I go to the polls to vote my local politicians, those that are more likely to have my community’s best interests at heart. I put in significantly more time to research the School Commissioner then that of the President of the United States.

When we’re talking about issues involving race, these emotion-driven tactics have an additional attraction. In addition to reaching Blacks on an emotional level, invoking the Confederate flag tells them that the horrible condition of Black society is not their fault – it the fault of those evil White Southerners. It is far easier to just blame others for one’s problems than it is to face those problems head on and solve them. The politicians are only too happy to play along with the game.

What is lost in so many discussions such as this is the fact that racial issues are, for the most part, power struggle issues. The “Black team” knows how to take full advantage of the emotion-driven guilt of the “White team”. This is all about money and power, and has little to do with questions of right or wrong, good or bad, honor or dishonor. That is why racial strife will never end – there is simply too much at stake.

I know there are Northerners who look at the South with disdain and i don’t really know why. A few years back my parents moved from NY and settled down in VA. They love it down there! I have gone down to VA many times and i love it as well! The wide open spaces, friendly people, the laid back atmosphere and of course the good ole southern hospitality keeps me coming back. There is actual freedom down there unlike up here in NY. Hell i went to a sporting goods store and saw all those shot guns and rifles i was in awe of it. You don’t see that in NY unless you go waaaayyyy up into the country.

Blaming a flag for the misgivings of a country shows me that these so called leaders don’t want to talk about the real issues. What about jobs, economy, the free market, inflation, the rise of gold, FIAT currency talk about that and not about a flag!

I wish the situation were clear-cut enough that I could say with absolute confidence either, “Vote for the candidate who will do the least damage” or “Never vote for the lesser of two evils.” In life, there are no easy answers – only difficult choices.

I have edited the original post to include a link to a “Voting Strategy” document that provides some insight into why strictly voting your conscience makes good sense from a political strategy standpoint.

The judgement that any and every voter needs to make is whether his choice will have a chance of being elected, and the difference between the other candidates likely to be elected. Here in the UK, we have had a choice of three parties, Labour, which is the party of organised labour and has a social democratic position. Liberal which varies from pretty much extreme free market all the way through to being left of the Labour party, and Conservative, which are pretty much akin to the Republican party in the US. No Conservative would ever vote Labour, and no Labourite would ever vote Conservative. the Liberals are a much smaller party. Except that we now have the United Kingdom Independence Party or UKIP. UKIP would have us withdraw from the European Union and would roll back much of the state, and because of this draws its support mainly from disaffected former supporters of the Conservative party. Each constituency elects a single Member of Parliament to the House of Commons. The constituency in which I live has a high profile Labour MP, who, in 2010 beat the Conservative candidate by 1100 votes. The UKIP candidate polled 1500 votes. The question each elector in this constituency needs to ask is whether the difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party is sufficiently large that it warrants voting for someone who is your second choice effectively (Conservative when you personally would prefer UKIP) because the other side might well cause so much damage to the county, like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (who are often referred to as B-Liar and B-Ruin on the web) that the country would never recover. If you think that I am joking, consider that under the “Tax Credits” scheme introduced by Gordon Brown, a family could be receiving benefit called tax credit when there was a family income of around $120,000 per annum. And no, that is not a misprint, I mean One Hundred and Twenty Thousand dollars per annum. You are paying tax with one hand and receiving benefit with the other. Is it more important to ensure that such people are kept away from the levers of power or do you keep your conscience pure and allow them to be elected because the alternative loses too many votes to your preferred party? It brings to mind the old adage that there are two things to keep clear of the making of, sausages and laws.