Topics: upcoming election, dumbasses stay home, democracy as the tyranny of the majority, individual liberty. Length: 5 minutes.

Your hosts: Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai.

Download the MP3 file of this show here (right-click and select save to download the file).

Not exactly a conservative? Not precisely a liberal? Not quite sure at all? What do those labels mean, anyway? Most people have the nagging feeling that this left-right, liberal-conservative pap that Big Media smears us with every day is far too narrow a view. The fact is that these labels are not only meaningless, but they exclude millions of people.

Relax–the Samurai has just what you need to figure it all out: The World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Quick, easy, painless and, most of all, revealing–you just might learn something about yourself!

I don’t understand all these bleeting appeals to get out and vote. Could someone please answer this question for me: if people are ignorant about the pressing issues of the day, the principles of individual liberty upon which this nation was founded, or the basic structure and function of our government, then why in the hell do we want these boobs casting votes that affect all of us?

Oh wait, I can hear the whining and caterwauling now, “Hey, Samurai, you’re too cynical about people!” Ok, how ’bout some numbers? Warning: the following contains factual information, including statistics, and a TV-talking head is NOT supplied to inject this information directly into that void between your ears. You have to actually read it…just like you would a ballot.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS
by James W. Harris

New Study: Shocking Voter Ignorance

A new study by the libertarian Cato Institute indicates that a shockingly large
number of U.S. voters are almost totally ignorant about the issues and
candidates they vote on.

“Overall, close to one-third of Americans can be categorized as ‘know-nothings’
almost completely ignorant of relevant political information,” writes Ilya
Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, in “When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss:
How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy.”

“Most of the time,” Somin notes,” only bare majorities know which party has
control of the Senate, some 70 percent cannot name either of their state’s
senators and the vast majority cannot name any congressional candidate in their
district at the height of a campaign.”

Overall, voters tend to be “abysmally ignorant of even very basic political
information… the sheer depth of most individual voters’ ignorance is shocking to
observers not familiar with the research.”

A few examples from many in the report:

• The Patriot Act? What’s that? Three-fourths of Americans say they know little
  or nothing about it. 58 percent say they’ve heard “nothing” or “not much” about
  it.
• Seventy percent don’t know about the $500 billion new drug benefit added this
  year to Medicare, which Somin describes as “probably the most significant
  domestic legislation passed during the Bush administration.”
• A majority cannot make even a rough estimate of how many Americans soldiers
  have been killed in Iraq.
• 61 percent believe that there has been a net loss of U.S. jobs in 2004.
• Over 60 per cent don’t know that, during President Bush’s term, there has
  been an explosion in domestic spending (about 25 percent above previous levels)
  that has enormously increased the national debt.
• Last year, 58 percent of Americans could not name a single federal Cabinet
  department.

And such voter ignorance is, alas, nothing new:

• In 1964, at the height of Cold War tensions, only 38 percent of the public
  knew that the Soviet Union was not a member of NATO.
• In 1994, after Republicans took control of Congress under the
  highly-publicized leadership of Rep. Newt Gingrich, 57 percent of Americans said they’d never
  heard of Gingrich, despite the avalanche of press coverage.
• In 1996, 67 percent couldn’t name thei

r congressman, and only 26 percent knew
that senators serve six-year terms.

• In the 2002 elections, only 3

2 percent of voters knew that the Republican
Party controlled the House.

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Looking at the grave threats to liberty now facing America, one can only
conclude Jefferson was right.

(Source: Cato Institute study:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-525es.html)

Mrs. Samurai recently found out that a very nice friend was planning to vote
for John Kerry. When asked “My heavens, why?!”, this friend, whom we will call
Eeyore, responded with her concerns (to put it mildly) about the Republican
party. Mrs. Samurai responded to these concerns in the hopes of opening Eeyore’s
eyes to the truth of the two-party scam. We thought you might enjoy this
interchange as well. Can you handle the truth?

Eeyore: The Republican Party, in all honesty, hasn’t got an inch of ground to
stand on when they talk about standing up for life. This government cares only
for the richest people in our society, and is willing to sacrifice everything
and everyone else in the attempt to ensure that the interests of that top
percent are protected.

Mrs. Samurai: In theory, Republican policies would benefit most of society by
minimizing government interference, thus allowing a vibrant economy so people
have decent jobs, and minimizing the tax burden so a one-income family can live
comfortably. Charity would stay where it belongs – in the community.
Unfortunately, Republicans do not live up to their supposed philosophy of minimal
government.

Furthermore, Republicans want to be re-elected. That can’t happen if they only
“help” the top few percent. Even if it’s self-serving, every Republican
administration tries to help the economy be better so lots of people – including the
non-rich – are doing well and will vote for them again.

Democrats, on the other hand, claim to care for the little guy, but the social
programs they institute backfire. We now have a multi-generational welfare
class. We also have the minimum wage, NAFTA and GATT, which put so much burden on
businesses located in our country that jobs have flown out across our borders.
The Democratic party has seriously betrayed the very people they claim to be
helping. The Democratic party doesn’t like to talk about it, but, there are many
big businesses who support Democrats. Even Martha Stewart is a Democrat!

Eeyore: I don’t think Bush or the people around him care, underneath the
pro-life hype, for the person that that fetus is. When the baby is one day old does
she have that same right, even if her parents don’t have health care? What
about at a year? Does she have the right to eat and have a roof over her head

Mrs. Samurai: I have to agree with the Founding Fathers here. We have the
right to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness. Not the GUARANTEE of
happiness (or health care, or a roof over our heads, etc.). Before there were so many
government programs, there were lots of charity hospitals and free clinics.
These places are closing down under the weight of government regulation. I have
a doctor friend (a Republican, by the way) who got in serious trouble for
trying to see the occasional poor patient free-of-charge. Outrageous!

Eeyore: What if her father has a minimum wage job at Walmart and her mother,
with two other preschool children, is unable to work?

Mrs. Samurai: Minimum wage laws have actually forced a decrease in the wages
that could be earned by people who are not brand-new to the work force (i.e.,
teenagers). Our awful tax burden has created the situation where many families
cannot survive well on one income. Democrats and Republicans alike have
contributed to the decline in real wages over the last few decades. I don’t know
which party has been the most deceitful.

Eeyore: If a child, heaven forbid, is not American, does she have the right not
to be bombed in an attempt for America to secure the oil that lies under the
earth by her home, so that people can continue to drive SUVs and other new cars?

Mrs. Samurai: We do not belong in Iraq, but I don’t buy that we went there
over oil. It’s bigger than that. There are a lot of forces in our government
pushing for increased involvement in the Middle East, particularly the
pro-Israel-at-any-cost segment. And don’t forget that the Democrats got us into Vietnam
and also bombed Kosovo and aspirin factories. Again, neither party makes us or
the rest of the world safer.

Eeyore: Does a child have the right not to have to breathe foul air or dirty
water that’s been polluted by the companies owned by those fat cats who found it
so much to their advantage to sing her praises in the the months before she was
born?

Mrs. Samurai: Be sure you include many Federal politicians of both parties in
your “fat cat” moniker. I was an environmental engineer for several years
before having kids, so I’ve got some background here. A large amount of the
pollution to date has occurred because government has ALLOWED industries to pollute
government property. The U.S. government has been a terrible steward – under
both parties. Private property ownership encourages cleaner practices because
people want to protect what they own.

If you still suspect that we need government to make sure we don’t pollute,
consider this: Cars built in the 1960’s polluted less than those in previous
decades. Did the EPA come down on the auto manufacturers? No – the EPA didn’t
exist yet. The cars became cleaner because that’s what people wanted, and that’s
what they got as soon as the technology existed.

Big corporations are a problem in many ways. But it’s important to know that
they have flourished in our country precisely because there is a powerful
Federal government. There is an incredible regulatory burden on business, and
smaller businesses are at a decided disadvantage when trying to keep up with them.
Big corporations have tax advantages over smaller businesses as well. The
reason big corporations give so much to BOTH Democrat and Republican campaigns is
that politicians at the Federal level have a lot of power to grant favors. If we
could significantly scale back the Federal government, then these people would
have no big favors to bestow and smaller businesses would have more of a chance
to flourish. As citizens and consumers, we would in turn have more influence
over them.

Eeyore: In other words, you can’t be for life if you protect the first nine
months of a person and then damn to hell all the months and years that follow.

Mrs. Samurai: Just because someone doesn’t think a government program should
take care of a lot of these needs doesn’t mean they don’t care about these
people. Many of us know from experience that government programs hurt a lot of the
people they are supposed to help and that private charities are generally more
efficient and successful. As Harry Browne said, “If there seem to be ten
thousand people who can’t help themselves, pass a law to help them and there will
suddenly be ten million who can’t help themselves. The new law will provide the
incentive to qualify as needy.”

Eeyore: I cannot support all of the Democratic positions (the stand on
abortion, and stem cell research, for example). But I do not support the Republicans
on anything. Even the way they talk about abortion seems to me to be so
hypocritical that I feel offended by their rhetoric. They use the emotional issue of
abortion to mask their true feelings about the value of human life.

Mrs. Samurai: I think your condemnation goes a bit too far. I know an awful
lot of Republicans personally who are amazingly compassionate people. Granted,
there can be a big difference between the upper echelons of a political party
and the rest. That’s true for both parties. The guys at the top get their
supporters to believe they are going to help them, but it’s a lie. I am offended
equally by the rhetoric of both parties!

Eeyore: Our country is in the most dangerous position that it has been in
during my lifetime, if not in its history. If Bush gets in again, I don’t think we
will ever recover as a nation or as a world.

Mrs. Samurai: The Democrats are great at scaring people with their rhetoric,
but Bush is simply the result of more than a century of the centralization of
power in the Federal government by both parties. We have a professional class of
politicians and bureaucrats whose main goal in life is to keep their positions,
not to do what’s actually best for people. The Democrats and Republicans play
a game where they pretend to have huge differences so we feel like we’re making
a choice when we vote, but things never really change for the better under
either party. I always thought everyone accepted the axiom that “power corrupts.”
How can we keep giving them more and more and expect something better to come
of it?

Vote Libertarian!!!

I just submitted this letter to my local newspaper. It succinctly explains the often-overlooked scientific arguments that support the pro-life position. If you like this letter, feel free to use as much of it as you want in your own letter to your local rag.

Mrs. Samurai

Dear Editor:

Let me first state that I support neither Kerry nor Bush in the upcoming election. (My candidate, Libertarian Michael Badnarik, sadly won’t be on the NH ballot.)

A letter in last week’s issue defending Sen. Kerry’s apparent contradiction when it comes to abortion claimed that determining when life begins is a religious issue, and therefore each person should be free to make their own “choice.” This commonly-used argument oversimplifies the abortion issue by ignoring the fact that there is compelling scientific reasoning against abortion. After all, there are even atheists who are pro-life.

Science, not religion, tells us that from the moment of conception a fetus has a complete set of human genetic material. We have identified no point in the pregnancy or birth at which something else is added to transform “tissue” to “a human being.” To allow abortion assumes that there is at least a period in a pre-born’s time in the womb that it does not deserve the same protection as an older fetus or someone who is outside of the womb. This is a serious assumption! Particularly when scientific advances have consistently moved our ideas of when a fertilized egg becomes a full human-being in one direction only – towards the point of conception. There is the life of a (potential, to some) human being in the balance, and we err on the side of murder?

That the pre-born baby needs the “life support” of the womb for awhile shouldn’t affect her status as a human being. After all, an infant is still completely dependent on others for survival, and that doesn’t make it our choice whether or not to let her live. To use another analogy, let’s say a person is on life-support in the hospital, but it’s almost certain that he will fully recover within 9 months’ time. Most, if not all, would agree that it would be unthinkable to unhook him from that life-support.

Just because pregnancies sometimes occur in difficult situations doesn’t change how we should view our options. Lots of humans can cause difficulties in our lives – mentally ill family members, special needs children, elderly parents with dementia, etc. There are various ways we can cope with these situations, but murder is not an accepted one. I think we’ve only gotten away with abortion all of this time because, unless we have an ultrasound, we can’t see the baby, so we can pretend it’s not a real person. Unfortunately, many young women who undergo abortions never hear these arguments, but later realize with guilt and sorrow the truth about the “choice” they made.

I just learned that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Presidential candidate, will be on the ballot in 48 states. I was delighted that my party was going to have such a strong national presence in this upcoming election but was also curious about which two bonehead states excluded him from the ballot. Turns out they are Oklahoma and, to my eternal shame, my very own Live-Free-or-Die New Hampshire! I confirmed this depressing news at the New Hampshire Secretary of State website. You can read lots of good discussion on how this happened here.

Ralph Nader, however, did make the ballot in New Hampshire (but also not Oklahoma–what the hell is the problem with those nutty Okies?). Although I disagree with Nader on several key issues, he is absolutely a league above the Tweedledumb vs. Tweedledumber choice the we have with the R’s and D’s and he is a candidate with integrity. As Justin Raimondo observed, beneath his leftist garb, Nader has a glimmer of the Old Right in him.

So, cheated out of the option of voting for my ideal Libertarian Presidential candidate, I will settle for casting my vote for a man with whom I don’t agree 100%, but whom I trust and respect. Although it’s true that he doesn’t have a prayer of being elected, the idea is to send a message to the Beltway Bandits telling them that we’re wise to their one-party scam masquerading with two different names. Can you imagine the shockwaves that would ripple through those spineless thieves in DC when third party candidates rack up just 5% of the vote? Let’s make ’em crap their pants!

If you’re in New Hampshire, vote Nader for President. Outside New Hampshire (except Oklahoma), vote Badnarik. And if you live in Oklahoma, just stay home on November 2 and boycott the faux-election.