The Public Professor

the economic side, Reagan cut taxes but also raised spending, particularly on the military, and federal deficits skyrocketed.  On the political side, he grew the size of government instead of shrinking it.  On the social side, he made very few moves to dismantle the social welfare systems put in place under FDR and LBJ.  And on the cultural front, he talked a good game, but the man who had signed California’s liberal abortion law while governor, and who himself rarely attended church, was more than happy to tell the Christian Right what they wanted to hear and tally their votes while actually giving them very little in return beyond attention and political legitimacy.

Third party movements in America have generally come about during times of great social and economic stress. Typically, they have begun as social protest movements, coalesced into political movements, and eventually formed into parties.  They have also often met their demise after failed presidential bids, while their issues were diluted and partially co-opted by the major parties. Three notable examples of this are the American (“Know Nothing”) Party of the 1850s, which arose in reaction to foreign immigration and relentless urbanization; the National Labor Union and accompanying National Labor Reform Party of the 1860s, whose constituency was workers caught in the exploitative grind of the industrial revolution; and the People’s (“Populist”) Party of the 1890s, which emerged as farmers were thrust into the modern market economy. There is a common pattern to the history of all three that today’s Tea Party movement may yet be in the midst of following, at least to some extent.

The next person who says, “If you don’t vote, you’ve got no right to complain,” gets an F- The semi-mythical D- is for an otherwise inoffensive, slack-jawed, glazed-eye, mouth breathing drooler whose bluebook chicken scratch scrawling is comically witless; that is, the student who did not do the reading or attend class, and has no clue about how to how to fake it. But the semi-mythical F- is for someone who inspires my wrath. And the next person who dares suggest that I or any other American has no right to critique the system and/or its participants because we did not participate in an election will feel my wrath. Today is Election Day, and of course there are many wonderful reasons to vote. If you have made up your mind about what you want, then you should absolutely vote. If you’re given to drawing the curtain and waiting for inspiration to strike, then you should get down there and vote. Even if you don’t give a damn about any of it but simply want to participate, as is your right, then go ahead and vote. If you’re just looking for a way to kill an hour, think it might make for good people watching, and give you a chance to play with the new touch screens, then fine!  Get your vote on! Jeez, if you’re only voting to impress the person you just started dating, who for some reason seems to care about this stuff, and you’re merely gonna pull random levers while you play games on your phone, then go for it.  I ain’t standing in your way.  Vote! But just as there are many reasons, some more admirable than other, as to why someone would and should vote, there are also many reasons of varying merit as to why someone would not vote and maybe shouldn’t. But not a single one of them nullifies their constitutional right to speak their mind.