When it comes to voting (your civic duty and most patriot act), one must keep in mind that it is not a horse race.  You should not be trying to pick who the winner is going to be.  I know it gives everyone a good feeling inside when the person you voted for wins, but that is not the point behind voting.  The reason for voting is to pick the person that best represents your ideals and beliefs, the person that you think will do the best possible job out of all the people running.

            It is an election, a chance to voice your opinion of who is most deserving of the position.  For some people, it will be the only significant voice they will have in the way government is run.  A good voter is one who does his or her research and examines every candidate running, then it is his/her duty to pick the candidate that fits their respective belief system best.  This does not mean that you should pick who your parent(s) tells you to, or to pick someone based on how many television commercials you saw them on, or to pick someone since they have the best chance of keeping one of the other candidates out of office.

            If a thief steals and gets away with it, more than likely they will steal again, and again, until they get caught.  In my opinion, the two major parties have been expanding the powers of government too much and have been getting away with way too much.  Why is that?  Because there has been a tug of war going on for 100 years between only two political parties, which is preventing us from moving forward and keeping up with the other countries.  We have not had the needed checks and balances, where one party is ousted and another new party takes its place.  Now you might be thinking…”well, isn’t that the job of the people to not vote someone or some group back into power that has done a horrible job?”  The answer is yes, but the American people do not understand that they have choices outside of the two major parties.  The two major parties, which are constantly being pulled at by special interests, have control of the media, too much power and too much money into the system.  

            Although there are some minor differences between the democrats and the republicans, they are constantly working together to keep any other competition out of their perfect oligarchy.  A perfect example, they created a commission to decide the rules of who gets in the debates and who doesn’t; there are two chairmen on this board—one, a career democrat; the other, a career republican.  That commission on debates has set the standards extremely high for entry into the debates and set rules where each candidate no longer has to talk about important issues.  What this leads to is a lack of idea sharing.  When was the last time there was a discussion over what the real powers of the Federal Reserve are supposed to be, or why Congress—instead of the American people—votes for elected officials pay raises?  Or maybe even, why does the government interfere so much with the natural ups and downs of the economy.  By trying to fix a down turning economy, you are just going to make things worse in the long-run—Economics 101.

            How could two people expect to have all the answers to the most difficult questions in the world?  They don’t and worse yet, sometimes they don’t have any answers at all.  The two major parties don’t want people to think about the issues, they want the American people to like how they talk and like how they look when they are on television, to vote no longer on ideals, morals, beliefs and what one knows to be best for the future of America, but they vote based on who think has the best chance to beat the person they hate.  If we keep doing that, then the quality of the person we elct will continue to get worse and worse.

            If you let the thief keep stealing, or you let the government keep raising taxes, spending more money, taking away your personal liberties and creating bigger and bigger bureaucracies…then that is what they will continue to do.  

The equation is simple, if the government has more of your money and the government gets bigger and more costly; then you have less of your own money to spend and you have less freedoms, because the government is now making your decisions for you.

Every four years when the Presidential race comes around we always here about third parties ruining the election, by stealing votes away from a "major candidate", which will ruin our country by letting the other win.

Every day I hear people complain about the government and about how worried they are about our future, yet people still vote for one of the two "major" parties; which are causing this uncertainty and distaste. 

If we think back a little bit, to a time when the democrats and the republicans were the same party, Democratic-Republicans. And we compare it to today where we have the two major parties working together to keep other candidates--but more importantly, other ideas--out of the debates. It seems to me that the two major parties are in collusion in order to keep other major candidates like Nader and Barr out of the debates.

No one person can have the answers for everything; thus, the more people we have debating and sharing ideas, the better off our country would be.

In the business world you get fired for doing a bad job, the same should be true for government. Despite your political affiliation, there have been two parties in charge of this country for the past 20 years and we have had a laundry list of problems with our country, our education system, our national security and our economy. Bill Clinton made a mockery of the Oval Office; George W. Bush has stretched the constitution way beyond its means and has expanded spending within the federal government by over 40%--not very consistent with the Republican platform if you ask me.

It is true that Bill Clinton reigned over the last surplus that this country had, but that was due to increased taxes and the fact that Reganomics finally kicked in. Fixing the economy, which the government screwed up—by interfering with the free market—takes some time...

What I believe is in more personal liberties, smaller federal government and lower taxes. What I believe in, is not wasting my vote on someone that does not represent my belief system--the only proven system of government (Reganomics). What I believe in is less government intervention in my daily life and in the business world; I believe in the system of government that the writer’s of the constitution had in mind in the 1700’s and the system of government that we fought for during the Revolutionary War.

The ONLY candidate representing those values and beliefs is the Libertarian party candidate. I would actually like to see Obama win, so that the Republican Party can get a reality check and get forced back to the values they say that they stand for. I whole-heartedly believe in the Republican platform, but the neo-conservative movement of today is no longer representing the “Right” of the political spectrum, they are more centrist than ever before; and the Republican party of today is just as much to blame for the financial crisis that we are in. It is my belief that people in America will eventually educate themselves on Economics and Politics and it is at that point in time that we will have a new “major” political party form, one that stands for what the American people want, after all we are a republic (or Representative Democracy). 

Keep in mind one of our most recent events, the bailout. Over 70% of the American people were against it and both Obama and McCain were for it; Barr still stands strong in opposition of the bailout bill. 

If everyone wants to remain a party puppet and not look at the real person that is running, then our country will continue to head down the track that we are heading down. But if people really studied ALL of the candidates that are running and vote based on principle and vote what belief system they think is best for running our country, then we will no longer have to vote for the “better of two evils” and we will no longer have to listen to the same two commercials (one bashing Obama, one bashing McCain) because both commercials are correct, neither candidate is the best choice for our country. 

Written by: Aaron Judd

Last Updated: 10/26/08