A Vital Religion: Automatic Voter Registration in Vermont

Column by Alex R. Knight III.

Exclusive to STR

Recently joining the proud tax farms of Oregon, Commiefornia, and West Virginia, bureaucrats of Vermont, desperate to muster support for the continuation of the statist cause, recently enacted a measure that will automatically register all “eligible” applicants for driver’s licenses (a government tracking and identification device that turns the right to freely travel into a “privilege” – and for which, to add absolute insult to unprovoked injury, you must also pay a “fee” [tax] in order to avoid hardship, harassment, and arrest), including renewals, unless an opt-out box is checked on the form provided. The previous Vermont so-called “motor voter” law offered you an “opportunity” -- under penalty of perjury, of course (up to a $10,000 fine, and/or 15 years in prison!) -- to “opt-in” and become a loyal participant in the Cult of the State, actively aiding and abetting your own subjugation and slavery to whole batteries of bureaucrats, as well as that of all others around you in the Green Mountains. As of July 1, 2017, that arrangement will be reversed. You will be presumed to be an implicit, if not explicit, follower of the State Religion, unless you specifically tell them No.

Of course, that is exactly what I plan to tell them when the time comes (for the sake of about 50 Federal Reserve Notes, and privacy which I’ve already long-since lost, I really don’t feel like enduring all the even more expensive and imposing headaches inherent to ditching my driver’s license altogether after 2017), and why not? I can literally think of no other aspect of coming into contact with American government bureaucrats wherein a “proposal” of theirs is in any way optional – except voting and registering to vote. What does that alone tell you? I know what it tells me. That they really don’t give a monkey’s ass whether you vote or not. It’s not that important to them, except as a propaganda and public relations mechanism. As long as you continue to pay taxes and obey all the other laws? Voting? Meh.

So why this new law, then? Well, for one thing it demonstrates that interest in politics and overall voter participation is at such a record low that its very purpose (propaganda and public relations, as I pointed out above) is being slowly but steadily undermined itself. So the members of the State, in their ever-fanatical bid to maintain as much control over the lives and property of the populace as possible, must at least attempt to resuscitate the dying old man on the operating table – even if, for the historical moment, they perceive no active or immediate threat. The churches did this during the Reformation, and again at the dawn of the Age of Rationalism. It’s a tactic as old as control mechanisms themselves. The happy news is, it rarely works for long.

It might behoove us, as well, to have a look at the oath or affirmation which will now -- rather than being agreed to independently -- automatically accrue to acceptance of the overall terms and conditions of paying for a driver’s license:

VOTER'S OATH (Vermont Constitution, Chapter II, Section 42): “You solemnly swear or affirm that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the Constitution, without fear or favor of any person.”

Note that this oath, as it were, appertains to and concerns exclusively a fictitious legal entity (the “State of Vermont”), and “the Constitution” – a piece of paper filled with ideas and opinions written long ago by men who are long since dead (yes, I understand the “oath” refers to the Vermont Constitution, but the principle Lysander Spooner laid out some 146 years ago with respect to the federal one still holds entirely true, no matter).

Looks and sounds like all the trappings of a religion to me. And never mind that Quakers (Friends Meeting), certain denominations of Judaism – as well as anarchists – don’t believe in voting . . . the State Religion is what it is . . . and we’ll keep trying to push it on people as forcibly as we feel we can get away with . . . and “for their own good” too, by George. The Jehovah’s Witnesses got nothin’ on us, baby.

For now, collecting taxes and compelling obediance to its “laws” by threat or application of violent force – coupled with the willingness of sociopaths, psychopaths, the lazy, and the ignorant to fill its ranks – are sufficient to keep those calling themselves “the State” in a position of dominance. However, it is slowly dawning on them that fewer and fewer people continue to believe or find comfort in this arrangement anymore. Thus, they must try to prop up the status quo with the only thing they have left: More raw force.

Again, long term, this strategy always fails. So far in history, however, this only leads back to a temporary diminution in hypertrophic violence – only to repeat itself and resurge within a couple of short decades, at most.

Will next time – this time – be any different? I suppose we’ll see. Meantime, I want no part of the cult, the religion known as the State.

Here’s hoping you’re a political atheist too.

0
Your rating: None
Alex R. Knight III's picture
Columns on STR: 153

Alex R. Knight III is the author of numerous horror, science-fiction, and fantasy tales.  He has also written and published poetry, non-fiction articles, reviews, and essays for a variety of venues.  He currently lives and writes in rural southern Vermont where he holds a B.A. in Literature & Writing from Union Institute & University.  Alex's Amazon page can be found here, and his work may also be found at both Smashwords and Barnes & Noble.  His MeWe group can be found here.