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A voter's guide
 Scott Bushee -- Reader´s Advocate
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"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
-Descartes
I realize that it might be a touch contradictory for me to write a primer on voting after advising that it should be illegal, but the thing is, most of you are still going to go out and vote anyway.
And, unfortunately, you will be basing almost everything you know about government off of things you learned in school, be it high school or college.�
Allow a simple observation on the wisdom of this:� Are not public schools, by their very nature, government schools?� Are they not institutions funded by, and staffed by, government?� Are not all of your professors on the payroll of the state?� Further, is not public education one of the Marxist/fascist cornerstones of the welfare state? Might it be the case that people whose very livelihood relies on the continuance of the welfare state have some interest in promoting it's expansion to those they teach?�
Absurd, you say?� What if it was the case that the universities and high schools were fully funded by corporations, and we were always being taught that corporations were the solution to any social problem?�Is there not room for doubt here?�Those who have doubt in the second case are often the same people who do not to the first, even though they cannot do so without contradiction, as the logical form is the same.
None of this is to say that your teachers are bad people, or that (outside of the Human Relations Department) they are out to brainwash you.�Reasonable people disagree on important issues.�Nor am I trying to convince anyone of an ad hominem argument against teachers.�It is just this:�I think, prior to voting, each of you should stand back a little from what you have been taught in government schools and evaluate things on your own.�Take Mark Twain's advice and never let your schooling get in the way of your education.�
To that end, I would like to recommend an essay that you will probably never read if you stick to the curriculum taught by the government.� It was written by Frederic Bastiat, and is called "The Law." (http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html.)
This short essay asks and answers most of the important questions in political science.�For example:�What is law?�"It is the collectiveorganization of the individual right to lawful defense."�That is it.
Or how about this: Is social justice just?�No, since social programs are simply the use of the government to redistribute wealth, and "since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force � for the same reason � cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups."
In conclusion, if you wish to gain fundamental enlightenment into the nature of politics and government prior to voting, do yourself a favor: read "The Law."
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