What’sparticularly nervy — galling, really — about the ideathat the US ought to bespreading ourdemocraticsystemacross theglobe is the fact that we don’t have anything close todemocracy in this country. Nor do we have what the Founders intendedto create: a republic, where the power of the state is limited bythe Constitution. This is underscored every time Americans go to thepolls, where they are confronted with “choices”determined by lawmakers whose chief interest in life is gettingreelected with as little opposition as possible. These guardians ofthe polity have made itvirtually impossible for so-called thirdparties — i.e. parties not controlled by corporate interestsand foreign lobbyists — to even get on the ballot.

And if you don’tlike this state of affairs, and take action, the State will smackyou right in the face. Takethecase of Richard Winger, the third party expert andpolitical analyst, editor ofBallot Access News, who,together with other interested parties, sued the state of California so that all candidates would have an equal right to show their party label on the ballot. With the passage of an “open primary” law, whicheffectively abolished third parties, California’s third partycandidates couldn’t even identify themselves on the ballot.The lawsuit failed, however, and the judge ruled that the plaintiffshad to pay the court costs of the big corporate moneybags who hadsponsored the “open primary” legislation to being with.Winger and his fellow third partiers got a bill for $243,279.50.

Isn’t“democracy” wonderful?

Well, no, it isn’t,not the current American version, which merely serves to legitimize — in a “legal” sense, at any rate — what isin realityan oligarchy. As this election season dramatized onceagain, the differences between the two state-subsidizedstate-privileged “parties” is chiefly rhetorical: thiscame through loud and clear during the Obama/Romney foreign policy“debate,” but it’s true on domestic issues aswell. The bipartisan consensus is clear: maintain theWelfare-Warfare State pretty much as it has existed since the NewDeal, with allowances made for trimming around the edges here andthere. No matter who wins this election, the victor will have toimpose a program of “austerity,” i.e. burdening thelower and middle classes with new taxes and program cuts, whilegranting new opportunities for corruption and cronyism to thepolitical class and the oligarchs, foreign as well as domestic.

Libertarians are notsmall-‘d’ democrats: we don’t believe in theefficacy or legitimacy of the system — but we don’t (orshouldn’t) disdain it. For this is the one concession anotherwise authoritarian-minded political class must make in order tocontinue their system of “legalized” thievery and massmurder. They must ask, if only symbolically, for the consent of thegoverned — what Ayn Rand called “the sanction of thevictim.”

But we don’thave to be victims: we can utilize this chink in the armor of theState to drive a stake through its rotten heart — because anyand all weapons in the battle for liberty must be in our arsenal. Yet we also should have no illusions: everyone saw how the GOPleadership, in league with the Romneyites,stole a goodhalf of RonPaul’s delegates to the national convention. It was such abrazen display of thievery that the Republican governor of Maine —where arguably the most egregious rip-off took place —refused to attend the Tampa coronation.

And it isn’tjust about the Paulians. Every dissident tendency in the country hasbeen silenced byrepressive ballot access laws which give theoligarchic parties ample “legal” ammunition to keepoutsiders off the ballot. Previously, Democratic party lawyers practicallyfollowed Ralph Nader around the country as he tried to attain ballotstatus,suing to keep him off as soon as he qualified and all toooften succeeding. The Republicans targeted Gary Johnson inthe same way this year. A more disgusting display of “legal”repression” has never even occurred in such bastions of“democratic” authoritarianism as Belarus and Putin’sRussia. Indeed, it is easier for a political party to attainnational ballot status in Russia today than it is for theLibertarian party or the Green party to get on the ballot in, say,Pennsylvania.

Congressionaldistricts are sogerrymandered into shapes which give the incumbenta job for life that we might as well make the office appointive, oreven hereditary. That way, the American political class can conferon itself all the titled magnificence and glitz of itsmodel andprogenitor: the British aristocracy.

In the face of asteady assault of election spending legislation attempting to limitcontributions, and requiring all kinds of “disclosure” —conceivably subjecting donors to official retribution — thenear invincibility of incumbency is a fact of American politicallife in much of the country.

The War Party has twowings: theDemocrats and theRepublicans. All others are outsiders,whose ability to storm the gates is “legally” restrictedby a nearly impassable series of bureaucratic obstaclesdesigned to keep them out while still maintaining the “democratic”illusion, i.e. thephony two-party system, which is in reality asingle entity.

It is a delicateoperation, in the course of which the political class must walk afine line between repression and allowing some degree of freeexpression. This year how that line is drawn, and who draws it, isgoing to make a big difference — and perhaps a decisive one.

There’s nothinglike an election to show up the essential fraudulence of thedemocratic system, particularly how it’s practiced in America.Nothing makes this point clearer than theRepublican votersuppression campaign, which is designed to keep African-Americans,Latinos, and others from voting. Aside from the ugly racialimplications of this deplorable effort, one can kind of see theRepublicans’ point: after all, with a candidate so widely andintensely disliked,even by his own supporters, what else can theytry? Asking people for all kinds of identification at the polls, andputting partisan zealots on guard asking people toidentify themselves, is straight out hooliganism. Did you think theRomneyites were above that?

As I write, we don’tknow who will win this presidential election, but I mademyprediction long ago and I’m sticking to it. I evenhalf-seriously averred that, by nominating a complete nonentity, theRepublicans were deliberately throwing the election. Romney’scandidacy postponed the ideological blood feud that’s going tobreak out when he goes down to a well-earned defeat, but theKarlRove/Fox News grand poobahs of the GOP can’t delayit indefinitely. Just add the Ron Paul vote to the Republican column,the day after the President declares victory, and see what you comeup with. Most of Paul’s voters stayed home on election day, orelse voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian standard-bearer thistime around.

And that, I predict,will make all the difference.

When the Presidentspoke of voting as “revenge” the other day, the wimpishgirlish Republicans immediately started up a chorus of whining —one reason why they’re such losers, and why they deserve tolose. Yet I was heartened to hear Obama say it, not only becauserevenge is such a major (albeit unacknowledged) factor in politics,but because it’s particularly appropriate this election year,and even more so from my own ideological perspective. Because whatwe’ll see, this Election Day, might justifiably be called RonPaul’s revenge, and, asRalph Cramden would put it:

“How sweet itis!”

Okay, I’mposting this on Election Day, before the results are in: tune inhere for an update after we know who won, and by how much, to see meeither exult in the sheer accuracy of my prophecy, or else eat crow.

Update: It’s8:13 pm PST, and the President has been reelected. Once again, theneocons have dragged the GOP down to defeat. Netanyahuplacedhis bet on the wrong horse. In spite of soaringunemployment, a collapsing economy, and widespread disenchantmentwith the incumbent, the Republicans still managed to lose.

Why?

Conservatives willclaim it’s because Romney stood for nothing — and that’strue in terms of domestic policy. He reversed himself on every majordomestic issue, fromhealth care toabortion andtax policy. But onforeign policy hedid stand for something: ahuge increasein the military budget in spite of ourlooming bankruptcy,unconditional support for Israel oneach and every issue, andwarwith Iran. This was the main dividing line between the Ron Pauliansand the Romneyites, and the main reason whyno endorsement from Paul(the elder) was forthcoming. Given the closeness of the election inseveral key states, particularly Ohio — the state that put thePresident over the top — support from Paul’s voterswould have made the difference. Ron gotover 113,000 votes therein the GOP primary.

And that made all thedifference.