Accepted. Feel free to criticize the hell out of my arguments, and you may even call my arguments bad names.

 

Ummm... it was a great example of the fact that edjucation doesn't equal intelligence. Since the ability to read can have nothing to do with intelligence, and way more often than not has to do with a lack of education, it was a perfect example. You like to think in nice straight lines don't you?

-Chris

p.s. your argument is a doo-doo head.

 

OK that's a less direct argument, but my point still stands that your argument would have been stronger had your granddad actually been illiterate or demonstrably ignorant of economics or history or current affairs.
Your point about book-learning and real intelligence is well taken however. I have known a lot of people like that. Some of the smartest guys I have met were machinists or mechanics or other "uneducated" people.

 

Did you even click on one single link that was posted here? I'm sorry, but you really should at least look at both sides even if you're going to disagree with them. It just gets really tiring presenting fact after fact, and argument after argument and none of them are being considered.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. Why don't you show us some reasons, not just your own opinions, on why our government was wrong in 1965 when they passed the Voting Rights Act, and why we should have to take tests to be able to vote?

I'm honestly open to some valid points. But you haven't made one single one of them with a fact to back it up.

 

Anyways, to sum it up, because I have to go to a meeting, Psoper made a good point when he pointed out that my proposal would rely on subjective testing, and that there would be a large potential for abuse or error. So I admit defeat.
However I maintain that it would be an interesting experiment to see what kind of government we had if we excluded really stupid or ignorant people from the electorate. Or better yet, what if everyone was well educated and informed, so we could include them all?

 

Actually there is a somewhat obscure mention of it in the 2nd section of 14th amendment in regards to electing representatives, which I believe opened the door for states to establish their own voting rights/eligability standards as they are effected by criminal convictions;

Amendment XIV

....Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which....

 

I examined the Constitutional arguments in detail and found them wanting. If someone says "XXX is in the Consitution", there is no way to refute that with a link. All I can do is read the Consitution (which is readily available on the "internets"), find that there is no reference to XXX, state that fact, and encourage the "someone" to read for himself.

The link you posted didn't have the text of the VRA, just a general description. I don't disagree with the idea of tests. The problem is that these tests were being applied differently to blacks than to whites. Which is the type of abuse that I am referring to in my last post. So I concede that the VRA probably had a good point, although I won't be totally sure until I see the actual text of the Act.

 

Wasn't this done in 18th Century France? It was called an Aristocracy. It didn't turn out too well.

This is the point of many of the "liberal, pinko commies" that set up the social systems that our taxes go toward.

 

Good point, there it is.

 

after admitting defeat we actually get some words of wisdom from our funky friend, to which I can only reply; hear hear!

actually this is one of my biggest gripes with some of you hard-core "capital L" libertarians- I really think there is a national security imperative- both economically and domestically, that can only be served by having a well educated general populus, and that the foundation for such an objective must lie in a solid national education system.

 

From my readings, I would have to say that they failed miserably on the excluding "really stupid or ignorant people from the electorate" part.

Yes it was a noble attempt, but unfortunately not working out too well. That's a whole 'nuther thread though.

 

I'm "small L", not a party member.
PS You know I am a public school teacher, right?

 

Actually it points directly to the root problem in such thinking- the French aristocracy envisioned themselves as being above stupidity and ignorance, much as our own bushcheneyrumsfeldians seem to- desite their own thinking being deeply mired in both stupidity and ignorance.

 

I didn't know the second part, but I do now- I am a party member, only because I could not get behind either of the major prties and the greens are too big a bunch of pu**ies, but I also consider myself a small l libertarian.

When it comes down to a lot of the main points, you and I probably agree on more items than we disagree, but sometimes you'll toss one of these elitist zingers back from the outfield that make me wonder.......?

Good discussion though....

 

A little off-topic now, but who are you voting for? I, too, am an educator, or at least in education. I am in the administration for a school district.

No Child Left Behind, amongst others, is one reason why I won't be voting for Bush.