From Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" (highly recommended reading!): "All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a sort of moral twinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voter is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it the the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceedes that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail by the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the actions of masses of men. When the majority shall at last vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote... ...Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... ...Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistable when it clogs by it's whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose." Poor Thoreau would have a stroke if he were alive today. Still I think his advice has the ring of truth to it. The whole essay is amazing, and goes on about unjust laws (oh if only he knew...) and about how it is our responsibility not to participate in evil doing by stated or tacit (taxes, obedience of unjust laws) support of the government that is orchestrating that evil. In his time it was slavery and the Mexican War, in our time it is drug laws, Patriot Act-like invasions of personal freedoms, and the attack on the environment by the government and corporations.
If ya don't see me at the protest march And you can't find me nowhere Come on over to the county jail I'll be roomin' over there
