Aside from the occasion quip and a couple of posts in this thread (since it presented the opportunity) I try not to harp on people too hard about choosing to engage in an activity which I consider to be an aggressive act of force, i.e. politics. Unfortunately, the courtesy hasn't saved me from a fair amount of the reciprocal harping. I've been told that if I don't vote, I don't have a right to complain. I've been accused of choosing not to do anything, which is patently not true. I'm just not doing what THEY want me to do. Keep in mind that this is just in a span or a couple of weeks max when people have been pressuring me to make political phone calls, donate to the Ron Paul campaign, etc.
The reason we're in NH is to attempt some things that have never been done before because previous attempts have been failures. Some of us are just taking that a step further. I believe we're right but I'll try not to be too preachy about it.
BTW, if you want to know what sparked this thread, listen to the last 5 or 10 minutes of last night's (11/12/07) FTL broadcast available for download at
http://freetalklive.com. Mark and Ian were talking about the two types of activism and Mark implied that the a-political types should get involved in the Ron Paul campaign just to be supportive of the political types. I called in and was totally caught off guard because I didn't realize the show was about to end and I didn't expect to be on the air IMMEDIATELY. My point was that some of us are morally opposed to that activity and it's wrong to push people into an activity that they're morally opposed to. I think that sort of peer pressure is just as heavy-handed as this thread. Eric (Vitruvian) was sitting right there as I called in and I think he felt frustrated that we didn't get to make our point. That's not Mark and Ian's fault, of course. That was just bad timing, but the frustration was created none the less and Eric had to vent somewhere.
To be clear, I wasn't calling in to say "Mark, you are engaging in evil political activities and you are going to Libertarian Hell!" All I was trying to do was get him to stop pressuring us to engage in an activity that WE believe is immoral. Think of the analogy of passive vs. active rights. I shouldn't have to explain that to anyone here.