Offsite Post: ‘The Value of Voting’

 

There is a tendency among many in the States to absolutize the ability to vote for government officials, as though there were some magic property in voting that makes a government built around that process a just government and others with less emphasis on it unjust.

Mr Royal Alexander provides a good example of this.  There are two things that need addressing in the worldview he and others put forward:  First, that voting has been rare in world history; two, that it is the mark toward which all peoples should be politically striving.

As to the first, it is not by some miracle that the citizens of the States are able to vote.  Electing political and religious leaders has been known in places all over the world, throughout history.  Of relevance for the States, one could point to ancient Greece and Rome, and to post-pagan Christian Europe, who, in counties, towns, guilds, Orthodox dioceses, monasteries, through the laws of Solon and Lycurgus, and so on utilized voting to some degree in their societies.

More important, however, is the attempt to make voting a universal, non-negotiable ‘right’ that divides the civilized from the uncivilized, the chosen from condemned, the righteous from the unrighteous.  This overlooks something fundamental:  The goal with regard to government isn’t a particular structural political mechanism – the goal is just government.  And elections are not necessary to that.

Every society has its own unwritten constitution that corresponds with its people’s unique history, customs, characteristics, moral and spiritual development, land features, climate, and so forth.  The political system that arises from that combination will likewise be unique to each people.  The system that has developed here in the States is, therefore, not applicable to every other country.  It cannot be held up as a universal goal for all peoples, as though history were being driven in a deterministic manner to some pre-ordained, paradisiacal end, at the conclusion of which is the Philadelphia constitution written in 1787.

The logic of the latter view can lead to some pretty bizarre conclusions if we follow it through to its end.  For example, should we view the Holy Prophet Moses and the Holy King David as ‘tyrants’ because they were not chosen by elections (Moses was chosen by God Himself to lead Israel; David, by the Holy Prophet Samuel)?  Or because they exercised judicial and legislative powers as well as executive powers?  If the American system is the only valid system, we would have to answer Yes.

Absolutizing the right to vote has also led to foreign policy disasters all over the world, instigated by the US in the name of democracy.  . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2021/12/garlington-the-value-of-voting/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!