It strikes me that running for office is an inherently bothersome (if not annoying) thing to do -- both to yourself and to other people. I suspect that this is why people who want to leave people alone tend not to run for office.

It also might explain why the people who are running for office often tend to be precisely the types of people who don't want to leave other people alone. And when they get elected, you can depend on them not to leave you alone.

So how about someone running on a platform of "VOTE FOR ME AND I WILL LEAVE YOU ALONE!" Sounds pretty lame, doesn't it? The people who vote might even wonder whether a candidate with such a self-canceling platform was out of his freaking mind. So maybe a better slogan would be "VOTE FOR ME AND I WILL FIGHT THE PEOPLE WHO WON'T LEAVE YOU ALONE!" (Except no one would believe it, as experience has taught them that people who run for office almost never have truly idealistic or altruistic agendas.)

I think there are a lot of people out there who want to be left alone, and who really do try to vote accordingly. In many cases, whoever seems to the more reasonable candidate is the one who wins. Unless people are fed up. Then it becomes "THROW THE BUMS OUT!" The problem is, throwing out Bum A can only be accomplished by replacing him with Bum B. Not voting means having no say on the bums at all, even if you think that they should all be thrown out on general principle.

The fact is, government has not gotten less intrusive over the years. It has grown ever larger, ever more malignant, ever more unconstitutional, ever more wasteful, ever more vengeful, and ever more eager to not leave anyone alone. Voting in the Republicans has never really worked as a solution, and now it's become clear to many voters that replacing Republicans with Democrats is even worse than replacing Democrats with Republicans.

Voting is when people who want to be left alone are forced to choose between candidates to whom the idea of leaving people alone is anathema, and who only disagree on whom they plan to leave alone. It's like having to vote for a crime boss by selecting between two criminals, one of whom promises to steal only jewelry from houses with wood siding (on a platform of "spreading the wealth") and another who promises to steal only electronic appliances from houses with brick walls (on a platform of "promoting fairness and efficiency"). As to the people who live in houses with both brick walls and wood siding who have both jewelry and electronics, well, fortunately, they belong to a tiny minority. Besides, shouldn't they have thought about it before they asked for trouble? After all, we have to elect someone.

What is a person who wants to be left alone supposed to do? Vote for whoever does the best job of telling them what they want to hear? If that has not worked before, why would it work this time? Isn't that like Einstein's definition of insanity?

If the purpose of voting is to elect people to government, and if the purpose of government is not to leave people alone, then I think a related form of insanity is to imagine that people running for the express purpose of not leaving you alone somehow will.

As a commenter recently accused libertarians of being like anarchists,
let me say that I do not advocate anarchy. However, I do advocate imposing the Constitution on the government rather than imposing the government on the Constitution (as has been happening since around 1914 or so).

But such chatter about the Constitution is silly, because the Government has long superseded it -- to the point where anyone taking the constitutional literally has become an anarchist for all practical purposes. In fact, in terms of today's federal government, constitutional literalism can be seen as nihilism. You might be free to talk that way in blog posts, but if you tried running for office on such a platform, you'd never get the endorsement of either major party. I suppose you might be able to wangle a spot on the Libertarian Party ticket, but you'd be stuck having to run as a kook. However, you could promise honestly to leave people alone, and you could even mean it, but it wouldn't mean much. Because the people who want to be left alone want to be left alone by real candidates -- people who are serious about running for the job of not leaving them alone!

UPDATE: Some advice to the Republicans from our friends across the sea at Samizdata:

...the Republicans need to rediscover the "leave me alone" agenda of limited government, low taxes, tight spending and free trade. And they need to rediscover it convincingly, and learn the lessons of George W. Bush's terrible error of talking the free market talk while doing the exact opposite. The GOP also needs to remember that being in favour of small government is not just about economics, either.

Let's face it, neither constitutional literalism nor libertarianism offers many employment opportunities for the think tank policy wonks, and the political reality is that the many people it takes to put someone in office expect to be rewarded for their efforts.