Alasdair MacIntyre is a Rev. John A. O’Brien Senior Research
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. I first came across his work in this book while writing my Master’s Thesis at Washington State University.
Below is a quoted segment of this piece. In it, MacIntyre argues that we should not cast a vote for either candidate. Quite the take. Though I agree with his take on the presidency I still think people should vote for particular issues on the ballot as those votes will matter in their respective states.
“When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives.
These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush’s conservatism and Kerry’s liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target”.
Thoughts?
A Philosopher's Take 
John Woodard: Crazy Like A Fox
November 6, 2012
How about a vote for Romney, which is like REAGAN’s Conservatism that produced an economic BOOM and winning the Cold War? Regular 4% Economic Growth and National Security sound nice after four years of Obama building windmills on his feudal plantation.
LikeLike
philosophicalscraps
November 6, 2012
Sounds more like “Crazy Like Fox News.” Reagan ran up the largest budget deficit the nation had ever seen. His own VP referred to it as “voodoo economics,” and he was right; Reagan put that whole boom on a credit card. And when Reagan’s team, including Cheney, came over to GW Bush, they also ran the government as if, to use Cheney’s own words, “deficits don’t matter.” And now many of those Bush appointees who ran the economy into the ground are advising Romney.
More importantly, though, you seem to be missing or ignoring the point. The point is, is there such a thing as a moral mandate to not vote at all? MacIntyre has already heard your point, and mine, and finds them both wanting. Instead, he says we should abstain from voting. Changing the topic just to get some cheap last-minute political bluster in about the Golden Age of Reagan (which I lived through and it wasn’t so golden) is poor philosophy and poor timing—the race is over, let it go!
LikeLike
philosophicalscraps
November 6, 2012
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that one really feels that the two “main” candidates are merely two sides of the same bad penny, then the moral mandate is to register that displeasure with the alternatives. If you don’t vote, you abdicate the choice to others. That is basically saying that any choice is good. If you go out to eat with friends and they ask what everyone wants on the pizza and you say nothing, you are giving them the right to decide. And if the understanding was that everyone would pay an equal amount whether or not he or she ate equally, you are obliged to accept their decision. If you don’t like it, you must speak up. Similarly, if Obama and Romney are sausage and pepperoni and you are a vegetarian, you need to cast a vote for none of the above. Choose a third party candidate whom you don’t find so objectionable. Write your own name in. Do something. If enough people got off their behinds and voted “none of the above” one time, the parties would notice and start changing their policies to try to win those votes next time. But if you simply sit home, either out of apathy or out of a smug sense of being too clever to play the political game, you are simply endorsing whomever wins, and thus also endorsing the policies and laws that will be implemented by the leaders you helped to elect by your silence.
And from a communitarian point of view, it seems to me an odd position MacIntyre is advocating. He has already argued that patriotism is a cardinal virtue; without allegiance to a moral community, the moral self shrivels like a plant with no root. One of the essential tenets of the American moral community is that all citizens are part of the government—of the people, by the people. To simply withdraw from the voting process. as the Amish or Jehovah’s Witnesses do, is to withdraw from the moral community and claim allegiance to another. So again, I would urge you to vote your conscience, but to vote.
Or, as I heard on WMMR in 1984, you can’t bitch and moan if you don’t vote.
LikeLike
Sword of Apollo
November 7, 2012
I generally agree about voting for a third party candidate, so long as one is suitable. I voted for Gary Johnson as a protest.
LikeLike