(They're only slightly less so now: if they kick out the minarchists and diehard isolationist-at-all-cost types, we'll talk.)

We're working on it...

It's not that we sort of progressive libertarians want to kick the quasi-anarchists out of the party; it's just that we clearly are not going to be able to coexist. One group or the other's going to leave. We'll see.

Can anyone seriously have read the post my quote comes from without understanding exactly why I voted the way I did? It's not exactly arcane reasoning or anything. It was a strategic protest vote made all that much easier by the fact that I lived in a state where my vote wouldn't affect things one way or another. I certainly didn't vote for Nader out of any ideological simpatico. Come on now, no need to play dumb here.

You're being easy on yourself to refer to it as "reasoning." I guess the irony of it must have had some appeal.

You can always leave portions of your ballot blank if you don't like the choices.

You're being easy on yourself to refer to it as "reasoning." I guess the irony of it must have had some appeal.

The surliness of your sarcasm here is quite peculiar. Of courseit was a reasoned decision; one need not have taken a Rational Choice Theory class to understand that different people reason by different criteria that can be perfectly valid under the circumstances. And you're right, given the limited marginal utility of my vote, I was indeed persuaded in large part towards by the irony of it. (I also enjoyed getting the bug-eyed reaction from liberal friends in subsequent years when I would casually mention my vote for Nader, absent any further clarification of my politics.) I don't understand why you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.

You can always leave portions of your ballot blank if you don't like the choices.

I suppose so, but it's not as if the 3rd party candidate I was voting for was David Duke or someone like that. Had there been any conceivable negative consequences of my vote for Nader, I probably wouldn't have done it. (For example, had I lived in FL I might have bitten the bullet and voted Bush. Or maybe accidentally punched a chad for Buchanan alongside those elderly Jewish Reform Party mavens of Miami-Dade County, I dunno.)

The surliness of your sarcasm here is quite peculiar. Of courseit was a reasoned decision; one need not have taken a Rational Choice Theory class to understand that different people reason by different criteria that can be perfectly valid under the circumstances. And you're right, given the limited marginal utility of my vote, I was indeed persuaded in large part towards by the irony of it. (I also enjoyed getting the bug-eyed reaction from liberal friends in subsequent years when I would casually mention my vote for Nader, absent any further clarification of my politics.) I don't understand why you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.

I'm not insulted, and not even being sarcastic really. I just think it's nonsense, particularly the "to the extent it affected either candidate it made the Republican's election more likely" part. I mean, if you wanted the Republican to win, the best way to accomplish that was to vote for him. The rest of it just strikes me as sophomoric.

In '96 I considered voting for Nader, with whom I agree on a number of fronts, because I thought Clinton had become a serious problem. Then I thought wait a minute, Nader would be a completely shitty president. So I didn't vote for Clinton or Dole, I just left it blank (in California, where it didn't matter). But Nader's ideology isn't completely counter to everything I believe in, like it would be to any "conservative Republican" who is in possession of his or her faculties.

Would it have been preferable to vote for Voltron instead of Nader? Both had about the same chance of winning. How was voting for Nader any different from leaving the ballot blank? Possibly affects the chances of Federal campaign funds in the next election, but that is about it. And Nader didn't get to 5% of the popular vote, so really this had no effect at all.

What's the problem?

The problem is that it tends to keep them in job situations below what their natural talents might otherwise make available to them. It often leaves them vulnerable to exploitation to a degree beyond that of English speakers. They can have potentially serious problems of communication with doctors and policemen.

I do think that these points are the number one reasons for them to learn the language. It became most apparent when I asked my wife why she didn't bring up her fluency with Spanish on her resume when she was trying to become a nurse at a hospital. She responded that although she knew the body parts and could tell them where to go when they needed something the first time she had to give any sort of detailed medical translation to a question made by the non-English speaking people would be her last, which is what is really important. When there are non-English speaking people who are very nervous about why they are in a hospital not being able to communicate only makes the matters worse.

Glad to see that someone else recognizes this. One can only wonder how many unnecessary deaths and untreated medical situations have been caused by an inability of people to be able to describe their symptoms accurately. Not every problem can be adequately described with pantomine gestures and a ten word vocabulary, and not every hospital and clinic is going to be able to be staffed 24/7 with bilingual doctors and nurses.

I voted for Browne in 2000, Nader in 2004, and nobody in 2008. I simply wanted to vote for a non-big two candidate that wasn't a complete nutball because of the main party choices in those years. I requested an absentee ballot and filled it out for Obama but decided not to send it in because, even if it's a fait accompli, I didn't want to be have any feeling that I helped Pelosi and Reid.