Epic Banality

I’ve recently been bit by the writing bug, although I have a feeling those that have been reading around here would think otherwise given that I’ve said nothing for over a week. I’ve been writing elsewhere though. Last night and this morning I began work on a section of a greater essay, a political treatise of sorts, concerning voting which is what has spawned today’s rant.

It started like my normal writing sessions on political topics generally do. I go through some of my notes, read quotes, write a little bit and then generally decide to do some additional research to put my mind in gear and find a few other historical points and authorities for whatever it is I happen to be compiling. While I have a small library of quotes and references on some subjects—liberty, the right to bear arms, the evils of the consolidation of wealth and corporate power—voting is a subject I have very little on. I tried some Google searches which turned up nothing. So, I decided to plug in a portion of a quote I did have to see if I could find a collection of similar statements. That’s where things became very messy. Here’s the quote:

Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level. — John Adams

I know many people who would knee-jerk to that statement and lash out against John Adams like some kind of rabid dog. Don’t get the idea that I agree with him in implementation either, because I don’t, but anyone with proper context and a study of the era understands what Mr. Adams is talking about and why. Everyone shouldn’t be voting, a concept I agree with. White land owning men being the only voters is not something I agree with though.

I digress. The paper I’m working on is all about that and I may very well post it here later. I was hoping to at least find some website with similar quotes, even if it was by some modernist pro-democracy jackasses that were making a huge list of reasons to hate the Founding Fathers and tell me what any remotely educated person ought to already know: “The Founding Fathers of America didn’t really believe in Democracy!” No kidding. I know the modern media has made the word “democracy” synonymous with “free government” and has held it up like some kind of shining ideal, but the fact is that democracies aren’t the be all end all of free governments. In fact, as many of the founders argued, they’re quite the opposite, a position I share. History has had no shortage of democratic tyranny.

Despite my ranting and raving, I came across no such sites. I didn’t find any more quotes on the subject just yet. What I did find was pseudo-intellectuality at its finest, the kind so headache inducing that it forced me to create my own axiom of sorts:

There is no idea so thoughtless and baseless that it is without advocates.

One can only dream of a world where such an axiom was not so axiomatic. It would be a world without NAMBLA or Republicans. It would also be devoid of FOX News and the Democratic majority in congress. The IRS and the high school I attended would never have come into being. In short, the world would be a better place.

The above statement, however, does have the awful ring of truth to it. Even worse, in this era of endless information at the fingertips of anyone with an internet connection, the very same advocates of the worst ideas will most certainly write papers about their ideas (i.e. blogs). Fine examples of the intellectual buffoonery that has caught my ire can be found in The Right to Vote and The Voting Age: Discrimination in Action.

I must warn you, these essays are the very ingredients of bad political philosophy.

Let’s focus on Deb Lewis first, in her essay, in which she thinks her 12-year-old is more qualified to vote than many adults—the only decent point she makes in her entire essay. This little essay is lacking any real meat and can be summed up as follows:

1. Anecdotal evidence about my son being smarter and more informed than a lot of adults.
2. Children are apparently born to be adults right out of the womb.
3. A quote from John Holt, who is a crank.
4. Children are affected by laws but can at times be tried as adults.
5. Quoting John Adams out of context.
6. Women can vote now, so why shouldn’t children? (I just want to interject something snarky like, “After all, there’s not much difference between the two groups!”)

So, there’s my viciously biased misrepresentation of Ms. Lewis’ crap article. The reality that this imbecile fails to miss is this: children aren’t adults and aren’t ready to be. If they’re ready to be, it changes a lot of rules. See, people rarely think “equal protection” all the way through. When most people say “equal protection” what they mean is, “I want the benefits that some other group has, but don’t want to deal with the consequences.”

How many laws do we have in effect that specifically protect children? Child labor laws anyone? Child abuse? Child neglect? Free schooling? The list goes on. The point is, you want to give children the same privileges as adults, fine. Do it. However, they get the same consequences. Junior isn’t pulling his own weight at four years old? Kick that freeloader to the curb! He was born to be an adult so he better learn to act like one. It would create a free market sort of economy for parents and children though. We—parents and children alike—could all just shop around until we find what we’re looking for.

Avi Hein starts his essay with the following: Imagine for a moment that senior citizens were denied the right to vote. I can hear John Lennon singing right now, “Imagine a world without the elderly using their unfair voting block to pick the pockets of their children and grandchildren so they can continue to be drug addicts and Social Security recipients. Imagine a world where everyone associated with the AARP caught some kind of bone rotting disease that rid the world of all of these thieves entirely.” Okay, perhaps that isn’t to the tune of Lennon’s song, but I think my point is made.

Mr. Hein continues with genius statements like, “America is not a democracy if youth are denied the right to vote.” Let me shorten that for you Avi, “America is not a democracy.” In fact the second paragraph, where this statement appears, is chock-full of some of the most amateur legal reasoning I have ever seen. The young Mr. Hein was probably 15 at the time he wrote this paper and, from reading it, the very content of his paper is exactly why people his age shouldn’t be voting. (I know, I’m taking a pot shot at a kid, but this is the internet and I am a rat bastard and he wants to be treated like an adult. I didn’t title this site “Epic Banality” because I wouldn’t be making fun of statements people wrote when they were teenagers. Geez.)

Ms. Lewis and Mr. Hein also make the most basic mistake that someone talking out their proverbial ass always does when addressing a political issue. They whine. They complain. They moan. They give us anecdote here, bad research there and poor reasoning across the board. They never, not once, really offer a solution. We shouldn’t discriminate on account of age? Really? So can toddlers vote? Can a parent pop out a kid two days before the polls close and “assist” that child in casting its first vote?

I’m sure someone would say, “well, when the person can physically handle voting for themselves,” or “when the person can first talk,” or “when the person can read.” All of these are restrictions that have also been cited as discrimination. Combine them with the age issue and, guess what, toddlers are voting either that or you have to set an arbitrary age limit elsewhere. Then what? The same arguments end at the same place they started. At some point, there’s got to be an age of majority and it’s going to be, more or less, arbitrary. Deal with it. Age, though arbitrary, is basically free of government tampering. Any other kind of test, whether it be literacy or accountability or whatever else would be used to measure whether a person could vote or not isn’t going to be free of problems anymore than age.

The only decent point either of these two “philosophers” make is that adult voting isn’t all its cracked up to be. Ms. Lewis, for instance, admits that her 12-year-old son knows more than many adults about the candidates and political process. That’s all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t make a case that he should be voting but rather that a lot of adults shouldn’t be voting because they’re apathetic morons who use their vote as nothing more than a tool to beg the government to give them free money and property on someone else’s dime—the point I’ll make whenever I finish my own paper on the subject. The last thing this country needs is another voting block filling with selfish, uninformed chumps. It’d be one more group I’d have to watch our annoyingly diluted politicians try and pander to with vague language and empty promises. Oh joy! I can’t wait for that day!

No one thinks highly of the American voter, including most other American voters. Ask the average voter if he or she thinks that most other voters should vote. Aside from a few philosophical weenies, the resounding response will be, “Most voters are idiots.” Even the idiots can agree on that much.

The only people who will defend the American voter or say anything as to his critical thinking abilities and whatnot, are politicians pandering to them as if to say, “My opponent thinks you’re retarded, but I don’t! I know you’re smart and you consider the issues which means that you’ll vote for me!” Of course, in presuming that method would be useful at all, said politician doesn’t actually believe the average voter can see past such amateur tactics and as such isn’t as wise as the politician implies.

The only other people that think highly of voters are authors of political novels with the ridiculous thesis that we’re more informed and concerned about the issues now than we were during X period in history. We aren’t. Glad I cleared that up for y’all.

So yeah… there you have it. Another fine rant. I should probably get back to some actual writing now.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Politics, Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.