Let’s talk about mandatory voting laws, as seen in some countries. Australia comes to mind off the bat. I have read the Wikipedia article on compulsory voting, and I can assure you that none of the arguments presented here in this article were addressed in that one.  In other words, unsurprisingly, there was no rational consistency to the “against” arguments in the Wikipedia article.  This is because once you concede the legitimacy of Government–that is, Force–to command behavior to subjective social (politics and ethics) outcomes, there IS NO RATIONAL ARGUMENT AGAINST GOVERNMENT FORCE.  Incidentally, this is why it makes sense to avoid almost all political discussions these days.  Because, you see, the real debate is not about which political ideology should become law–that is, should be thrust upon the masses at gunpoint, which is what law is, because the Law NEEDS violent men to enforce it or it is irrelevant–but about whether or not anyone has a right to use violence to compel the behavior of another.  And if all sides start the argument from the place of “yes”, then the differences in political opinions concerning how to best wield the violence necessary to compel political ideologies which MUST use it, under the false moral auspices of “Law” in order to sell it as something other than rank violence in service to entirely subjective standards, become purely semantic.  Philosophically, there is no actual difference.  Which means that ALL ideas which incorporate Government necessarily lead to the same place: tyranny.

Anyway, back to mandatory voting:

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A forced choice is not a choice; and FORCED compliance to the outcome of a choice is overt evidence of the illegitimacy of such a “choice”.  (Of course, when I say “forced compliance to the outcome”, I mean as opposed to the necessary natural experience of an effect.  Like, if you choose vanilla ice cream for dessert you are going to taste vanilla ice cream.  This isn’t force, this is consequence…a free and willful consequence of a free choice.)

This false choice (forced choice) is, in fact, and ironically, an outright denial and rejection of man’s ability to choose, which is a rejection of his very agency.  And thus it is a rejection of his ability, qua himself, to be aware of anything–to know anything–at all. And thus, it denies that he is capable of making a choice in the first place. Here’s why:

The scenario is this: I must choose A or B (or A or B or C or D…the number of “options” is irrelevant).  But the coercive nature of the choice functionally eradicates the difference.  Because of FORCE, A = B.  Or, said another way, A = B via FORCE.  If I am forced into A or B, then choice is not the thing defining the relationship. Real choice, predicated upon my will, which proceeds from the understanding that I (Self), being the conscious agent, form the ethical and epistemological (good and true) reference for the purpose and relevancy of the choice, is not what defines the distinction–the relationship–between A and B and myself.  Rather, FORCE from an outside agent or institution of Authority (legal violence…which is not synonymous with moral violence) is that which defines the relationship.  My choice thus is irrelevant.  For by the nature of coercion I am forced upon A or B, and A or B is forced upon me.  In other words, I am forced to accept A, OR I am forced to accept B.  And this means that both A and B equally represent my submission to the Authority…which is merely submission to violence.  (Who has supreme authority? The guy with the biggest gun.) Thus, they both equally cease to be an option, and therefore I do not choose between them in any legitimate sense of the word. They have both become merely symbols of my submission…my sacrifice.  They are equal manifestations, distinction-less, of my utter enslavement to coercive authority.  Whatever other distinctions there may be between A and B are irrelevant.  They both equally represent Authority.  And Authority is FORCE, and FORCE nullifies volition, and this nullifies choice.

A and B cease to become actual options because they cease to become functionally distinct.  They represent a monolith of sorts; a singular thing to which I am bound by FORCE, not by choice.  A = B precisely because I cannot actually choose them, because I do not define the relationship.  That I must accept A means, as far as I as an individual am concerned, the exact same thing as I must accept B, and vice versa.  The fact that I may not act freely of my own will on my own behalf but am forced by threats of violence into the “choice” makes “choice”, itself, at the very conceptual level, compulsory.  And “compulsory choice” is a contradiction in terms which necessarily denies my agency. That I must be forced to consider A or B demands the assumption that I do not, in and of myself, possess the ability to properly apprehend their value, and thus their meaning, in the first place.  And this means that I cannot possibly know the difference.

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Legitimate and foundational choice is the necessary and rational right of the individual to decide (choose) how he wants to relate to ONE specific thing at any given single moment.  This means that choice is never really, at root, between A or B, but between A and NOT A, or B and NOT B; and by this I mean that A is not the same thing (does not equal) as NOT B, and B is not the same thing as NOT A.  The rejection of A does not necessarily mean the acceptance of B…for B is not A’s “negative corollary”, or vice versa.  The non-acceptance/application of A is not B; and the non-acceptance/application of B is not A, because A and B are entirely distinct things.  The absence of one does not equal the presence of the other.  Simply because A might or may be selected for a particular purpose does not make B the reciprocal of A.  That is, the absence of A does not fundamentally, logically, or ontologically equal the presence of B.  And this is the root of real choice, because real choice does not synthesize the two.  It means the actual, efficacious, distinction between A and B, as opposed to a purely illusory or semantic one.  If I am presented with a choice between coffee and tea, and I decline the tea, it doesn’t mean that I must have the coffee. I might have the coffee, but the declining of the tea is not, itself, the acceptance of coffee.  Because the real decision I am making is not whether I will have coffee or tea, but whether I will have coffee or not have coffee; and whether I will have tea or not have tea.  Tea is absolutely distinct from coffee, and coffee is absolutely distinct from tea, and both are absolutely distinct from me. Their identities are not bound to each other, nor to me.  And I, as the moral and intellectual agent, whose Self represents the reference for the meaning and purpose of them, MUST make the CHOICE (and dictate the terms by which the choice is made based on what I WANT and what I THINK) to apply each one, as distinct from the other, to me, separately.  And I am not obligated to either, separately.  But as soon as we wreck the distinction…as soon as we make the reciprocal of A, B, or vice versa, by FORCING “choice”, then we nullify choice.  And thus, as soon as we use FORCE to remove the rational distinction between objects, or leaders, we remove the rational distinction between those objects or leaders and the individual.  We are merely using FORCE to utterly integrate the individual into the will of the Authority, period.  There is no choice for an individual who’s choices are demanded, and determined for him by the Authority. There is only the sacrifice of man to this new “reality”, where A IS B and B IS A, because the “choice” of one over the other represents no rational difference to the individual, but merely his absolute obligation, manifest by violence, to the will of the Authority.