Those of you who know me know I don’t talk about politics much. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested, of course, and nothing interests me more than US politics. Mostly because Canada — my birth nation — sits right on top of the States and when they jump, we usually feel the impact.

I’m a little late to the game on Sarah Palin, yes. I’d like to get a word in edgewise anyhow.

I like Sarah Palin. I know I’m not supposed to, as a Canadian, like a Republican vice presidential candidate, especially one who so vocally opposes a lot of the values I hold dear. Still, I like her. She does, however, scare me.

She’s probably a great person. She looks like she’d be a lot of fun to be around. She seems to be vivacious and spunky, and if you’ve ever met my wife you’ll see I like to be around those kinds of people.

Yet for all the things I like about her personally — for all the things about her personality I admire — I can’t help but be scared by her. The policies she represents, the sort of religious Republican right-wing agenda she embodies, and the stunning lack of knowledge she displays all roll together to make me extremely leery of what she would do as a vice president.

Vice presidents for the longest time did absolutely nothing. They sat around and waited for the President to die. They were the guy in the wings who reads novels while the main actors perform the play. That era is clearly past, with the Vice President — along with the First Lady, should she be so inclined — filling a much more activist role. That is to say, VPs are the bully pulpit to the President’s political manoeuvrings. Vice Presidents use their position to nudge policy their way, even though their role in the Executive Branch is ill-defined and essentially powerless. Recent Vice Presidents, such as Dick Cheney, have had a great influence on the direction the government takes. They are spokespeople for their various causes, and have a great platform from which to raise awareness and money for whatever they put their minds to.

Sarah Palin looks ill-equipped to properly serve this function. Even if she were informed about issues other than oil and bridges to nowhere much, her agenda would probably be too right wing even for me.

Bear in mind that a hundred years ago I would have probably been a Republican. I’m pro-life — I despise abortion, but also execution and euthanasia — I hate big government, and I believe that history bears out the free market as the best solution for quite a few problems. Yet in the USA, the Democratic party seems to be the one leading, from FDR on, the charge for innovative policy that actually helps people. The Republicans have become a sort of big-government, military-industrial party, completely separated from their roots while every once in a while appointing or choosing or electing a politician who harkens back to the good old days, back when neo-Conservatism wasn’t more than a loosely grouped glimmer in that back of Leo Strauss’s head.

This person is Sarah Palin. She has been chosen as a Vice Presidential candidate in a stunningly crass bit of political cunning, at once appealing the Republican base — mixed up Christians who have somehow integrated politics and religion, much to the diminishing of Christ — and making the party seem fresh and young, despite being anything of the kind.

She is the veneer on the reality of the Republican party as it stands today. It’s a party speaking out of both sides of its mouth. Sarah Palin is pro-life. This is good. Yet the Republican party has said that it wants “the debate” about abortion to continue, which is to say that they would very much like for everyone to keep talking and no-one to do much about it. She is anti-homosexual. This is good, or bad depending on what you take that term to mean. Yet the parade — pardon the pun — of gay rights marches on unabated in the United States, and the Republican party wishes nothing more than to stop that march. Yet legislating lifestyle and denying genetics is just the sort of thing one might expect from Big Government. Or Big Brother, if you’re particularly pessimistic. Sarah Palin is pro-gun, despite the avalanche of evidence that guns are harmful to society at large. Sarah Palin is pro-oil, willing to spoil the last great reserve of American wildlife to drill for it, willing to sacrifice anything at any cost to feed the American oil habit. She shows no interests in alternatives, even though drilling can only satisfy this craving for so long. Drilling for more oil a a thumb in a dam full of holes. Sarah Palin is, in the last analysis, critically lacking in knowledge about things — the Bush Doctrine being a recent example — that even I, a humble Canadian, can elucidate with almost embarrassing ease. She is not a crash-course away from being knowledgeable. She is fully unprepared to fill any bully pulpit whatsoever.

I could go on. I won’t. I have a glass of scotch calling my name. Just let me say thing: I don’t dislike her as a person, but I disagree with her politics and thing she is a crass and irresponsible choice for a VP candidate. Biden, though I don’t particularly like his style, seems a much more wise and measured choice. The sort of choice one might expect from a man who seems to be fairly wise in his own right.

Since you asked — well, you should have asked — I’m going to expand on why I vote my conscience instead of adhering to the utilitarian philosophy of my past.

First, I’ll take you back. I used to be surrounded by people voting for Christian parties, who claimed I should vote as my conscience led, for principles that matter, and for a party that upheld my beliefs. That I set my tent up with the more jaded pragmatists was — I admit — reactionary; just because those people happened to be, generally, weirdos, doesn’t invalidate their point. Of course, I don’t think I ever really plumbed the thinking that got me to “vote for those most likely to get into power and do the least evil”.

That said, I still can’t vote for an explicitly Christian of “family-oriented” party (made up of, let’s admit it, mostly Christians). These parties hold out a false promise of political salvation, that we can somehow legislate the world better. No, I can’t cast that vote: even if Christians rule the country, the country isn’t really Christian, simply nominally Christian.

That’s just me. That’s my conscience. That’s what my intellect, such as it is, dictates. It also dictates that I no longer vote pragmatically; and with the above history behind (or above) us, let me move on.

When I decide to do something that seems morally grey, I like to ask myself a set of questions. First on those list, and most relevant here, is, “What would happen if everyone acted like me in this situation?” For example, if I throw a fast food bag out the window of my car whilst driving, it’s not that big a deal. It’s just one bag. If, however, everyone did that all the time, we’d be swimming in trash.

See, if everyone votes pragmatically, the parties you define as “alternative” and “not likely to be voted in” are by definition left behind at the polls. Your position on voting creates the very conditions that you supposedly evaluated to come up with your position on voting. This is a feedback loop, and a bad one. It’s a snake eating its own tail.

I like to, instead, view my vote as one way I can speak out. To the point that if the Freedom Party or the Green Party get just one more vote in this election than last, that vote says that one more person in this election is saying that the “mainstream” parties have nothing left to offer. That one more person has decided that voting the a different version of the establishment into power yet again is less important that voting for something.

If every man and woman in the province truly considered their options, and considered that we have however many parties for a reason, election results would be much, much different. If we stood up and said, Wait, no, I am not going to be swayed by by government spending before an election, spending that amounts to cheap bribery, and I am not going to simply run with the crowd, and yes, I have beliefs, and will vote accordingly! the government would, I think, actually reflect the people.

Instead, right now, the government essentially reflects the politicians and spin-masters who happen to have their hand in the till. They package up the election, crouch it in a certain light, and manipulate it like a magician performing in a circus.

I’d rather elections not be a circuses, wouldn’t you? I mean, I know my voice is just another in a crowd of people saying things, and I’m not likely to be heard. Especially not these days in Ontario.

But hey, that’s why I vote.

And having read all five party platforms (NDP, Tory, Liberal, Green, Freedom, those that I feel might be relevant to me), I’m so very divided between voting Green and voting Freedom.

The Green Party’s focus on transferring taxes to environmentally costly areas, for instance, is quite attractive. On the other hand, the Freedom Party is, for me, a strong idealogical fit. What I like most about both parties, though, is that they simple stand for something. Greens are unabashedly Green, and don’t fear saying that the populace must pay for what the populace does, and in fact they should pay for that instead of paying for other things. The Freedom Party is unabashedly libertarian. Read it: their platform is like nothing else you will read in Canadian politics. These are not parties pandering to get votes; they exist so I can vote my conscience, to raise awareness, and perhaps even wait for their time to come.

(As a side note, I used to believe in the “throwing away your vote” view, that if you vote for a party no-one thinks can possibly win, you’re basically burning your vote. Which is, of course, a fallacy: if everyone does that, no wonder these parties don’t get much of the vote, even when people may find their platforms extremely attractive. Now, I think that voting according to your conscience is much, much more important than voting for the Tories or the Liberals — who are essentially the same party! — regardless of your party’s chances of winning. Do I go to the ballot box as an arbiter of the lesser evil? No. I go as a contributor to the greater good.)

The NDP are a bunch of left-wing nutbags, which to their credit is something of an impressive feat in Canadian politics. The Conservatives and Liberals are essentially the same party with different faces. (If you want evidence of this, note that the issues both campaigns are focusing on and consider whether these are anything more than niggling variations on each other. The Tories are Red, and the Liberals are Redder. They’re pretty much interchangeable.)

If there’s anyone out there who wants to help sway me to an alternative perspective, by all means, do so! In the meantime, read the parties’ platforms here:

The Freedom Party Platform
The Green Party Platform