When you believe in a political ideology or when you cast your vote for a candidate, what you are doing is acting on the only political manifestation of your free will. What are you doing with your only mental freedom is essentially saying "I believe in this candidate, and I trust that all his actions will reflect my views for his/her duration in office." The candidate for which you vote has no legal, morale or spiritual requirement to serve your interests - and may in fact act in a way that you find contrary to your beliefs. It would be in ignorance of history to believe that an oligarchy has ever served it's supporters rather than itself.
In this sense, you have agreed for the duration to suspend your free will for the sake of a fantasy.
What I find interesting is that the analogy of political belief to religious belief does not end with the illustration of faith vs. reason. A good example (barring the political bias) of this is the book "What's wrong with Kansas", on which the premise is that individuals who would receive the greatest personal benefit from voting for the American Democratic Party, choose instead to vote for the American Republican Party.
Taking as a given that a particular group would believe in a political party that has little benefit for them, comparisons to cult-religion such as Scientology and LDS are numerous and easy to make, and I will leave them for you to infer.
My message is this, that unless your free will can be acted upon the political sphere constantly, you have no free will or sentience on that political scale. You are a non-entity.
tl;dr
Demand cliffnotes.
>>2
in a nutshell it’s “i don’t get representative democracy.”
Remove ideology, and the system works.
Vote based on records and character, not promises and ideas.
>>4
The current balloting system of most elections in the U.S. (barring some local ones) ensures that if you simply vote for the candidate who most accurately represents your views, instead of carefully selecting a compromise candidate who is likely to accrue a significant percentage of the vote, you may have easily thrown half a vote to a popular candidate who diametrically opposes your political views, with your own vote accomplishing nothing.
Since most people are stupid, and prefer those candidates which lull them with promises and ideas rather than boring political discourse about issues that matter, those are the most likely compromise candidates. Thus, independent-minded voters who do not choose a candidate based on ideology or popular sentiment- Nader supporters in 2000, for instance- are actively punished and made to feel like betrayers of their political constituency.
>>6
Clearly, but I don't think this is an argument for strategic voting so much as still being an argument against ideology.
>>7 I think it says in the title what this is really about, which is about reasonable political discourse. Is it truly an argument against ideology or about belief in ideology, I think the title of the post and the content of the first post should clear this up for you.
If it was an argument against ideology... well, honestly, I think that would be inane. I also think an argument against faith and belief would be inane for the exact same reason, these are attributes I have found to be reliably frequent in human beings. What matters is to
A.) Have a healthy degree a skepticism
B.) Have a system of voting that can change dynamically
C.) Have a system of voting that does not favor the majority
>>8 Shit, what I meant when I said "does not favor the majority" would be more accurately said as "is not inclusive to the majority".
>>8
I would say expecting much scepticism or extensive reflection from any sizable number of people is as void as expecting an absence of faith and fantasy.
Few people have the grey matter, motivation or time to do so.
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
The Crowd: Sch!
>>10 Maybe this is too optimistic, but I think any improvement on the voting system in terms of thought is a good thing. Even if people are too stupid to appreciate it, perhaps such a system could coax them to educate themselves.
Like right now, political information comes to the public largely in the form of PR, Viral Ads, and a very small percentage of people watch debates or know the issues their particular candidates will vote for. Maybe a system that promotes freedom of information, a dynamic vote as discussed would also promote intelligence.
maybe not.
>>11
I wouldn't say debates are a good source of information.
If you want to know whether you should vote for a politician, the worst people you could possibly ask for information are:
I really don't believe the issues matter as much as competence and public record.
One old idealist can screw up just as much as the next.
I don't think it's a problem of democracy per say, elective representation isn't surrendering your free will at all.
What is killing American Democracy is really the lack of a third party, and a more proportional electoral college. Without a third party a vote for a minor candidate is pretty much a vote against the mainstream candidate most similar to the guy you voted for. It's a function of spreading the votes between two candidates rather than concentrating on one.
So in 2000 (as already meantioned)
we had two liberal candidates
NADER and GORE
one conservative candidate
BUSH
the votes between the two main candidates were closer than close, with NADER getting maybe 1%.
so what happened
NADER + GORE > BUSH
but
GORE < BUSH
thus BUSH wins even with more liberals voting against him because the vote was split.
This is why we have no real choices. Since there is no viable 3rd party, any vote for the candidate of a third party that you agree with is a vote against the mainstream party you agree with most. So all the liberal side must do is be slightly less conservative than the conservative candidate, and all the conservative must do is be slightly less liberal than the liberal. As a result both parties are essentially centrist, though spouting the appropriate platitudes have absolutely no intention of making them reality.
Conservatives love to say how pro-life they are, but they won't ban abortion. Why? Who are the Pro-Lifers going to turn to? If they vote for the America First Party, then they've essentially voted for the more liberal pro-choice candidate. Same with gay marriage. Gays can't vote for anyone else, lest they essentially vote for the conservatives who don't want gay marriage.