[/sarcasm on] But that made my vote only half as important. [/sarcasm off]
Truthfully, I find it a little shameful that it took so long for western civilization to come to the idea of one adult (regardless of ethnic background, sex, religion, etc) having one vote. With the vote comes power in the society.
Now if we could only complete getting equal pay regardless of those factors, we would be getting somewhere. With economic equality comes even greater power in our society.
CENT ONE: Some time in the early 1980s, I had a history teacher who taught the 19th Amendment, and added, "That same year, of course, we elected the worst President in American history. Heh-heh."
Heh-heh. For extra credit, make a list of reasons he can't say that any more.
CENT TWO: For more extra credit, read the next-to-last chapter of Thorstien Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class". Better yet, read the rest of it, which is actually kinda good and has many biting, spot-on insights about the monstrous behavior of uber-capitalists in an age when millionaires sought to achieve obesity as a status symbol.
But just before the end, Veblen goes into a completely gratuitous digression where he attempts to justify the male-only vote. It's such utter, utter nonsense that it makes you question the rest of his theories, but it does provide some insight into what the greatest (male) minds they could come up with a century ago were thinking.
To think that the whole thing came down to one letter and one state. A mother sent a letter to her son, who was a state senator in. The letter was a plea by the mother for her son to vote for sufferage, and so moved (and because he didn't want to go against his momma) voted to amend the constitution. That state was my beloved Tennessee.
As I see the increasingly severe consequences of a collectively clueless electorate, so lacking in critical thinking faculties they can be duped into supporting any evil agenda backed by a slick marketing campaign, I'm less and less convinced that universal suffrage is a good idea. There should be some limitations on who can vote. But those limitations definitely should be based on the actual person and their knowledge, experience, and intelligence, not gender or any other accident of birth.
I have trouble seeing progress against vile discrimination as something to cheer about. I can feel a little relief knowing that we've improved in one small way, but we still have a long way to go, and we need to be shamed by the discrimination we still accept as a normal part of life. We haven't come far enough to be smug.
Personally, I like Heinlein's idea that only those who can do higher math should be allowed to vote. He posited a system wherein the voter enters the voting booth and finds that the computer controlling it has generated a brand new quadratic equation, just for him/her. If s/he can't solve it, s/he doesn't get to vote. (Poster notes that this would likely disqualify himself.)
Me, I'd like to see all sides allowed to submit *factual* questiions about the issue or candidate. With some degree of "challenge" for ones that are too obscure or slanted.
You get offered a random selection of the questions for each issue or candidate on the ballot. If you can't answer enough of them correctly, your vote for that candidate or office doesn't get counted.
That'd be great. To get people to vote for them, candidates would have to give voters enough information about the office and their plans that the voters would pass the test -- information candidates usually spend most of the campaign ducking questions and avoiding oppurtunities to talk about, because they have consultants that say that accusing your opponent of pedophilia wins more votes. And people who would rather watch the next episode of Survivor than actually read that real-information-filled campaign literature would not influence the outcome. But as soon as somebody came out with a study that showed that Polish Muslims were more likely to opt for Survivor than Finnish Hindus, our current misapplication of the ideal of nondiscrimination would throw it out.
The idea being that you couldn't be too much of an idiot and still keep the land or keep getting clients.
Actually, that wasn't the idea at all. The idea was to keep the power in the hands of the rich -- since the way most people become landed is to be born landed. Not all of the Framers were egalitarian or even very small-d democratic.
We also tried literacy tests rather more recently, alas, those showed the problem with biased testers.
And unfortunately, our society isn't smart enough to recognize that the problem is the biased testers, and not in the basic idea of a test. I think a test is a very good idea in principle; unfortunately, because some evil people called their racial policy a test (it's not much of a test when the tester decides by looking at you whether you will be allowed to pass before you take it), we've formed a cultural belief that tests are bad that will take a century to overcome.
I beg to differ. Colonies, which we were, and territory expansions, which we had, are all about people who aren't born into land getting land by merit of their ability to stake it out, keep everyone else off, and survive. It's what made the democratic republic more viable in the early US than in old Europe.
Course the side effects were lots of death, conquering, and exploitation. Which is bad. But don't say the idea was to keep power in the hands of hereditary wealth. If that were so, I assure you, America would have a king in name.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 10:27 am (UTC)But that made my vote only half as important.
[/sarcasm off]
Truthfully, I find it a little shameful that it took so long for western civilization to come to the idea of one adult (regardless of ethnic background, sex, religion, etc) having one vote. With the vote comes power in the society.
Now if we could only complete getting equal pay regardless of those factors, we would be getting somewhere. With economic equality comes even greater power in our society.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 03:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 05:16 pm (UTC)Heh-heh. For extra credit, make a list of reasons he can't say that any more.
CENT TWO: For more extra credit, read the next-to-last chapter of Thorstien Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class". Better yet, read the rest of it, which is actually kinda good and has many biting, spot-on insights about the monstrous behavior of uber-capitalists in an age when millionaires sought to achieve obesity as a status symbol.
But just before the end, Veblen goes into a completely gratuitous digression where he attempts to justify the male-only vote. It's such utter, utter nonsense that it makes you question the rest of his theories, but it does provide some insight into what the greatest (male) minds they could come up with a century ago were thinking.
And....
Date: 2006-08-26 05:22 pm (UTC)Saint Dharma
Re: And....
Date: 2006-08-26 09:46 pm (UTC)Re: And....
Date: 2006-08-27 08:50 am (UTC)THey are putting a sufferage monument here in Knoxville because the senator in question was from East Tennessee.
Saint Dharma
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 08:23 pm (UTC)I have trouble seeing progress against vile discrimination as something to cheer about. I can feel a little relief knowing that we've improved in one small way, but we still have a long way to go, and we need to be shamed by the discrimination we still accept as a normal part of life. We haven't come far enough to be smug.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-26 09:54 pm (UTC)Originally, you had to be either a landowner or what we'd now call a "professional" to vote.
The idea being that you couldn't be too much of an idiot and still keep the land or keep getting clients.
We also tried literacy tests rather more recently, alas, those showed the problem with biased testers. :-(
Math voting tests, anyone?
Date: 2006-08-27 12:33 am (UTC)Re: Math voting tests, anyone?
Date: 2006-08-27 12:48 am (UTC)Me, I'd like to see all sides allowed to submit *factual* questiions about the issue or candidate. With some degree of "challenge" for ones that are too obscure or slanted.
You get offered a random selection of the questions for each issue or candidate on the ballot. If you can't answer enough of them correctly, your vote for that candidate or office doesn't get counted.
Re: Math voting tests, anyone?
Date: 2006-08-27 12:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-27 12:50 am (UTC)Actually, that wasn't the idea at all. The idea was to keep the power in the hands of the rich -- since the way most people become landed is to be born landed. Not all of the Framers were egalitarian or even very small-d democratic.
We also tried literacy tests rather more recently, alas, those showed the problem with biased testers.
And unfortunately, our society isn't smart enough to recognize that the problem is the biased testers, and not in the basic idea of a test. I think a test is a very good idea in principle; unfortunately, because some evil people called their racial policy a test (it's not much of a test when the tester decides by looking at you whether you will be allowed to pass before you take it), we've formed a cultural belief that tests are bad that will take a century to overcome.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-27 01:39 am (UTC)Course the side effects were lots of death, conquering, and exploitation. Which is bad. But don't say the idea was to keep power in the hands of hereditary wealth. If that were so, I assure you, America would have a king in name.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-27 04:26 am (UTC)Now we have have both!
Who says there ain't a grand design to the universe?