RE: If you don't vote, you can't complain! Really?
Um. This is fundamentally wrong on all accounts.
You are under the misconception that a voter is required to vote for a party, not an individual. As such, you fail to understand the reality of voting. You vote for an individual based on their merits and their intentions. Sometimes their public intentions are not the same as their private intentions, but you typically can't predict that so that's not your problem until the next time you're able to vote for that position. At that point in time, it is now your obligation / civic duty to vote for someone different! (unless you decide that you prefer this person's private intentions).
So to sum up: Not Voting means you have ZERO right to complain.
If you want to make a difference in this world, the world is not going to succumb to your will. YOU need to ACT.
If there are no valid or proper candidates available, YOU could be that valid or proper candidate.
If you don't want to be that candidate, then, again, you have zero right to complain.
ACT or Do Not Act. Those are your choices. If you Choose Not to Act, then you Choose Not to Complain because Your Actions indicate that you do not care enough to act. If you do not care enough to act, you should not care enough to complain. If you care enough to complain, you should care enough to act.
/rant
Hi, thanks for the response. I understand your position but disagree. I will ask you five questions and please answer honestly:
1) Is there any means by which any number of individuals can delegate to someone else the moral right to do something which none of the individuals have the moral right to do themselves?
2) Do those who wield political power (presidents, legislators, etc.) have the moral right to do things which other people do not have the moral right to do? If so, from whom and how did they acquire such a right?
3) Is there any process (e.g., constitutions, elections, legislation) by which human beings can transform an immoral act into a moral act (without changing the act itself)?
4) When law-makers and law-enforcers use coercion and force in the name of law and government, do they bear the same responsibility for their actions that anyone else would who did the same thing on his own?
5) When there is a conflict between an individual's own moral conscience, and the commands of a political authority, is the individual morally obligated to do what he personally views as wrong in order to "obey the law"?
I ask these because they illustrate the hypocrisy of government. You cannot ask a group of people to commit violence in your name and call it moral. I opt to not participate in an intrinsically immoral system.
Also, I think you didn't quite understand the post. I was saying that if you give someone authority to make decisions for you, then you have no right to complain about it as you have abdicated responsibility to them.
I will be interested to hear your answers to the above questions.