While driving home from school today, I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. Peer pressure, the force that leads young children down the course of drugs, sex and crime, was pushing me toward something I felt was inherently wrong. As an American nonvoter, that’s understandable as that sort of furor only occurs once every four years. People continue on with their daily lives today, bearing their “I VOTED!” stickers, proudly slapping one another on the back for taking part in what’s the greatest farce of democracy ever concocted. What follows from here should not be considered an effort to change others’ views but only to express my own in such a way that others, hopefully, understand.

I am an anarchist. I believe in a society where small communities govern themselves through consensus democracy, and the “oikos” (to borrow from the Greek language) is managed for sustainability rather than exploitation. This belief and ideal is inherently contradictory to the globalist American system that has been forcing its economic and military interests on the people of the world for centuries.

Crimes against humanity can be tallied to high amounts for both of the major American parties, and I believe in Noam Chomsky’s thesis that most American presidents, if held to the standards of the Nuremburg trials, would be hanged for war crimes.

The self-delusion that an elite cadre of politicians can govern in the interests of a populous and diverse nation such as America is ludicrous. We have to consider the differences in race, gender, age and class in the needs from government. All too often, those needs are entirely ignored for the consideration of the elite.

Upon the founding of America, the Articles of Confederation were formed because a weak central government was necessary to achieve the freedom the revolutionary ideology required. However, after the weakening of power in the elite, several “founding fathers” felt that there was too much democracy in America. As the common man had co-opted the ideology of the revolution and thought it had applied to him, America’s elite met in secret to ensure that the war fought to maintain their status in the face of encroaching British power would not weaken it in the light of an assault from below. The result, after compromise, was not something even remotely democratic. Since then, we’ve lived under what’s best described as a republic, where again the elite decide for the people what course society will take via political ends (whereas the unelected elite still direct society’s economic ends).

Today, our “two-party” system fails to even meet the illusion of republican representation. The Republican Party, currently led by George W. Bush, takes the stand of representing America’s traditional values of Christian doctrine and conservation of government power. However, we see a crusade waged against the people of the Middle East, even by the admission of our own government officials and military officers; other stated reasons for this war have fallen by the wayside, while we have a president admit he doesn’t spend much time considering the war on the terrorists who actually attacked this nation. The belief that the Republican Party continues to conserve government power does not hold true to the massive expansion of federal control into the fields of education (with No Child Left Behind) and others. The Republican Party seems to speak one thing and act upon another.

The Democratic Party is no better. Filled with self-deluded idealogues who preach their beliefs sanctimoniously to any who get within earshot (even more so than Republicans, who are by no means innocent of this charge), the Democrats are just as hypocritical. Under their last president, Bill Clinton, the military expanded global operations faster than under any other recent presidency, mainly in pursuit of protecting the globalist pursuits of the party. The Democrats, supposedly supporting America’s minorities and labor, have done little other than to crush their interests in their quest for the holy grail of “free trade” as we see our jobs in Mexico and India. The environment, the other main cause of the Democratic Party, also ends up crushed under the heels of the IMF and World Bank, as their policies overrule local mandates on management of local economies – even here in America.

Neither of these two parties can represent me, nor can any other. The only one who can represent my beliefs, concerns and needs is myself. I will continue believing this and working toward those ends until I have been convinced otherwise.

David V. Healy

Graduate student, history