Don’t Vote

by P. J. O'Rourke

  Therefore, if we were inventing a new political system... Stop. We do not want to invent new political systems. Whenever people tell you they are going to wipe the slate clean, it’s your slate they mean to wipe. The political systems that we have already are plenty bad enough. Newly invented political systems mean Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, or, at best, Che Guevara—best because the Bolivians killed him before he caused any trouble.

  Political systems cannot be treated as if they were blueprints from Habitat for Humanity, drawn to a conscious plan and given a fixed start date. The social engineering involved in political subdevelopments such as these leads to bodies buried in the basement. Nor were existing political systems created intentionally, for reasons bad or good. There is a notion that somewhere in a dusty archive or dog-eared poli-sci textbook there’s something called a “social contract.” It was mentioned first by Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, then by John Locke, and later by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hobbes thought that man had surrendered liberties to government in return for order and safety. Locke thought that man had volunteered powers to government in return for safety and order. And Rousseau thought... he thought all sorts of things. He was French.

  Just where and when did hairy apemen come down from trees and speak to the fine points of this agreement before speech was invented? Who decided how many ughs would be in the Gruntstitution? Few? Less? Some? More? None?

  The rule of political systems is that we must play the hand we’re dealt lest we be shuffled and discarded. Or this would be the rule of political systems if it weren’t for the fact that 230-odd years ago some hicks sat down in a flea barn in a no-account burg in what might as well have been Borneo and invented a new political system that’s been the envy and astonishment of the world ever since.

  We know nothing about where political systems come from. We don’t even know where they don’t come from. And considering the shiftless, slave-trading, bed-hopping, debt-ducking (and that’s just Thomas Jefferson) nature of America’s founding fathers, who also included rum-soaked bunkum merchants and Indian-massacring land swindlers (and they all oppressed women and weren’t vegans) we should be careful about saying that certain societies or nationalities or religious persuasions aren’t “ready for democracy.”

  As I was saying, if we were inventing a new political system, the first question should be, “What is good for everyone?” By everyone we ought to mean everyone as in every one. The question can’t be, “What is good for one?” That’s monomaniacal and results in a political system like the New Hampshire presidential primary. The question can’t be, “What is good for someone?” Everything’s good for someone. The New Hampshire presidential primary is good for someone who owns a Motel 6 in Keene, New Hampshire. The question can’t even be, “What’s good for almost everyone?” or “everyone who matters?” or “the majority of everyone who gives a shit?” Political systems always end up asking these questions. The place where things end can’t be the place to begin. (Unless politics is as much like a Monopoly board as leftists say it is.) Finally, the question can’t be, “What is good for everyone as a whole?” There is no whole. Individuals are available only individually. A complete set cannot be collected, even by force.

  No matter how newly inventive we’re being with our political system we should take a few lessons from the past. The philosopher George Santayana told us that when we ignore history we’re doomed to repeat it, and, if high school is anything to go by, the same is true for civics.17

  Mankind has made improvements in living conditions over the past couple of million years. (Some people don’t think so. To those people I say: dentistry.) The improvements that have been good for everyone are those that have increased the dignity of the individual—have given the individual broader scope, greater self-accountability, and more authority over everything in the world (except other individuals who have the authority to tell the first individual to butt out).

  Judaism provided individuals with one God and one law before whom all men are equal regardless of wealth or rank. Christianity pointed out that every individual has precious intrinsic worth, even the most lowly among us such as those we vote for in the New Hampshire presidential primary. The growth of trade and private enterprise let individuals acquire autonomy and material goods by means other than delving in muck and killing each other. And the industrial revolution allowed millions—now billions—of individuals to lead a housed, clothed, and fed life. (Albeit with some unfortunate side effects such as those polar bears living in our Sub-Zero freezers.)

  So there we have it, a political system that consists entirely of us individuals, each of us entirely free. All that we free individuals have to do now is ask each other, “What do we want?”

  And be told to shut up. There’s no way to learn the infinite wants of myriad individuals, and why are we so nosy anyhow?

  Yet we do know some things that we want from a political system, whether we care to know or not. What we want, from even the freest political system, is relief from freedom. Freedom is not a tranquil condition, witness all the killing, fucking, and marrying involved. We want order and safety, per Hobbes and Locke. That is, we want the police, the army, and TSA to be on the lookout (for other people, thank you). But we also want somewhere to turn when our weather, our economy, our health, our luck, or ourself screws up.

  Some people cannot enjoy the benefits of freedom without assistance from their fellows. This may be a temporary condition, such as childhood and when I say I can drive home from the bar at 3 a.m. just fine. Or, due to infirmity or affliction, the condition may be permanent. Aid must be given. Assets must be redistributed.

  All political systems are redistributive. The most rigidly individualistic political theorist can’t get away from redistribution. The theorist might wish he could invoke the “fuck you” clause in the Kill Fuck Marry paradigm when it comes to poor people. But there are always more poor people than political theorists. The poor people may go for the kill.

  Also there’s the sympathy, compassion, and basic human decency embedded deep within our souls. Embedded so deep that they’re often invisible and sometimes impossible to find. But we won’t admit that. We may not have a conscience, but we do have something inside that keeps us from announcing that we don’t. This something may be, again, the fear that everyone will kill us.

  Political systems are redistributive because every political system is modeled to some extent on the original political system, the family, that hotbed of communism. Within a family the dictum of Marx is valid: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” But the family is not a good model for a political system. For one thing Marxism ceases to work when it is extended outside the family by even so much as the factor of one bum brother-in-law. For another thing, think about your family. Or, worse, think about mine. Talk about kill, fuck, marry. There are branches of my family too looney even for jobs in government. Now imagine that my family occupies hundreds of thousands of square miles and is made up of tens of millions of people too looney even for jobs in government. It’s California.

  On the other hand, what’s a better model for a political system than the family? The coral reef is okay, as long as we don’t have to go anywhere. Animal farm has been tried. Facebook would be weird.

  In the makeup of a halfway decent political system, the quality of freedom (including the free market), the quantity of individuality, and the fact of redistribution are fair assumptions, I assume. Redistribution is where the political fun begins. How much? Of what? To whom? By which means? And where the hell do we get it from?

  This is the crux of the liberal versus conservative argument in modern democracies. Let us say that the argument is “Does size matter?” and that liberals and conservatives are bickering about the amount of redistribution to be done. This isn’t quite true but it’s close enough for government work. Let us say further—liars though we may be—that both the left and the right mean well an
d that each wants “what is good for everyone.” Redistribution still causes a huge fight. People are never going to agree about it. The quarrel will go on forever.

  And let’s hope it does. An end to the argument would be horrible. The moment when we’re all in accord about every social benefit with which we all will be provided forever is the moment when we enter my twelve-year-old daughter Muffin’s alternate universe where “everything is fair.” You don’t want to go there. Pink blasting on the iPod speakers. The laptop glowing with snarky BFF e-mails. The stinking hamster cage. The huge polyester tangle of the abandoned My Little Pony collection. Floors a fathom deep in wadded-up Aéropostale outfits, tattered Twilight books, fruit roll-ups and half-chewed gum. There are snits. There are sulks. There is bitter sarcasm apropos of nothing. And you’d better hope you’re not a younger sister. For younger sisters life really is hell where “everything is fair.”

  A few nonpartisan (or, at least, not very political) observations can be made about redistribution. When any authority of any kind undertakes to redistribute goods and services we can be sure we’ll be told that “what goes to the poor” has “come from the rich.” Those who are indignant at the rich say so; the indignant rich do too. But who’s rich? You are. To someone who lives in the slums of Karachi you’re rich. I don’t care if you’re driving a 1990 Geo Tracker, haven’t had a job since Cher was a babe, and your trailer home just burned down because your wife’s boyfriend’s meth lab exploded, you’re rich. You’re farting through silk as far as that person in Karachi who’s looking for a job as a suicide bomber is concerned. Accusing someone of being rich is like accusing someone of adultery in the Gospel of St. John. Let he who is without anything anybody wants cast the first vote.

  We all praise the virtue of sharing, but perform the following thought experiment about the sharing process. Imagine that your family is matched, by lot, with five other families and that the resulting half dozen familial units must pool their resources and come to mutual decisions about how those resources are to be allocated. For a brief moment that sounds like an intriguing combination of reality TV and the 1960s. Then we recall what an awful combination reality TV and the 1960s would have been. The Real Housewives of Charlie Manson.

  Since we’ve already determined that you’re rich, let’s institute a requirement that the other five families be poorer than yours. And why is a small bad idea like this supposed to get better if you make it bigger? It stinks in your hometown. How is it going to smell nationwide?

  Nor does the idea improve if you shrink it. How small would that pool of resource sharers need to be to make it practical, sane, and unstupid? Even within our immediate families we don’t share our resources fairly (as Muffin is totally fond of pointing out). And in most families collective decision making doesn’t rise above the level of hamster purchase. (My dogs favor having the hamster—with a side of fries.)

  What if the shared resource pool is restricted to only a married couple? Surprise divorce filing! And your spouse’s lawyer just called to say you’re rich.

  Another rule of redistribution can be extrapolated from a family circle: Never do anything to (or for) a stranger that you wouldn’t do to (or for) your bum brother-in-law. (I’d like to note here that I have a perfectly respectable set of brothers-in-law: an engineer, an industrial designer, a medical researcher, and a deceased career military man. So it’s your bum brother-in-law we’re talking about.)

  You can’t let your sister and her five kids by six different fathers starve, but you can try to make her husband get a job. And you can (at least in my state) run him off at gunpoint if he beats her.

  Or say your brother-in-law isn’t a bad guy, just drunk and crazy and high on drugs. He’s living on the street and talking to people who don’t exist. Do you pick him up by his collar and belt, heave him in the back of your car, and get him some help? Or do you respect his civil rights and let him freeze in doorways and get run over by a bus? Yeah, I’m for the bus myself. But you know the kind of fit your sister is going to pitch at the funeral, screaming and yelling, and that will get your mom started and you’ll never hear the end of it.

  We’re in the same situation, politically, as we are with our sister. We have to help. But when an overcollectivized political system is allowed to make all the decisions about who gets help we end up helping some people who are hardly helpless. Maybe they’re worthy people whom we love dearly but we still don’t feel obligated to share our resources with them.

  For instance, there you are, scraping along, three kids in school, and the house worth half what it was a few years ago. And your dad needs a knee replacement. Let’s say your dad, oh, served three terms in Congress and then went to work as a Washington lobbyist so that his net worth is, um, a couple hundred million dollars. Do you pay for the knee operation? What’s the old fart still doing out on the tennis court anyway? And will somebody tell me why the goddamned hell Medicare isn’t means-tested?

  Redistribution is practiced in every democratic political system (and allegedly practiced in most of the systems that aren’t democratic). This is well and good as long as we’re mindful that, a lot of the time, redistribution works about as much as your brother-in-law.

  Power, freedom, and responsibility are the main features of our politics. We pay with our freedoms to relieve ourselves of our responsibilities, and this is how others get their power over us.

  Maybe a nicer way to put it is, “We come together in a political system to share the burden of our responsibilities.” Except that’s bullshit. We snatch the material resources that constitute freedom from everywhere and everyone we can. We’re such thieves of freedom that we pick our own pockets. And we turn these resources over to politicians so power mad they’re willing to endure the filth of politics to gain the least bit of mastery over their fellows.

  If we do our stealing for the sake of Hobbesean order and safety, we’re not much to blame. But a look at government expenditure indicates that safety and order aren’t our first concerns. According to the 2009 federal budget we’re spending $651.2 billion on defense and $26.6 billion on administration of justice. Add to this the $91.8 billion that we spend, quite rightly, on veterans’ benefits and we get a total of $769.6 billion in Hobbesian diminishments of our freedom—two and a half thousand dollars or so apiece and worth it, or we hope so. But in the same year we’re spending $694.8 billion on Social Security; $420.1 billion on Medicare; $316.8 billion on the other government-funded health care services; $54.2 billion on “income security” including unemployment, disability, and welfare benefits; $12.2 billion on social services providing vocational education and training; $22.6 billion on the agricultural subsidies that everyone wants to kill; and $38.3 billion on humanitarian foreign aid. That’s one and a half trillion—a lot of giving. We’re giving until it hurts. That is, we’re giving until it hurts other people, since we’re giving more than we’ve got.

  Do we need to employ the untrustworthy and rapacious power of government to effect the redistribution that our political system requires? We’ll never know. We’re too busy running up to our untrustworthy government leaders and thrusting gifts of additional rapacious power upon them so that we don’t have to take care of Grandma. She doesn’t know who we are anymore and she smells. Even if Hobbes and Locke had been talking crap and there never was such a thing as an internal or external threat to society, people would still form governments just to shirk responsibility. It’s “Kill Fuck Marry” again. In our political heart of hearts we’re all twenty-two, rich, and beautiful. We fuck all we want, then we get an abortion or ask the National Institutes of Health to kill the HIV virus, and if we do get married it’s just for a couple of months. (Don’t forget the prenup!)

  6

  The Purgatory of Freedom and the Hell of Politics

  The best way to have a good political system is to avoid politics. But political disengagement deprives us of opportunities for bitching at politicians and pushing them around. This is occasionally
useful and always a pleasure. In our democracy we don’t get in trouble by trying to make politicians mad. We get in trouble by trying to make them like us. Our political system goes to hell when we want it to give us things.

  There are certain things we may reasonably demand of our political system, of course. But most of these things are negative rights. And often it’s the political system itself that’s violating those rights. The most sensible request we make of government is not “Do something!” but “Quit it!”

  As for our positive rights and the goodies we expect to gain with them, we’re confusing politics with Halloween. Politicians don’t mind. They love devising programs of incentives and disincentives for the populace. Trick or treat! And a ghouls and goblins political system is fine for those among us who are really scary. But, for the rest of us, don’t be surprised if we go house to house—White House to House of Representatives to Senate—and, ringing doorbells as furiously as we may, get nothing but healthy fruit.

  If there’s something we want, politics shouldn’t be our first resort. Politics is all taking, no making. Whatever politics provides for us will be obtained from other people. Those people won’t love us.

  And we don’t love them. When we gain our ends through political takings it’s because of a certain bad idea. What we’re thinking leads to death, destruction, and taxes. What we’re thinking is that we live in a zero-sum world: there is a fixed amount of the things I want, and when anybody has anything I want they’ve taken it from me. If you get too many slices of pizza, I have to eat the Domino’s box.