My Favourite Criticism

[gpeters]

Today at lunch, a friend critcized me, and I like his complaint very much.

He asked me: "Gavin, you are volunteering on 4 November to drive people to the polls on election day in the United States, and yet you refuse, on a kind of principle, to vote in that same election?"

I had to agree, he's right. Both are true. Does that make me a bad man?

Comments

[kiwano]

I think the principles motivating your two decisions are rather orthogonal. The driving clearly expresses the value that you place on good government anywhere in the world, even if your participation is rather limited by your geography to small actions like driving people to polls (instead of voting yourself

[gpeters]

also, more directly: it's a felony for me to vote in this election. The very earliest I could be a citizen, supposing I wanted to be one, would be around nine years from now.

- Gavin

[kiwano]

right, so assuming that comission of a felony makes you a bad man (which, when it's a felony to file taxes late, is actually quite an assumption to be making) then you're really avoiding being a bad man.

also, it's generally seen to be canadian to show more deference to the law than most other nationalities (certainly than americans).

[fare]

On principle, I would volunteer to drive them, too. Just AWAY from the poll stations.

As for lecturing them, you should tell them how rebellion against their legitimate king only caused the American colonies to endure longer the indignities of the institution of slavery, with a second civil war that killed nearly a million, all the while making them no freer than their law-abiding northern neighbors.

Plus, the last American monarch (Emperor Norton) did outlaw both Democratic and Republican parties, and dissolved Congress.

This whole United States Government is but an illegal gang of racketeers.