PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL LAW: There Is No Natural Right To Vote

Contrary to what so many of us would like to believe, there is no Natural Right to vote.  Remember, a Natural Right is that which you can claim on a deserted island.  Well, how can one even hold an election in a society of one?  By definition, it is impossible.  Now, if you are so inclined, you can go through the mental gymnastics of arguing the case for an election in a society of one, but the idea is an absurdity, which — therefore — would make any such argument irrational.  This means that there is no Natural Right to vote.  So, if no such right exists, what then — exactly — is voting?

Simply put, voting is a privilege:

Full Definition of privilege

This means — at best, voting is a civil right, not a Natural Right. As such, voting is subject to societal control.  It can be regulated or even revoked, but — most importantly — society can even control who has the privilege of voting.

Now, in our society today, we see have a tendency to see the assertion that voting is not a right as an affront.  We believe it is a right, and many of us have been taught the same.  However, what we believe or have been taught is irrelevant.  The Truth remains: voting is not and will never be a Natural Right.

So, why would a society wish to control who is allowed to vote?  There are many reasons.  First, if a society allowed… Oh, say we allowed in 30+ million foreigners to enter the country and gave them all the ‘right’ to vote without first making sure they had assimilated into and embraced the founding principles of the American ideal. In such a case, society will have literally invited a foreign attack upon its very fabric.  Not only would this be subversion, something against which the Social Contract is supposed to protect us, but it is also societal suicide — and the Social Contract does not mandate mutual suicide.  For the same general reason, society may agree to withhold the privilege of voting from citizens who prove too ignorant, too dependent upon government welfare, or to hostile toward the principles of our system.  In every case, giving the vote to such people amounts to an attack on those principles, and such an attack is a violation of the Social Contract.

Our founders understood this.  They did not embrace the notion of ‘democracy.’  Instead, they rejected it, calling it the tyranny of the masses.

“Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy; such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable [abominable] cruelty of one or a very few.”

–John Adams

Now, if you will trouble yourself long enough to actually read the original Constitution, you will find that it provided for the popular election of only one body — the House of Representatives.  All the rest of our government was elected by the States.  That;s correct: originally, the people did not elect the President.  The States did.  This is because the Federal government was supposed to govern the States, not the Nation.  But this is perfectly aligned with the principles of Natural Law and individual liberty.  You see, the founders could have designed our nation such that no one in the Federal government was elected.  All positions could have just as easily been filled by a regular drawing of lots.  In fact, it can be argued that such a system would be even more protective of individual rights and liberties as no one would be serving more than one term.  Without a ‘professional’ political class, there is no need for money in elections, or lobbying, and corrupting public servants then becomes a little harder for the side of industry.  Heck, such a system would even improve education, as no one would ever know who might be called to serve as a public servant, it would be in society’s best interest to properly educate every individual to the best of their ability to learn.  Knowing that such a duty could fall on anyone might even serve to produce a bit more responsible citizen.  It would certainly produce a sens of holding each other accountable for the sake of self-preservation.

So, you see, voting has nothing to do with liberty.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  If I am a corrupt politician, and I use public funds to create a dependency class, I can then use the public’s tax dollar as a weapon against it by withholding those funds from that dependent class unless they vote the way I tell them.  I could also create and allow situations which create public fear so that I could direct the public fear into taking away their own rights, or more specifically, the rights of whatever responsible part of society remains.

The founders knew all of this would happen, and they tried to warn us against it:

“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.”

–James Monroe

“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to licentiousness.”

–George Washington

In other words, to take over a free people, you must first:

1 — Make them stupid (dumb-down the schools).

2 — Corrupt their morals (most effectively by destroying religion and the family).

3 — Divide them into a mob (identity politics).

4 — Then seduce them into a decadent and immoral life of self-indulgence (commercialism).

Once you accomplish these things, all you need is direct democracy and you can convince such a people to sell their souls to you for a scrap of bread or empty promise of security.

Now consider this: if you look, you can directly correlate the decay in America’s original system of government to the growth of direct election in Federal and State politics.  Is it any wonder, then, that the founders seriously considered restricting the privilege of voting to property owners and those who had served in the military during a time of war?  I suggest that not doing so may have been one of their biggest mistakes.