Editor:

I was appalled by Vitaliy Voznyak’s comments in the Jan. 21 issue of The Maroon (“Consistently voting helps to improve students’ interests”).

He claims that a number of issues that affect today’s youth are unresolved and/or unaddressed by politicians due to lack of input and that “by registering and consistently voting, Americans can get what they want.”

What he really means is that government is the solution to the problems of today’s youth and that we can all receive from it whatever we wish.

Allow me to remind Voznyak, a political science major, that government is force and that force is only justified to defend the lives and the property of citizens from other citizens. Even though today one might think otherwise, government is not – and never should be – a bottomless pit of handouts and preferential treatment.

Democracy is just a way to recycle the peons who handle the dirty work of running this republic.

Voting is not necessarily a problem. The problem lies in that statism, now rampant, has entered every stage of life and commerce.

Statism reduces freedom, our rights and lowers our standardof living and corrupt otherwise free markets.

As a homework assignment, I suggest that Voznyak inspect the tens of thousands of pages in the Federal Register and the thousands of bills coming out of Congress and state governments. He might be surprised at the huge, mind-numbing number of regulations and taxes, which cause unemployment, lower wages and increase prices.

Voznyak, instead of blaming the youth for not voting, should be investigating the nature of those problems and trying to prove, if it’s even remotely possible, that government meddling is the culprit.

Equating “registering and consistently voting” with “Americans can get what they want” is an aberration of the political system of government: It turns the institution into a piñata where only the strongest can extort the politicians for things that they cannot obtain without coercion on the free market. Those comments perpetuate the incorrect notion that statism can solve problems.

By rejecting government control of their lives, Americans can get what they want.

Manuel Lora

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