Q&A: Liberal Power
Liberal Power
Question
Hello Rabbi,
What do you think of the Liberal Power party economically, if we ignore the issue of the electoral threshold?
Also, does the categorical imperative obligate me to vote for a party whose positions I identify with, even if it has no chance of entering the Knesset?
Thank you very much.
Answer
I’m not familiar enough with it.
There is value in voting for a party whose success you want. I do not know whether that is sufficient to establish a full obligation under the categorical imperative.
Common sense says that if there is a party that seems reasonable to you, even if not ideal, then the electoral-threshold consideration is relevant. But if the others are very problematic, you should not be concerned about that consideration. I wrote a column about this in the past (No. 189, “The Considerations of the Lesser Evil,” and also in several responsa), where I distinguished between two kinds of drawbacks in parties.
Discussion on Answer
In column 122 on the categorical imperative, I explained that the Kantian consideration is ultimately consequentialist after all. See there.
But even according to the categorical imperative, one could say that if everyone voted for parties that represent their views, then those parties would pass the electoral threshold. For example, I have a feeling that there are 300,000 people who say that if Liberal Power had a chance of passing the threshold if they voted for it, then if those people would not take the threshold consideration into account, the party actually would pass it, and that way we’ve overcome the categorical imperative issue.
If that is your assessment, then yes indeed.
I’ll remind you that I wrote that there is room for such a consideration (the electoral threshold), but I did not necessarily say that this is the correct consideration in my view. My claim is that it is not absurd even if one accepts the categorical imperative.
If one is already voting for “Power” — after all, there’s also “Jewish Power” 🙂 headed by the son of a “tycoon,” who presumably supports a free-market economy…
Best regards, P. Nietzsche, author of "The Will to Power"
At the time I thought that “The Biblical Bloc” was a party of Herzog College in Gush Etzion 🙂 but it turned out to be a “Jewish Christian.”
Why, really, is there room for electoral-threshold considerations, if in any case my individual vote won’t affect the standing of a party that does have a chance of getting in? If in any event my vote has no impact at all, then I’d already be better off voting for the party whose positions I identify with, even if the chance that it will pass the threshold is tiny.