The American Spectator

p>Please, don’t abandon the party to go party in perpetual loserdom, even if it is trying to excommunicate you. Instead, hunker down and stand your ground. And help fight to take the party back from the blue bloods and put it back in the hands of the people. And then you will matter a whole lot, even if this isn’t the year that your vote will matter. br> — James Bailey br> Farragut, Tennessee /p>

Re: W. James Antle’s June 3 piece, I have never bought into that “throwing away your vote” stuff. Why is it “throwing something away” to refuse two equally distasteful choices? But I’m always being told that if I vote Libertarian, I’m “throwing away my vote.” I like to answer that commonplace with the following anecdote.:

Let’s say someone offers me a choice between eating trash and eating garbage. “I’d rather have strawberry ice cream,” I reply. “Well, you can’t have that. All we have are A. Trash and B. Garbage. Pick one or the other or you get nothing.” “I’d still rather have strawberry ice cream,” I reply. And I would go on record as preferring strawberry ice cream even if I get nothing. I mean, who wants to eat trash or garbage?

p>If enough people vote for a third party candidate, they can tip the election. Unfortunately they tipped it the wrong way in 1992, when Ross Perot took enough votes away from George H.W. Bush to hand the election to Bill Clinton, who by the way only got 43 percent of the vote, but won the White House anyway. Let the chips fall where they may; I voted for Bush in 2004 but this year I might vote Libertarian. As I said, I’d rather have strawberry ice cream, even if I can’t get it. br> — Kelley Dupuis br> Washington, D.C. /p>

Lots of good men and women have died so that any of us have the privilege of voting.

Wonder if those who served and died because of that service — regardless of which war or place of conflict where they were sent — could still vote for anything. would they be so cynical to throw their vote away, or condone anyone else throwing their vote away?

p>If for no other reason to honor the sacrifice of those men and women, eligible voters ought to find someone they could support, passionately or not, given the circumstances surrounding the vote and the implications of some lunkhead — say, for example, Barack Obama — winning because lots of cynical Americans don’t understand the right they’re squandering.