Does Popeye know best?

You can’t beat something with nothing, Gary North has said repeatedly, and I think he’s right in the realm of ideas.  Bad ideas, once entrenched, hang around until a crisis brings the roof down.  Even then the guilty will be standing in the wreckage pointing fingers elsewhere, usually toward anything that hints at freedom.   

Evil systems eventually break down [North writes]. We have seen this in our day: the three-day disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union itself: August 19-21, 1991. Impossible, we would have said in early 1991. 

Our goal is to promote positive change at a local level while we wait for today's evil systems to break down. This waiting goes on for years. Then, without warning, the transformation comes in short order.

It is our job to be ready to accept responsibility and then implement local changes in terms of the ideas we profess to be true. 

We can't beat something with nothing.

But when it comes to elections, “nothing” may be a very sane option to take — as in choose A, B, a minor party candidate, or none of the above.

As we know the last choice is not found on the ballot.   Ever wonder why?

For every voter terrified that Hillary will win there’s at least one voter apoplectic over a possible Trump victory.  

But voters aren’t the only ones suffering.  If someone wants less government, there are no realistic choices.  He stays home on Election Day.  He figures the federal government will grow until it collapses, and his vote won’t stop that from happening.  Worse: His vote will provide much-needed legitimacy to state expansion.  There are those who take the Atlas Shrugged approach — voting for the candidate most likely to bring about the collapse first — but that’s a crap shoot.  Voters have no way of knowing what the candidate will do after the election.  People who refuse to vote know a more authoritarian government is on the way regardless of who wins.  Their only hope is gridlock. 

Whether you’re a voter or nonvoter, this is an exceedingly dangerous state of affairs.   It’s also embarrassing to educated adults with healthy IQs.  Especially in today’s world, what kind of thinking validates the existence of a monopoly that routinely lies, murders, and steals and calls itself civilized and the leader of the free world?  

Is there nothing that can be done?

Boycott

I have never seen a movement consisting of nonvoters, meaning people who refuse to be complicit in government’s activities by not voting.  Nonvoters have always outnumbered voters but they’ve never been organized.  What if they decided to call a convention to bring the futility and danger of voting to a high pitch?  What if the attendees proudly wore T-shirts or other attire or jewelry advertising their position throughout the election season?

What if they’re tired of waiting for the eventual collapse?  What if they want to live free soon, not someday?   What if, as Popeye might say, they’ve had all they can stands?

What if instead of hammering one another over which of two statist candidates is the less evil, the people in this territory called the United States boycotted the election?  What if they decided two bad choices is no choice at all?  What if they decided they didn’t want to live under the opposition’s candidate?  Or their candidate, for that matter?  What if the boycott united them as much as political parties do now?

What if people didn't want alphabet bureaucracies lording over their existence?  What if they want to be the decider of the money they wish to use, rather than be forced into an impoverishing scam where a monopoly cartel can counterfeit currency for its favored clients while the rest of us suffer the consequences?  What if they don’t want to be considered guilty by virtue of being a person who may sometimes do things a criminal or a terrorist might do, such as withdraw a large amount of cash from their bank account?  What if they want to live free, and at the very least demand that government back the hell off to pre-1913 status?  What if they eventually decide that the free market can provide all their legitimate needs, including the country’s defense?

Isn’t it about time people rejected the choices they’re given and stood up for themselves? 

By the way, my fictional character, Loose Cannon, did.