Tuesday morning I caught a stint on WAMC about Patriotism and Dr. Cahrtock was a guest. While people called in with their conception and definitions of Patriotism, an otherwise innocuous show on July 3rd, Chartock and some callers took the opportunity to bash non-voters. The idea being that unless you have indeed voted, any thought or protest in regard to government was illegitimate. Thus blaming any aspect of government and democracy for our ills requires one to vote. 
While it's obvious that this doctor of communications and politics is not familiar with the concept of consent withdrawn and its electoral relationship to voters, the underlying theme for Alan on frequent occasions is that even voting third party is wrong when someone as evil and wrong as Bush can assume power and drag us into conflicts like Iraq. In many ways I opted out of voting for Harry Browne a second time for Ralph Nader precisely because of this elitist tripe that is peddled at every opportunity by charlatans like Chartock.
Since 1988 I've never cast a a presidential vote for anybody but third parties. There was one vote for 'no confidence' in 1992. I'm proud and old enough to say that Ron Paul was my first vote for President despite a short lifetime of following presidential politics as a lad since Nixon. Perhaps the undue influence of liberal gate keepers at 'state' University and the rejection thereof by a young conservative despite them all was motivation enough. But electoral reality has had some cause or shape in these decisions over the years.
The bunk that Nader is the cause or result of everything that has happened since Bush took power is also prevalent in attitudes like Eric Alterman's of the Nation magazine. It's a disgruntled anger that the stakes are just too high to risk the likes of our neo-con brethren of deceit and greed in power. As a libertarian no power is justified in the course of promoting the 'good' at the point of a gun. It's all bad and unreasonable. Yet folks like Chartock and Alterman deny the reality of states like NY where your vote is almost always wasted on anybody but a Democrat for POTUS (Reagan in 1984 being the most recent exception). So voting your conscience should be acceptable in these conditions to them, one would hope.
Despite the fact that ALL the third party candidates in 2000 in Florida could have made the 537 vote difference in the election, all blame is placed on the man who brought happiness to 'progressives' in the form of clean air, safe cars and other countless causes for the regulators of evil corporations. The fact that two parties have a monopoly (or duoploy as Nader describes it) is of little concern to someone like Alan who draws all belief and ideology into a neat box and ascribes only donkeys as the mystical carrier of magic political elixir. As one who has always fought from without the walls of power, I will continue to hurl spitballs at Fortress Statist.