When "anarchists" vote...

AP reported on Monday that a faction of participants at last weekend’s North American Anarchist Convergence at Ohio University announced their intention to cast votes against George W. Bush on November 2.

Howard Ehrlich, the editor of a magazine called Social Anarchism, said he intends to “engage the political system” this year.

Susan Heitker, a so-called “anarchist” from Athens, Ohio, was quoted as saying the U.S. government is neither legitimate nor democratic, but she still plans to vote. “To me, at least, it’s important to vote,” she said. “There was a time when I was not going to vote, but I really dislike Bush.”

But one attendee got it right. “Ultimately,” he told the AP, “those who are voting are either bad anarchists or not anarchists at all.”

These voting anarchists are what Murray Rothbard once called “anarcho-pragmatists.” They push a fraudulent agenda of electing politicians to abolish politics, appointing bureaucrats to abolish bureaucracy, and governing to abolish government — i.e., moderation in the pursuit of Power.

The best arguments for why neither anarchists nor libertarians should vote — directed specifically at the Libertarian Party — remains George H. Smith’s article “Party Dialogue.”