Voting Conviction

Alright. I think I've officially burned through my small obsession with national politics during this election. And I'm right back where I started: both candidates are walking invitations to disaster. So I've made the only vote I could possibly explain or defend to anyone, including myself: I wrote-in "George Washington" again. I also feel (and, yes, I see the irony) that Objectivists spend way too much energy on worrying about which loser to vote for. One vote doesn't change anything. A bumper sticker has more effect on history.

What ended my inner turmoil was to finally come across Craig Biddle's very cogent argument for why Kerry is to be preferred. I was never totally convinced by John Lewis's piece, nor by the mentionings on the Internet of Peikoff's view that while a Kerry administration will be expectedly bad, Bush's administration is comparatively apocalyptic. Biddle's piece is obviously in the same camp as these, however.

Biddle's article doesn't make me wish I'd voted for Kerry, but it does convince me that the Tracinski and Binswanger "vote Bush!" camp is following some dubious reasoning. Specifically dubious: believing that Bush speaking about "evil" and waging wars is making any significant progress at all against the enemies of civilization, militarily or ideologically. Everyone (Objectivists, I mean) is quoting her for support, but I don't think there's any way Ayn Rand would have bought this fantasy.