Power Without Accountability By John T. Kennedy http://www.no-treason.com/Kennedy/10.php It's been widely noted that the Senate approved the spending of $87.5 billion in Iraq by voice vote. This was done to save at least some senators from having to go on the record one way or the other. And we know the overwhelming majority of them were conspiring to cover each other's asses because it only takes a fifth of a quorum to force a roll call vote. The Agitator's Brian Kieffer wrote: For the moment, I'm going to suspend my opinion on our foreign policy with regard to Iraq. Whether I think we should be there or not is irrelevant now, since were are indeed there. We elect people to debate this for us and let us know what they think... or at least I thought we did. No, my real problem is that the Senate authorized this package and spent $87,500,000,000 of our money by Voice Vote. I don't know about everyone else, but I want to know who is spending my money. Hear! Hear! I'd certainly be interested to learn who authorized the spending of my money. But there's a problem: The folks exercising their "sovereign franchise" to authorize the spending of my money vote by secret ballot - just like the senators they elected did in this case. They're called voters. Lysander Spooner had plenty to say about the secret ballot: "As all voting is secret (by secret ballot), and as all secret governments are necessarily only secret bands of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, the general fact that our government is practically carried on by means of such voting, only proves that there is among us a secret band of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, whose purpose is to rob, enslave, and, so far as necessary to accomplish their purposes, murder, the rest of the people." "But even these pretended agents do not themselves know who their pretended principals are. These latter act in secret; for acting by secret ballot is acting in secret as much as if they were to meet in secret conclave in the darkness of the night. And they are personally as much unknown to the agents they select, as they are to others. No pretended agent therefore can ever know by whose ballots he is selected, or consequently who his real principles are. Not knowing who his principles are, he has no right to say that he has any. He can, at most, say only that he is the agent of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who are bound by that faith which prevails among confederates in crime, to stand by him, if his acts, done in their name, shall be resisted. Men honestly engaged in attempting to establish justice in the world, have no occasion thus to act in secret; or to appoint agents to do acts for which they (the principals) are not willing to be responsible. The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this. The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If anyone denies my right, let him try conclusions with me. But a secret government is little less than a government of assassins. Under it, a man knows not who his tyrants are, until they have struck, and perhaps not then. He may guess, beforehand, as to some of his immediate neighbors. But he really knows nothing. The man to whom he would most naturally fly for protection, may prove an enemy, when the time of trial comes. This is the kind of government we have; and it is the only one we are likely to have, until men are ready to say: We will consent to no Constitution, except such an one as we are neither ashamed nor afraid to sign; and we will authorize no government to do anything in our name which we are not willing to be personally responsible for." "This is the kind of government we have; and it is the only one we are likely to have, until men are ready to say: We will consent to no Constitution, except such an one as we are neither ashamed nor afraid to sign; and we will authorize no government to do anything in our name which we are not willing to be personally responsible for." Are voters willing to be personally responsible for the power they exercise? Brooke Oberwetter, another blogger at The Agitator is crystal clear on this question: "No one has elected me to be a voter; therefore I am not accountable to anyone else for the way I vote." There it is. She wields the fundamental political power of this republic and isn't accountable to anyone for the consequences. I ask you: Who then is responsible for that exercise of political power? In the same thread Oberwetter writes: I want to take two hour lunch breaks, but it isn't within the parameters of my voluntary employment. If I want to take two hour lunch breaks, I can either quit my job, or find an employer willing to accommodate my wish. That's certainly the way things ought to be but it's not quite the way things are. As a voter Oberwetter can find a politician willing to accommodate her. Her representative can conspire with other representatives to impose her will on her employer by force. Her representative is accountable to her and she is not accountable to anyone. It's a neat trick. When I first read Spooner I thought he was trying to make too much of the secret ballot. I see now that it is a significant corrupting factor in democracy because people are naturally more inclined to abuse power when they know they will not be held accountable. That's true for senators and it's true for voters. I don't hold that public accountability would fix democracy any more than it would fix the Senate. The real problem is much deeper. The real problem is that the power wielded by voters and their representatives is fundamentally illegitimate in principle. But secrecy facilitates the abuse of that power. I also do not hold that all voters conspire to rob and murder, though many do. It can be moral to cast a defensive vote, as Spooner acknowledged: On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot---which is a mere substitute for a bullet---because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him. Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to. So I don't I don't infer from the fact that a man votes that he is conspiring to wield illegitimate power over me. But Kieffer writes: When I cast my vote, I am trying to elect someone to represent me in a way that is close to how I would represent myself. To do this I look at the candidate's platform, which is essentially a promise. A record of his votes in congress must be available to me so that I may verify that he is keeping his word. He is accountable to me for his voting record because he has created an expectation, and in return, I have given him my vote. If he does not meet that expectation, I can choose not to vote for him again. As a citizen I have offered no promise to anyone that I will vote in a certain way, hence I am not accountable to anyone for the way that I cast my vote. Again: Who then is responsible for that exercise of political power? A man casting a defensive vote as Spooner describes doesn't hold that his "representatives" are accountable to him, he merely tries to deflect the aggression of those who would rob and murder him. But when a man wields political power and holds that the government is accountable to him then certainly he bears moral responsibility for the consequences.