What If Elections Don’t Matter?
What If Elections Don’t Matter?
by
Andrew P. Napolitano
Recently
by Andrew P. Napolitano: Big
Government Cannot Pay Its Bills, Again
What if Democrats
and Republicans were two wings of the same bird of prey?
What if elections
were actually useful tools of social control? What if they just
provided the populace with meaningless participation in a process
that validates an establishment that never meaningfully changes?
What if that establishment doesn’t want and doesn’t have the consent
of the governed? What if the two-party system was actually a mechanism
used to limit so-called public opinion? What if there were more
than two sides to every issue, but the two parties wanted to box
you in to one of their corners?
What if there’s
no such thing as public opinion, because every thinking person has
opinions that are uniquely his own? What if public opinion was just
a manufactured narrative that makes it easier to convince people
that if their views are different, there’s something wrong with
that — or something wrong with them?
What if the
whole purpose of the Democratic and Republican parties was not to
expand voters’ choices, but to limit them? What if the widely perceived
differences between the two parties was just an illusion? What if
the heart of government policy remains the same, no matter who’s
in the White House? What if the heart of government policy remains
the same, no matter what the people want?
What if those
vaunted differences between Democrat and Republican were actually
just minor disagreements? What if both parties just want power and
are willing to have young people fight meaningless wars in order
to enhance that power? What if both parties continue to fight the
war on drugs just to give bureaucrats and cops bigger budgets and
more jobs?
What if government
policies didn’t change when government’s leaders did? What if no
matter who won an election, government stayed the same? What if
government was really a revolving door of political hacks, bent
on exploiting the people while they’re in charge?
What if both
parties supported welfare, war, debt, bailouts and big government?
What if the rhetoric that candidates displayed on the campaign trail
was dumped after electoral victory? What if Barack Obama campaigned
as an antiwar, pro-civil liberties candidate, then waged senseless
wars while assaulting your rights that the Constitution is supposed
to protect? What if George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of nonintervention
and small government, then waged a foreign policy of muscular military
intervention and a domestic policy of vast government borrowing
and growth?
What if Bill
Clinton declared the era of big government to be over, but actually
just convinced Republicans like Newt Gingrich that they can get
what they want out of big government, too? What if the Republicans
went along with it?
What if Ronald
Reagan spent six years running for president promising to shrink
government, but then the government grew while he was in office?
What if, notwithstanding Reagan’s ideas and cheerfulness and libertarian
rhetoric, there really was no Reagan Revolution?
What if all
this is happening again? What if Rick Santorum is being embraced
by voters who want small government even though he voted for the
Patriot Act, for an expansion of Medicare and for raising the debt
ceiling by trillions of dollars? What if Mitt Romney is being embraced
by voters who want anyone but Obama, but don’t realize that Romney
might as well be Obama on everything from warfare to welfare?
What if Ron
Paul is being ignored by the media not because theyclaim he’s unappealing
or unelectable, but because he doesn’t fit into the pre-manufactured
public opinion mold used by the establishment to pigeonhole the
electorate and create the so-called narrative that drives media
coverage of elections?
What if the
biggest difference between most candidates was not substance but
style? What if those stylistic differences were packaged as substantive
ones to re-enforce the illusion of a difference between Democrats
and Republicans? What if Romney wins and ends up continuing most
of the same policies that Obama promoted? What if Obama’s policies,
too, are merely extensions of Bush’s?
What if a government
that manipulated us could be fired? What if a government that lacked
the true and knowing consent of the governed could be dismissed?
What if it were possible to have a game-changer? What if we need
a Ron Paul to preserve and protect our freedoms from assault
by the government?
What if we
could make elections matter again? What if we could do something
about this?
Reprinted
with the author’s permission.
January 13, 2012
Andrew P. Napolitano
[send him mail],
a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior
judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel, and the host of “FreedomWatchâ€
on the Fox Business Network. His latest book is It
is Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong: The Case for
Personal Freedom.
Copyright
© 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano