Do you believe in magic?

               “Do You Believe in Magic?”, The Lovin’ Spoonful, 1965

Some people do. Penn Jillette  does not. Penn also does not believe that voting is always the best way to participate in democracy (see video).

Penn, in his words, is more than half of the comedy magic team Penn & Teller  by weight. He is an outspoken skeptic and debunker, as evidenced on his Showtime  show Penn and Teller: Bulls***!  He is also a libertarian, and has a rant on Crackle  called Penn Says.

Penn’s words to me were, well, surprising, to say the least. “Make sure you weigh as an option not voting.” Did – did he really just say that? “Not voting is one of the more patriotic things you can do.” He  did just say that! Why, oh why? What happened to high school civics? Not vote? That’s totally against everything America stands for, right? How could anyone do that?!

“Once you vote, you have then told people who are running candidates that one of the candidates is okay with you. If you vote for the lesser of two evils and keep doing that, things will just get more and more evil.” Huh. Now that kind of makes a lot of sense. I mean, I know from experience that I voted for the “lesser of two evils” in 2004. While I didn’t really like either candidate, I picked one because, well, I didn’t want the other. (I will not elaborate on which candidate I voted for). But in a sense, I told the person and the party that I voted for that I liked them and had faith in them, which isn’t entirely true. And if 55 million people were like me, then that party has a very skewed idea of what the people want. Or, as Penn says, “If they’re not doing a good job, do not encourage them. If you’re going to vote, make sure you’re voting for someone you think would be the best president of everyone living in the United States of America. If you don’t believe that, do not vote. You should vote with love, and don’t vote with hate.”

Small government was also on his agenda. “The government that governs least governs best. There’s wisdom that says, ‘If it’s a good idea, the government should do it.’ If it’s a good idea, the government doesn’t need to do it. iPods  are a good idea. The government doesn’t need to do them. We don’t need to mandate them because people want them and get them.” In fact, Penn encouraged personal involvement over government systems. “Help people. You help every person you come in contact with. You love every person on the planet. But do not ever love governments. And never believe that a government can do a better job of helping people than you can yourself.”

Towards the end of our talk, Penn mentioned that he might be wrong. But the beauty of that statement was made clear by Penn’s parting words to me: “The only way to fight bad speech is with more speech.” Thankfully, we live in a country where we are free to express ideas without the threat of censure, and can have someone like Penn offer his ideas on government.

Ironic, considering Teller  declined to comment.

For more, check out my video.