I’d be thrilled if Ron Paul were elected, so why won’t I vote for him?

By David McElroy · May 18, 2011

I won’t be voting for Ron Paul next year, but that’s only because I won’t be voting for anyone. Despite the fact that I don’t want to give my sanction to a system I feel is illegitimate, my sympathies are with Ron Paul and his supporters. If he were to do well, I’d be happy. If he were to win, I’d be giddy. What’s the source of this apparent contradiction?

For me, it’s a matter of being consistent with principle rather than pragmatism. I’m not going to criticize others who come to different conclusions, but I can’t give my stamp of approval to the majoritarian system by participating in it. When someone votes, he tacitly acknowledges that the winner of the election has the right to govern (or do whatever the rules ahead of time stipulate). I can’t agree to that.

Many of my more pragmatic libertarian friends will say I’m being unrealistic. They say that since someone is going to be elected and will control the machinery of government, we may as well influence the process. I definitely understand that argument, because I felt that way in the past.

I grew up believing in our civic religion just as much as anybody else in American society. I’ve gone from being an enthusiastic cheerleader for the system all the way to believing it’s morally wrong. That didn’t happen overnight, but it’s been in stages. I’ve been through the “Libertarian Party stage” and the “make the GOP more libertarian phase.” But once I reached the point of confronting the moral dimension of the state — the issue of the wrongness of one group holding power over everyone else — I couldn’t be pragmatic anymore. Not in good conscience.

I’ll admit that it makes it easier to sit this out because I know Ron Paul can’t win. I know a lot of people are spending a lot of time convincing themselves that he might, but I think those arguments are sheer fantasy. If he ever becomes a legitimate candidate, a few well-placed TV ads about drugs and prostitution will be enough to sink him. Logic and swing voter behavior don’t go together very well. I spent years learning how to influence voters for various campaigns, and I don’t think there’s a chance in a million that he could get past the messaging that would come from consultants much more skilled than I ever was.

Do I think it would be a good thing if Ron Paul were elected president? Of course. Not only would it provide the most entertainment possible — watching the Establishment fall all over itself to oppose him — but there’s even a slight chance that he could make a tiny difference in the short run. If nothing else, it would be enjoyable watching jaws drop at having a president speak the truth.

But that’s not going to happen. Barring bizarrely unlikely outcomes, we are going to be stuck with Barack Obama or some establishment Republican politician as the winner in 2012. (Which it is depends largely on how the economy performs between now and the election, in my opinion.)

I like and admire Ron Paul. I would be joyful if he won. But, ultimately, he’s participating in a process that confirms the legitimacy of the state. I just can’t go along with that anymore. If your moral calculus says that the best thing for you is to work to elect him, I’m not going to criticize you for coming to a different conclusion than I do. I hope you’ll grant the same favor to those of us who make a principled choice to sit it out.

My emotions are with Ron Paul and his supporters, but my principles and my logic will keep me from voting for him.

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Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

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