I think you can make your position stronger by arguing that voting is a HUMAN right.
I think being able to decide how our lives are lived is a fundamental human right. Voting is one of the ways governments see to it that their citizens can exercise that right. A government is, by its nature, a system of force that dictates to some degree the way people can and cannot live their lives. Thus, governments are by default violations of that fundamental human right. To limit the degree of this violation, a government must allow all of its citizens an ability to have some say in how that system of force is run.
Although I agree with you and encourage you, you might get more mileage by avoiding calling people fascist.
Well, I call them as I see them. And I certainly can't think of a better word for someone who preaches propaganda about putting the nation ahead of the individual and advocates running a country as though it were a large factory.
The people who believe that democracy should be restricted are well meaning because they see a true problem.
I also believe democracy should be restricted. As I said already, limiting the number of things that can be voted on is one way to restrict a democracy. In the US, we have a Constitution which can be changed, but the means by which it gets changed are rather laborious and do not lend themselves well to being an afternoon hobby by lawmakers (like going to war seems to be). And though we can change our Constitution in principle, there are still many things that never get put to a vote, such as term lengths for certain political offices, what political office is what (it would not be an easy task to amend the document to hand over all legislative authority to the President, for example). And so in these, and many other, ways our democracy is limited.
And this is for the good much of the time. Occasionally, for example, the placement of a new traffic light will get put to the vote of the nearby residents, but by and large city officials and engineers decide to swap out the stop sign for a safer form of traffic control without consulting everyone who might drive down that street. And this, of course, is for the benefit of everyone because the safety of all those motorists should not be determined by a few people living next to the intersection who don't want a light outside their bedroom window.
What is sad is that their visceral reaction is to punish their neighbor instead of helping them.
And that's what I see with a right-to-vote test. Instead of helping people make the decisions you think would help your country the most, you are simply trying to ban people who might make decisions you dislike. Quite frankly, just because you don't like how uneducated people vote, that is no moral justification for restricting their right to do so.
I have a couple of times now said that instead of stupid tests and the like, a true citizen will go out before the polls open and express their mind, attempt to educate the people to their ideals, and so forth. But a false citizen? A false citizen will just try to keep all the people they disagree with from voting through force, coercion or other immoral means. And thus we have advocates here for the 'you must be this tall to ride the roller coaster' voting tests and 'you can't vote until you listen to the political propaganda of every candidate on the ballot' entrance fees.
At least in the US, our problems are not because TOO MANY people are voting. Its the exact opposite.
Exactly. The problem isn't that the individuals are all up and voicing their own selfish opinions, it's because they are counting on the rest of the nation to do their thinking for them. They have literally put their trust in the rest above their faith in themselves; they've raised the nation above their own individualism.
And they have done this because, as I have already said, the fascist propaganda preached by people like Butterflytyrant has made them completely oblivious to their power as an individual to effect real changethey have lost hope in themselves.
Destroying the individual's faith in themself is really the building block of the fascist state.
Jon
Love your enemies!
™ Version 4.2
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