Yesterday was the Pennsylvania primary election. I knew it was, but I didn’t think about it until Mike Daniel IMed me at 7:30 in the evening to remind me that I had half an hour left in which to vote. I didn’t vote.
I’ve never voted, which I guess is not that unusual, especially for someone my age, but it is sometimes a source of guilt for me. I think about politics a lot. Sometimes I go weeks obsessing over a single issue, struggling to find a solution I’ll feel comfortable with. I enjoy arguing politics with people. And, perhaps most relevantly, I can’t stand our current administration and spend a lot of time and energy complaining about it. To then not vote feels hypocritical to me.
The problem is that I don’t know who I’d put in office instead of Bush. Not only isn’t there one politician with whom I agree on most issues, but the vast majority of politicians today stand for things that I am vehemently opposed to. Historically I’ve identified myself as Libertarian, but over the last few months I’ve started to drift away from even that. I worry that one of these days I’ll wake up and find myself ready to vote Green, just out of desperation to believe in someone.
I recently read The Radical Center, which views this as a widespread issue and attempts to address the problem. Written by Ted Halstead and Michael Lind soon after September 11th in 2001, the book cites low voter turnout and recent survey results as evidence that a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with their options and that new solutions to existing problems are necessary. Citizens, they argue, don’t want to have to choose between reproductive choice and school choice, or between a free market and a sustainable environmental policy, just to name a few.
To remedy the situation, the authors propose a shift in our social contract, as well as novel approaches to partial Social Security privatization, school vouchers, universal healthcare, and more. Their aim is to maximize personal responsibility and choice, while still doing their best to insure that all Americans will be able to maintain a basic standard of living.
To my surprise, I found myself moved by their arguments. I believe the Libertarian line that the only innate rights are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness (I’m actually not sure about this one — how is this different from liberty?), but I also hate the idea of living in a society with a huge class division. Even if it’s not wrong on the most basic level that the deprivation of the three aforementioned rights is, isn’t it still morally questionable? And yet, is it the government’s job to determine morals, beyond the protection of those first three?
I keep coming at these questions from every angle I can think of, and all I can come up with is that I don’t know, and I don’t even know how to figure it out, but I do know that every option presented to me feels wrong to an extent that I don’t feel good about casting my vote for any of them. So for now I vote my conscience by not voting at all, and hope that one of these days I’ll figure it all out so that I can run for office myself. In the meantime, I think everyone should read The Radical Center and tell me what they think.
