvation of men's souls.  God not only isn't a Republican, He isn't even an American.
  In 2012 a friend of mine was positively abused on social media by people we both went to church with over his support of Ron Paul. He was called names and insulted by his brothers and sisters in Christ. His failure to  fall into line and back the empty suit of Romney caused division and  bad feelings.  This time around, another friend of mine has offered to 'defriend' anyone on Facebook who doesn't support Trump. What sort of wicked system turns brothers and sisters against each other like that? And why do you keep participating, Christian?
  It's ok, really. Let them ruin the place, they are going to anyway. it's theirs to ruin.  We seek a heavenly country wherein dwells righteousness.  Our citizenship is in heaven, and if the place falls apart, and it becomes (more) repressive, take heart; the church of Jesus Christ has lived and thrived under those conditions from the beginning. This literally isn't our fight.
  Don't get distracted. Don't believe their lies. Don't waste your time voting.

Why Nothing Has Changed for the GOP

  When I wrote the  book SWINDLED, I made the case that the GOP wasn't the party of freedom that it claimed to be , but rather a loose coalition of power brokers and money movers that, although ostensibly committed to slightly less government, where so terrified by the  candidacy of Ron Paul that they committed a whole slew of atrocities to  block his nomination. These  atrocities included voter fraud, financial shenanigans, and  the skirting of federal election laws.  Over and over again in primary after primary I showed that a handful of people flipped switches and pulled levers in an attempt to derail the  most serious liberty  element the Republican Party has seen in decades from  establishing any  real presence under the tent. One such individual is a man named Reince Priebus.
 Once upon a time, Priebus, but the general counsel for the national Republican Party, but Priebus's real skill seems to be  fund raising. In December of 2010, he stepped down as general counsel for the RNC so he could run for chariman.  In a letter to the delegates he said "I will keep expenses low. I will put in strong and serious controls. We will raise the necessary funds to make sure we are successful. We will work to regain the confidence of our donor base and I will personally call our major donors to ask them to rejoin our efforts at the RNC."  Having secured the job, Priebus was true to his goal, cutting the  party debt by almost half, raising over $50 million dollars. He brought some high level donors on board,  was praised by Ed Gillispie as being "on message" and having done "a great job at raising money, which is the principal  role of the RNC chairman."
  Deep pocket donors  give money to political campaigns for one of three  reasons.  One reason is  protection money, which is why  large corporations routinely finance both sides of the aisle.  No matter which  stooge wins, he's  less likely to bite the hand that has been feeding him. The other two reasons are closely related; access and influence. You pay a candidate so that when he wins, he will take your phone calls and then listen to you.  As  Louisiana governor Earl K. Long famously said " I don't buy senators, I rent them. It's cheaper." Very rarely are deep pocket donors  motivated by  principal or  genuine excitement  over a cause.  Men like Priebus understand this, and court these tendencies. The last thing  Priebus needs is an actual grassroots  movement that  is spontaneous, and can't be either controlled, steered, or tapped for large donations.  Enter the Ron Paul Revolution.


  As the  preparations began for the 2012 election,  Priebus is the individual who  pushed for Nevada to move their caucus date  from  January to February. Nevada has always been a  place sympathetic to the liberty message, and even with a large Nevada Mormon population that  would tend to tilt towards Romney, Ron Paul campaign organizers had reason to  expect great things.  But the GOP  machinery, headed by  Priebus engaged in all sorts of monkey business, including changing the times the polls were open and announcing a Romney victory when only 5% of the vote had been counted and several counties ( including Paul stronghold Clark County) still hadn't reported in. The state GOP chairperson  resigned in the middle of the night while the vote was still going on. The hour-by-hour account makes for compelling reading. Despite all this Paul wound up finishing  2nd behind Romney, and later  snagged the majority of delegates at the state convention, effectively winning the state.
  Oh, but dear friends, the last chapter had not been written yet, because Mr. Priebus ,being the money man that he is,  formed a thing called 'Team Nevada'. Priebus even  wrote their press release saying "
“Nevada is a critical state in the upcoming elections, and that is why the Republican Party is expanding our voter contact and volunteer programs across the state,” The purported purpose of Team Nevada was to expand  RNC outreach in the state.  The real reason  was to funnel money away from the Nevada Republican Party, with its Paulian sympathies, into the coffers of the Romney campaign.  Paul might have won the state, but the money  was going to Romney.
  Rolling into the Tampa convention, the national party was  struggling with impromptu and  possibly illegal rule changes that   finally managed to successfully block Paul's nomination.  One of the men most opposed to the  procedural  malfeasance going on was  Morton Blackwell. Blackwell was actually a Romney supporter, but felt that the rule changed behind closed doors the night before the convention at the behest of Romney s lawyer were  sinister and  'un-Republcian'. He was blocked, delayed, and stuck on a bus for 3 hours while John Sununu went  into hiding, lest anyone present him with a minority report challenging these new rules.  The end result was the nomination of Mitt "I am not a robot" Romney , who was  easily trounced by Barack Obama.
 
  The reason I  go briefly through all this history is this; 2016 will soon be here, and like the battering husband that swears he'll never hit you again, the GOP will  try to convince you they have changed.  They have not . In fact, they have changed so little that  Priebus and  Blackwell are facing off over yet another round of rule changes. Priebus has been making the talk-show rounds denouncing  convenient GOP boogey-man ( boogey-woman?) Hilary Clinton for everything  that could possibly be wrong with the world in an attempt to pre-empt her political ambitions.  This is  vastly more pragamtic than focusing on  the 'nar-a-dimes-worth-of-difference' between the two parties.  He is  flipping switches and pulling levers as  we speak, and those  GOP 2016 hopefuls  who want access to the war chest of funds have to court him, and have to say the right things. They will have to  either endorse the  warfare state or soften their opposition to it.  They will have to agree to long-standing  state pillaging programs like Social Security, and be willing to  blur the  numbers on issues like immigration.  The staus quo will not be challenged, only nibbled at the edges with  convoluted solutions that only merely shift inappropriate state power from  one pocket to another.  They will do all this while men like Priebus try to convince you that there is an Islamicist under every bush and only a robot with an 'R' after his name can  save you.  They will claim tea party roots while they pocket  vast rivers of money from  corporate donors who then will expect sympathy at best, and corporate welfare at worst.
  The same people are still in charge of the GOP machinery as were in charge of the machinery in 2012.  Don't be fooled.