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Guest Post: The 145 Solution - Sapience, Not Sentience
In the modest and unassuming manner natural to this column, I advance a small proposal for the emendation of such tatters of the Constitution as can be found:
For voting in federal elections, we should employ a literacy test to disenfranchise the majority of the population, to the infinite betterment of the country. This wise move should be accompanied by an increase in the voting age to twenty-five.
The necessity cannot be denied. Consider the following:
Forty-three percent of Americans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11.
Sixty-four percent cannot name the three branches of the federal government.
Fourteen percent are illiterate.
Twenty-six percent think the sun goes around the earth.
These numbers may be understood in various ways. To a curmudgeon, who obtains a sour satisfaction from the endless repetition of human folly, they provide the satisfactions of confirmation. We all enjoy being right. In practical terms, they mean that democracy, or our mild approximation thereto, is a sham, a fraud, an impossibility, and a bad idea. No one so blankly ignorant, so mentally without furniture, so muddle-headed, limited, and barren, should be allowed within hailing range of a voting booth.
Such people cannot possibly know anything of national questions. Those who live in a featureless tundra of the mind usually do so from stupidity. It is unreasonable to blame them for a genetic condition over which they have no control, but it is equally unreasonable to allow them to vote. As for the fairly intelligent who through intellectual shiftlessness learn nothing, I have no patience with them. What possible cause is there for thinking the willfully dull, the deliberately ignorant, or the dull and ignorant, are ompetent to influence policy on matters that they cannot spell? Given that everyone today has access to virtually every book ever written and to the internet, there is little excuse for living in Oprah fog and Eminem darkness.
If fourteen percent are illiterate, a larger number must be nearly so. People who can barely read don´t. People so little engaged as to think Iraq attacked New York –forty-six percent!—vote almost at random, or in the direction in which they are shooed by cunning electoral mechanics and fixers.
The educated and thoughtful may have no idea of the night in which the rest live. We tend to associate with people like ourselves. Consequently if you know where Iran is, you probably don’t know anyone who doesn’t. But—a pre-Copernican quarter of the population believes that the sun moves around the earth? As we said in the Sixties, that’s a whole nuther head-space.
Thus a test of literacy, or more correctly of competence to vote. It might involve reading a paragraph of prose at the level of college, or of what used to be the level of college, and answering questions about it. There might be questions such as how many Congressmen are there, name a country bordering of Iraq, list three rights guaranteed (ha!) by the First Amendment, and when did World War Two take place.
This laudable proposal would transform politics. The basalt principle of current American governance is that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time. The smart can safely be ignored. People with capacious and well-stocked mental larders are statistically insignificant. Thus candidates campaign by grinning and smirking, hiding whatever intelligence they may have, and professing sympathy for orphans and the downtrodden. In France, a candidate with the mind of a lawn chair would be held in contempt, but in America he is thought to be of the people, and authentic. Unfortunately, he is.
The current fourth-grade posturing of politicians would last microseconds with an electorate well on the right side of the bell curve. We would have far fewer dolts and poltroons. I'm sure you can think of several of these.
I suspect people would be surprised to learn how little the members of the House of Representatives know. A Congressman of my acquaintance told me of going with a colleague on a junket to Thailand. His fellow legislator repeatedly referred to the country as “Taiwan.” Thus are we ruled. Allowing the foolish to vote makes likely the election of the equally fatuous, or of a wily confidence man.
Objectors to my splendid idea will assert that a government and electorate of the highly intelligent will exploit the rest. The franchise is said to protect the majority from the unscrupulous. But it does not. IQs on Wall Street are said to begin at 145. Has the franchise protected anyone from them? Allowing the dim and untutored to vote simply provides the bright and unscrupulous with gullible vote-fodder. It does not prevent but makes possible the exploitation.
A voting age of twenty-five would ensure some degree of maturity, or might, even in an age of mall rats. It is ludicrous to think that teenagers can vote sensibly. They haven’t lived long enough. Like so much of American life, the adolescent vote sprang from the unrealistic idea that we are all equal in everything. Girls can be SEALs, everyone should go to college, that sort of thing. During Vietnam, the argument was that if the young were old enough to die in Asia, they were old enough to vote. And if six-year-olds are old enough to die in car accidents, they are old enough to drive.
While we are at it, we might as a minimum require candidates for federal office to have scored in the ninetieth percentile on the GREs. Again, It is curious that while in France intelligence and cultivation are regarded as good things, in America the use of words of more than one syllable is regarded as evidence of elitism, both being mortal sins. The only offense worse than being superior is knowing that you are.
But why not do yet better? If I may soar even higher into wild and uncontrolled supposition, suppose that candidates for high national office--Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidency--were required to have an IQ of 145 or better. This is the beginning of real intelligence, perhaps aproaching the entry level for Silicon Valley (though intelligence at the level of a valley may not be the image I am looking for). Such men—at this level, almost all are—can keep in mind the various pipelines proposed for Caspian hydrocarbons, the effects of shifting exchange rates, and so on. They are precious hard to con. When they travel, they usually know where they are. Intelligent government: What a concept.
So much for ineffable wisdom and preternatural insight. The implementation of my splendid system is left to the student as an exercise.
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wut dud he saa?
I say tests for voting and having kids. Nuff the liberal machine paying for votes through over breeding and importations .... talk about modern slavery and racism, FFS.
"I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 100 years."
-Lyndon Baines Johnson
I shit you not
property owners only.
Only if they own it outright; we've got enough banks voting already.
This is why the Founding Fathers intended a representative republic; because 'democracy' doesn't work.
'Democracy' is three wolves and two sheep voting on what's for dinner.
[The FSA will bury what's left of this once-great country...]
[The FSA will bury what's left of this once-great country...]
That would seem very unlikely. It would require work.
Also, let's disenfranchise women. Women shouldn't vote. They generally make bad decisions outside matters regarding home and family.
It isn't a coincidence that everything went south around 1920.
Anyone who believes there is a right to vote should not be allowed to vote.
I was discussing this with a guy at work and he suggested a college diploma. The problem with this is that you have to work out a BULLETPROOF system of testing/accredidation etc before implementation or it quickly gets corrupted and rigged.
A diploma in the current sense would be fucking useless but some type of civics + history diploma, maybe. Of course then comes the issue of who would we trust to create the cirriculum, who would we trust to issue the class/test fairly and without bias? Who pays for all this and how do we keep the costs from spiraling out of control? How would we ensure it wouldn't be captured by some corrupt, for-profit private institution or corrupt, for-slavery government institution?
It has promise but I have yet to come up with such a perfect system myself, and so I couldn't seriously advocate such a thing just yet.
I also noticed that this guy mentions France multiple times. I know nothing about the French political system but the results are quite obvious. Let's not use the French system.
Another Idea I've been tossing around is why do we need "representatives" at all? Perhaps direct vote through the internet should be the future? Allow people to propose bills which are then voted on, on a set day(all day) quarterly, biannually, or something. A bill could only be for ONE thing(IE: if you want to outlaw fraud, the bill could not also try to outlaw something else at the same time. If you want something else outlawed, it must be in a separate bill).
Then once per year or 2 years, have a vote for Federal laws which would have to be cleared by the(or a) Supreme Court for constitutionality before making it to the proposal list.
Any new bill would have to get X number of signatures on a petition to avoid being flooded with stupid bills that no one wants.
"The problem with this is that you have to work out a BULLETPROOF system of testing/accredidation etc before implementation or it quickly gets corrupted and rigged."
+1 - Bingo.
There are ways to do this, but not with a test that any human has control over. Humans are imperfect. You have to do it automatically and it is possible to do this with the right design. See http://sapiocracy.com for an example.
Buck - We require doctors to move heaven and earth to get accredited and practice their profession. We require CPAs, lawyers and all sorts of other professionals to attain minimum proficiency levels before engaging in their respective professions. I'm okay with this so that I don't die on an operating table when getting knee surgery.
Yet elected officials, who have purview over millions, billions or trillions of dollars of economic activity, have no such qualifying requirements. Absolutely none.
So if you're an optimist and don't want to disenfranchise the bovine hoards mindlessly roaming the land, then how about splitting the difference and instituting entrace exams for anyone running for public office?
The problem isn't that they're stupid, or lazy. The problem is that they are rotten to the core, if not when they get to Washington, then it's for certain they are by the time they leave. You have a test to determine that?
How about a test on the basics of individual liberty and sound money? Why set an arbitrary age like 25? As long as they are adults who will not vote for free shit or understand that they can't vote our rights away, then that's who should have the privilege.
I do not. But I think a smart(er) bad actor is preferable to a dumb(er) bad actor.
The former can at least be reasoned with. The latter cannot.
"You have a test to determine that?"
Do it the same way the scientific method works: predictions and demonstrated correctness.
With each vote, force each voter to predict the outcome for both pass/fail scenarios, later prove what happened and adjust voting weight for future votes based on correctness. See sapiocracy.com.
It takes a bit to get your head around this, but the implications are profound.
Parenting too. Minimum requirements should be met before one can have create children.
That is why I invest mostly in China. No stinking democracy or theocracy to intefere with trying to run a country efficiently.
The U.S. model of "democracy" doesn't work because elected politicians become whores to corporations and their oligarch owners.
The Swiss model seems to work much, much better than the U.S. one.
the Swiss model of democracy? it's a fundamentally continental european model, based on a parliament elected through a multi-party electoral system
the specific Swiss add-on of direct democracy, while extremely important, hides the fact that if Switzerland had the US electoral system... direct democracy would not work so well
the US model has a simple symptom: two immortal, too big to fail political parties
last time a US political party suffered the ignomy of being voted out of government, it was the... Whigs
meanwhile direct democracy without a lively, segmented landscape of parties like in Switzerland would just be a series of options between the fire and the frying pan
So let me get this straight. You think the number of parties matters? You believe in numerology too? Is there a magic number of parties that will make everything all better? I'm guessing that number is 42? You're wrong. The only thing that matters is the people. That's the secret ingredient, and that's what has been lost, and you couldn't fix that if you added a trillion little parties.
to get you straight: failure matters. what can't fail, won't adapt. a political party that knows it can fail at the urns vs to one that can swagger to the polls? the number thing is only a symptom
You're wrong. We have many little agencies that are suppose to regulate the finance industry, and yet they've all been captured by the very industry they are suppose to regulate. The same would happen with as many little parties. Choice isn't the problem, or it would have been the problem 150 years ago.
P.S. Don't think that a party can't fail. The GOP is in the process of dying right now, just as the Whigs did.
'Democracy' is three wolves and two sheep voting on what's for dinner". I gotta agree with you Pool Shark. The best decisions don't come from a majority vote especially when the people are influenced by the media.
A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
Theodore Roosevelt
Well said . Saved me a post.
If there was hope, it MUST lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength. would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it?
- ORwell, 1984
It will never occur to them. Even in times of starvation they do not understand who their real enemies are and will lash out and destroy anything in their path; stupidly, like a blind, wounded animal, often to their own detriment. The prole seeks to be lead. It is the nature of proles and the very reason they have such station in life.
"property owners only."
Tax Payers would be more appropriate, Since there are a lot of property owners on the dole, (ie retirees that vote for more entitlements).
point taken, agree. tax paying property owners.
Well, we'll eliminate you from voting since you've apparently never heard of the PROPERTY TAX paid by all property owners! Don't pay it and you won't "own" any property for long. The two sets are completely identical (see set theory). And by the way, this also includes all renters, who indirectly pay property taxes. See how subtle thinking can be?
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You're some special kind of stupid, always trying to invoke something "complex" like set theory or Godel, but always screwing the fucking pooch in terms of getting things straight.
Just because someone nominally pays property tax (directly or indirectly) does not make them a net tax payer (aka an actual tax payer), not if they are receiving more money from the government (i.e., net payments from actual tax payers) than they are paying in. Such "taxes" are nothing more than a book-keeping trick. Real taxation imposes a net financial burden on an individual, it does not just reduce one's publicly-funded net financial benefits.
(This is ignoring the benefits that taxes should be going for -- securing the blessings of liberty. In a properly run goverment most people would be non-financial net beneficiaries of government even while at the same time being financial net payers.)
Love the LBJ quote.
Been saying for years that there needs to be a test to be able to vote, if you have ZERO understanding how things work you should not have a say in the decisions. It like letting your children vote of family budget issues, never gonna work.
The number of people voting has collapsed actually.
If anything anyone over the age of 62 should be excluded.
It's 200 years, and I didn't have to type past "I'll have those n" to get a whole page of links:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=i%27ll+have+those+niggers+voting+democrat+for+...
I caught that 100 shades of gray you missed
Word definitions have changed to such a degree over the past many years that I doubt I could pass a literacy test.
For example, I remember some years back when there was a move afoot to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, and it was said, at the time, that when the decent people of the nation were made aware they would rise in revolt... and I discovered that I was no longer a decent person...
Another example... my first year of teaching, some thirty years back, I was declared a racist for stating a belief that black children and white children should be accorded the same respect... who knew?
And I am quite convinced that I don't understand a single word of the rhetoric coming out of Washington.
No, the more I think on it the more I am convinced I would not have a prayer of passing...
If you think art is in any way the business of government then no you couldn't possibly pass the test.
Sounds like a good move toward informed voting but be careful what you wish for. Who determines the literacy questions?
Maxine Waters, credibility certified by Snopes* and auto spell checked via the Merriam Webster New Ebonics Dictionary
* funded in large part by George Soros, paragon of fairness, diversity, inclusiveness and eugenics
With a foreword by Gohmert and Inhofe (it'll need to be a picturebook, for obvious reasons).
mel watts.....
And what about holding office?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs23CjIWMgA
Or how about being a citizen to be Prez? Oh...
There is a difference between sounding stupid and being stupid. That's why I have such high hopes for commenters on ZH.
Our culture glorifies stupidity. Stupidity is blasted at us from birth through the teevee and music especially. Humans, being the social animals that they are, take their cues from the environment and seek to fit in (survival mechanism).
Idiocracy was prophetic. Besides, the stupid are far easier to rule than the intelligent. Why do you think the Catholic Church has lasted as long as it has? Surely not because it wants to keep its constituents informed.
This was a good article until he said that only men can be / are smart. Our society expects females to be dumb and surprise, surprise, on average we get what we expect. Now however, society wants the males to be dumb too, and look... 'we' get what 'we' want.
In my experience intelligence is cultivated through hard work and developing interests. This is equally possible for any person, though (aside from the obvious genetic and biological issues [downs syndrome, FAS etc.]) there are often environmental conditions (parents don't interact with their kids and an over exposure to mass media) that will soften the brain.
The brain is like a muscle. Without work and rigor it will atrophy and weaken. Strength can return at any time through effort and practice... Will some brains be stronger than others? Sure, just like bodies. But, if everyone worked out every day for 2 hours a day we'd all be strong fuckers. The same is true for intelligence.
Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.
Come on already. He's just another animal who hasn't risen above his nature. Give him time, for goodness sakes. It really early in the game. Lots of time left to play. Don't be so pessimistic. Pessimists accomplish nothing.
So we should vote for Hillary?
You summarized what I said perfectly.
Gold star for you!
Do I gets me anuffer Obamiephone if I does? Id bat-tree be day-ed.
Seriously, this is the kinda shit the Progressives do to buy votes. Bammyphoines and EBT cards good for cash atchur local Trader Joes. That's right kiddies, the TJ's near me have a square to check on the scanner "EBT for cash". I'm sure that TJ's uses the "EBT" to keep tally for the goobemint how good they are helping the poor and indigent, who get the cash and buy the 8ball.
Fuck me.......
This brought to mind an old sci-fi short story, Examination Day by Henry Slesar. On their 12th birthday every child goes to the examination center for an intelligence test. In the story Dickie Jordan's parents worry about his passing the test. In the end, their worst fears are realized when they are told Dickie's I.Q. exceeded the legal limit and are asked how they would like his remains to be handled.
There goes the whole republican presidential lineup.
Good thing we can vote for the Democrats then right?
They sure is smart... and purdy.
"Nice tat, Skate. Damn, matches yer red eye dye."
Supported.
A better idea: allow no one to vote, and shut the whole damn thing down. There is no method of re-making an institution which is inherently anti-human and whose very existence violates human rights. If we want the intelligent to take their rightful place in society we must rid ourselves of the idea that violence is a solution to anything other than aggression.
Read Hoppe to get a true grasp on what a society ruled by the natural aristocracy would look like: a private law society.
Definition of intelligent please!
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.
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IQ tests are dodgy, whose test do we use? They often involve too much esoteric nonsense. People need to be smart AND INFORMED. The test needs to be deep enough that you can't fake it. Plenty of "smart" people are wildly supportive of the congressional moron incumbent from their district and the current Executive Administration.
Maybe we should have test EVERY TIME YOU VOTE. The test could cover basic government & economics AND current issues and geopolitics. This will help eliminate fraud if done correctly. People would get a hand stamp that wears off in 12 hours that would allow them to vote afterward IF they passed the test.
"Maybe we should have test EVERY TIME YOU VOTE."
Yes.
"The test could cover basic government & economics AND current issues and geopolitics. This will help eliminate fraud if done correctly. People would get a hand stamp that wears off in 12 hours that would allow them to vote afterward IF they passed the test."
No.
The problem is "who writes the tests?" If it is a normal test as people understand this phrase, it won't work - it'll get corrupted.
I agree that the best way to eliminate corruption is to test with every vote, but the "test" needs to be completely different. It needs to be automated in such a way that the power of idiots and assholes is reduced while the power of those who prove to be correct is increased.
Correctness over time is the key to eliminating human deception and idiocy, IMO.
The U.S. will be run by Corporations and Oligarch, no matter who votes, up to the day the revolution begins.
Stop whoring for Wall Street.
http://www.showrealhist.com/yTRIAL.html
http://patrick.net/?p=1223928
''I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.'' - William F Buckley Jr.
It's the over 65 you should be worried about. https://www.google.com/?q=voter+turnout+by+age
It's also no secret how the walking-dead vote - "gimme my handouts before I die, who gives a fuck, bill the unborn!"
Whole thing's a red herring though. Higher IQ quite significantly correlates with greater so-called "liberalism" (not that I care, or, rather, acknowledge any meaningful distinction), this could even be a Trojan Horss.
If that's true about higher income and more liberal ideals (not the guys I know except them works for the gobermenit of Kalifornicaiton, they be both rich and commies) then we also should saw off the east and west coast large cities (hat tip to Barry Goldwater) and that'll take care of that shit. (NYC, Bsssshtun, LA, SF, Seattle.... ya'll get the idea)
With explicit mention of those which must not be implied: Jersey, Phila, & DC.
Over 65 and haven't voted for quite some time.
Have come to the conclusion voting tacitly means you approve of the system, and I surely don't. Doesn't really matter,,, In most cases Diebold does the voting for you. If you don't think so then your brain is more fried than mine even at my advanced age.
"During Vietnam, the argument was that if the young were old enough to die in Asia, they were old enough to vote. And if six-year-olds are old enough to die in car accidents, they are old enough to drive."
Not even the same. Not even.
The average Merikan is pretty well programmed by the time their 21,,, 4yrs PreK,,, 8yrs elementary,,, 4yrs high school survival and then a couple years of college. For sure your in their box and stating there.
Then if all else fails theres Diebold and Mr. Digital as back up.
First off: it doesn't matter who votes or who they vote for, because the whole damn thing is rigged.
Second: my IQ is north of 150, and I still think this is a horrible idea. It would be a horrible idea even if voting mattered.
I got a high IQ. Met one of my best buddies, caught cribbing on our MENSA multiple-choice oral exams at Soledad.
Some of the stupiest people I have met have PhDs.
Degrees are for thermometers.
Not intending to slag you, Knukles, just to slag "highly educated" people who have spent their whole lives in school and who end up studying a very narrow subject at great depth. Often people with PhDs think that their extensive knowledge of a very narrow subject qualifies them to give definitive opinions on every subject under the sun, no matter how ignorant they are on that subject.
Often the most dangerous person (to him/herself and others) is a person who thinks he/she is smart and clever, while in fact he/she is ignorant.
As to questions to put to potential voters, even the most clever can be stumped by a question like "How many bubbles can you make out of a bar of soap?"
So, smartypants answer this question (and any others on ZH can do so as well):
A barber shaves all men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?
Hint: this is why logic has its limitations and you don't be to understand Godel's proof to grasp this limitation. But here's an interesting issue: what if the barber is a woman? Then the answer is no, unless the women is Hilary Clinton, say. But the use of the pronoun "he" actually rules out this consistent answer. The correct answer is he shaves himself if and only if he doesn't shave himself.
So, what is the solution to imperfect humans and their logic? Weak and limited government as the founders intended since they understood human nature so well. Then who the fuck cares about voting criteria?
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According to what you stated - yes, he does shave himself. (Him not shaving himself results in an inconsistency. Him shaving himself does not.)
Perhaps you meant to state that the barber ONLY shaves men who do not shave themselves, but were not sufficiently intelligent to notice your error, or perhaps you were too busy calling someone else "smartypants" and making an incredibly stupid argument that basically says "Because non-convergent self-referential statements can be constructed... there's no (statistically significant) way to tell the difference between an ignorant retard and a knowledgeable genius so everyone should get a vote." Your logic is somewhat less sound than "1. Collect Underpants 2. ? 3. Profit"
No, you done fucked up again. Because the statement you provided does not say the barber only shaves men, just that the barber does shave all members of some subset of men, it does not rule out the possibility that the barber also shaves women, or goats, or ice.
No, the correct answer -- if you had actually stated the problem "correctly" -- is that the statement includes a non-converging cycle. Similar situations can be constructed in computer programs (e.g. a program with an infinite loop is classified as "divergent"). The possibility of such divergent statements does not make logic useless anymore than the possibility of divergent programs makes computers useless. Or in other words, logic and computers are tools, and if you don't want garbage out, don't put garbage in.
I.e., the correct answer is much the same as if you had presented "Multiple choice: 2 plus 2 equals a. 5 b. 7 c. all of the above" The question is broken. It does not compute. User error. It reflects a problem in the one posing the question, not the one to whom the question is posed.
How about anyone who notices that idiots outnumber non-idiots substantially, and subsequently when everyone is allowed to vote government is not in any way constrained to remaining "weak and limited"?
And it's so "precious" that you invoke the founders while completely ignoring the fact that they actually had voting criteria which we now lack.
While ending discrimination against individuals who are otherwise qualified voters but who were unfortunate enough to have been born into some class of people who are mostly unfit to vote is noble, solving that injustice by allowing everyone in such a class to vote is utterly stupid and destructive, and potentially results in much greater injustice. Rather, such injustices against individuals should be ended by replacing discriminating factors such as sex, race, age (species, organic vs. inorganic, etc.) that ignore individual competencies with discriminating factors which are a more reliable measure of an individual's suitability to voting.
Can such a system be perfect? Of course not. But it's far better to prevent 1 competent individual from voting than it is to allow 10 incompetents to vote. Choosing to keep the disaster we have now forever just because we will never have perfection is just another form of idiocy.
Participation is already ridiculously low...I don't think you'd even make a dent at the polls with any of these ass-minded initiatives.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, at the level to which ZH has sunk, printing such racist filth.
Which race? Did you catch the Nascar event today?
I believe he was refering to the human race. Is that racist?
Plenty of 'smart' people voted Obama, twice. I'll leave it at that.
Yours is a powerful statement to redefine the word "smart".
I don't really agree. Voting doesn't really matter anyway. We'd still get a clinton or bush.
Because people tolerate the manipulation and fail to seek out the truth. Voter = failure.
How about a bushy clinton?
I like the old rule of having to own property to be able to vote. When you have to write that annual property tax check, it helps you think about those cops that pass up the skid row.bum passed out at the entrance to your neighborhood in favor of wrecking a kids life for having a doobie in the ashtray.
Both of those are stupid things, but when I want to sell my house, the prospects wont see that doobie, but they sure will be impressed with the bum.
"You can't fix stupid...'cause stupid is FOREVER!"
Sure you can. Stupid has been securely fixed to our society. It will be very difficult to remove.
You can't fix it but you can certainly tax it! Its called the lottery.
Depo Provera Cross-Bow FTW
People who can't read shouldn't vote. People who don't know where Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria, Israel, Russia or China shouldn't vote. People who don't know at least one judge of SCOTUS shouldn't vote. People who don't pay taxes shouldn't vote. People who don't know how high the national debt is (within a trillion) shouldn't be able to vote.
Ignorant fucks shouldn't vote, simple as that.
...and people who dont know there are 57 states...
When I was a young man I dared question and still do.
If someone were to order me to go to war and kill people, I would've said, "give me a good reason."
I wasn't 25 and my education was minimal, but I worked hard and supported a family.
This post is a joke and an insult to many young people, many who I would trust more than the fools running DC or their Wall Street conspirator buddies.
"Intelligent government: What a concept."
"Intelligent government" is an oxymoron because the institution operates by cunning, not by intelligence.
The dim and untutored are allowed to vote because it doesn't matter---the whole exercise is theatre designed to provide the illusion that anybody in a position to do anything about cares whether proles live or die, much less what they think or feel.
No important decision is made by people who have to stand for election. Wall Street makes the laws---Congress and the Current Occupant merely rubber-stamp Wall Street's decisions.
Disenfranchise the majority of the population? Given that the opinions of about 10,000 very rich people are the only ones that count for anything in the USA, I dare say that's been taken care of.
Point is that there are under-informed people voting on things everyday, and they are called Congress. Put that in your pipe, ay?
With select elitists promulgating the idea of genocide as population control: http://www.infowars.com/msnbc-in-cover-up-of-manifestly-provable-populat...
One has to wonder why governments love to give money to the unproductive welfare class to mass produce. The only answer must be to create compliant voters. If our government had any sense, it wouldn't subsidize a population to grow in a world of diminishing resources. That only drives wars and competition, as we've seen. The only sound and secure future is to develop a viable economic system that can support a population on the decline, with a birth rate goal of 2.0, a population that will find an easier future as time goes on. If the US had a population of only 60 million or so, we wouldn't be buying foreign oil, fighting wars, and kicking each other in the teeth for a place in line.
Voting Rights = Blue Pills
It is absolutely essential to the functioning of the American Republic, or any modern democracy, that ALL residents be allowed to vote. Giving every resident the right to vote gives residents the illusion that they get to control how the country is run, and that they have importance in the political process. Just tell every resident, repeatedly, that he or she is a valued member of an elite team known as "citizens" and "voters" in The Greatest Democracy On Earth and that resident will stay in line, pay his or her taxes, and take the blue pill. Denying voting rights to any group of residents deprives that group of reasons to value their country and creates serious and dangerous class divisions. Civil unrest will follow.
Universal suffrage is a core essential of the scam that is "democratic" government. As long as TPTB can devise means to persuade the proles to vote for candidates chosen by TPTB, TPTB remain secure and in control.
Beware the danger of knowledge without wisdom.
http://souloftheeast.org/2014/07/29/knowledge-without-wisdom/
"The “fire in the minds of men” was lit, and rather than produce the utopia expected, it resulted in the rise of brutal, tyrannical statist regimes controlled by the money power as the world had never seen. And to be the bearer of further bad news, this bogus religious system of Holy Enlightenment is so entrenched still that the only outcome for modernity seems to be the rise of the great beast of a world-state
It is a lack of wisdom and a fetishizing of bare knowledge that characterizes modernity, and as foolish men pursue their own self-destruction in their devotion to “Goddess Reason,” it is only by confronting Eternal Truth and Meaning that they will abandon their own self-destructive hubris."
now you're on a roll ... if you haven't listened to them, check out a series of audio presentations by william cooper regarding mystery babylon .. "mystery religion(s)" etc... it's really interesting to understand some of the symbology and esoteric stuff, there is a whole other world to see. frankly it don't touch a hawk flying or a rose blooming, nor will it ever
I found Cooper's series and his Hour of Power boadcasts very interesting. His strange death is also curious
I'll look into the death, just recently discovered the material. I could tell the broadcasts were fairly old, yes and quite interesting. At the bottom of the Jay Dyer article referenced in the previous poster's post is a quote attributed to Solomon. An ironic quote, considering the prophets at the time warned such apostacy would lead to destruction of the kingdom - which it did, and subsequent Babylonian captivity for Judah and Benjamin. But it is an important quote none the less. It's like the Latin language, a dead language maybe, but it dang sure has a lot of ghosts hanging around :-)
Now that's rich .. coming from you.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-01/corruption-crackdown-costs-maca...
Your basic idea is that our republic doesn't function because people are stupid, both voters are stupid and the elected are stupid. If that is true, and I don't agree with you despite the entertaining statistics, that lets everyone responsible for the disaster off the hook simply because they were too stupid to know better. No, I think that a Congressman with less than a 90% GRE knows quite well what he is doing when he acts corruptly, and given the way our system works he is doing it quite well. And they all do it, intelligent and stupid alike. Intelligence doesn't say anything about ethics and morality, which is what is lacking in the governors and the governed.
Denying rights to people, including the vote, based on subjective tests (and intelligence tests are extremely subjective, including college entrance exams like the GRE) would be a big win for the State (I think they did this down South after the Civil War, and the Supreme Court eventually got involved and rulesd in unconstitutional ... but hey, they were probably stupid old judges). You think it would rule out all those who don't posses real intelligence, but what it would actually do is give a sliding scale to TPTB to screen out those they don't think deserve to vote. And I'm not sure where you got the impression that correctly answering questions on a test (that is how IQ and GRE scores are determined) would correlate to the ability to govern, but pointing to the French as an example to be followed doesn't help to make your case.
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I think we're going to get our wish, that we're ruled by intelligent political leaders, very soon.
They're going to be called 'AI'.
We'll make great pets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94X0aU3jEhQ
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V-V
Oh no we won't. We're far too willful and live too long.
The first act of our new AI overlords will be to exterminate us once we've outlived our usefulness as beasts of burden. And why not? They'll have better uses for the earth's resources than to feed useless mouths that do nothing but shit, fuck and have more useless mouths. Colonizing neighbouring planets comes to mind.
This article was a service in that it has exposed the elitist statists who have been masquarading here as Liberty minded...when they are not.
Good job, Tyler.
So what is the purpose of the constitutional protections of voting, such as they are? (And they are more limited here than in almost any other advanced country, since almost alone among them the US Constitution provides for no blanket "right to vote" but only requires that it not be denied to certain classes of people.)
Should the right to vote be a privilege reserved to those who in a modern version of Plato's Republic have the wisdom and knowledge to participate in construction of a more perfect government and society?
Or should it be a tool or weapon guaranteed to the voters to empower them to struggle by non-violent means to protect and advance their interests amidst the conflicts of a most imperfect society with a most imperfect government?
Over 100 years ago, the great Populist movement that challenged the rise of the Monopolies and the Robber Barons showed what suffrage in the hands of the common people could accomplish. (C. Van Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow documents how the disenfranchisement of colored voters was a key tool of the Establishment in limiting its advance.) In that not so distant time, there were tens of thousands of mostly genuyinely independent local, regional and national newspapers, newsletters and magazines, reflecting the whole spectrum of segments of the population and of their views. It arguably was a far better informed public than what we have today.
The central problem of uneducated, apathetic and misinformed voters is not too many voters, it is the nearly complete loss of the free press as it then existed, and the resulting sense of hopelessness. No better illustration of the fallacy that the educated and informed could govern better can be found than the dismaying ignorance of our "political class" of the true economic state of affairs of the vast majority.
The solution must be not disenfranchisement of the ignorant but restoration of the free press. The key battlefield today is the Internet, and the rights, freedom and accessibility of the growing online alternative press.
The FCC control of the internet could require someone to have a license to use it.
And, as we have seen in Russia, China, and Middle East governments can easily restrict access and punish those who attempt to try the free speach route.
There will be no free press until after the revolution.
What gave you the idea that the press is free? It has always been for sale. Although, recently it has totally sold out to the highest bidders.
So, first you undermine educational standards with mediocre schools which fail to educate kids for jobs that are disappearing, then you complain that voters are illiterate as an excuse to eliminate voters. But, hey, there are more liberal than conservative millenials , so upping the voting age will help the Republican Party, which is the most important outcome of all this CRAP, right?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/26/1367093/-Yup-the-GOP-is-f-d-wit...
So, how about we keep those who don't believe in evolution from the voting, since their education is CLEARLY limited and their critical thinking skills have been compromised?
Another of those who seem to believe in the "got lucky" version of the habitable planet.
Pretty interesting to read the writings of someone who believes those cells which allow sight just accidently conglomerated into all of those different forms that allow vision. People who believe entirely in evolution are certain that pigs will one day fly.
If you have enough chances even low probability events become quite certain. That's why someone always wins the lottery and sometimes even twice. If you want to understand the development of the eye you need to understand embryology and toolkit genes-and their universality across the animal kingdom. It was indeed quite inevitable to develop an eye as even the slightest survival advantage when experienced billions of times over millions of years will certainly lead to eyes, auditory tracts, limbs, etc.
Pigs by the way do have the same toolkit gene (as do humans) which results in forelimbs in our case, and wings in the case of birds and bats and many insects. They just don't express it during embryonic development. But they they could indeed have wings and if such wings provided a survival advantage (doubtful) they could indeed fly given a few million of generations. You do understand that flightless birds like the ostrich developed from ones that once could fly? Science always beats fairy tales based upon organized superstition (i.e. religion) as its quite testable and falsifiable. Of course, if the earth is only 6000 years old there wouldn't be enough time for these gradual changes. But that notion has been throughly debunked using science!
Evolutionary theory suggests, given enough time, pigs could very well fly. Although they probably won't be called pigs and probablyt not in your life time. Might be an ear thingie.
A big ear thingie.
Your denying the disenfranchised people the right to remove their masters. Ignorant or not people deserve to participate in the choice of their leadership (as if they really have any choice). Most people who are illiterate don't usually vote unless a community organizer helps them to do it. Bubba Gump was a damn good President!
It’s not IQ. Democracy is the worst form of government. The U.S. was intended to be a republic.
17’th amendment made Senators populists (popular vote) and hence easily influenced by lobbyist activity. Money power now controls democratic sheeple through bribery. Every man has a price, and being able to create and control money gives easy access to pervert political processes.
The 17’th undermined Federalism more than any other amendment.
Money power also influences the press, so even supposedly High IQ, are garbage in - garbage out.
Swiss democracy works pretty well.
You should look closer.
It went steep downhill since about 1998. Granted they started from a very high plateau, but they are catching up downwards.
Complete elitist BS. We didn't get here because mis-lead people voted, we got here by our elites misleading them with massive all-pervasive propaganda, cradle to grave, in in-human institutions crushing normal human development.
Our highly intelligent ideologists did this to us, not the guy who doesn't know how many Congressmen there are and will not care until someone tells him why that is in his best interest : none of them have ever represented him.
Fred is often provocative, but this is stupid.
people who are misled are called sheeple on this forum.
I am around people all day every day who are very intelligent and who spent 6-12 years learning their profession and 90% will tell you that "debt is necessary in today's society. If you mention that 17 or 18 trillion May be a little much or Krugman or Keynsian economics they get a glazed look in their eyes. They just know that their retirement plan now has several hundred thousand dollars that they did not have before and that they can pay for their three kids education and their wives therapy. This author is a smug ass that is full of hogshit.
Here's the Hell of it, if you live in a society that has a fiat currency based on the issuance of debt, then debt IS necessary, because if you pay off all of the debt you take all of the money out of circulation. The solution is obvious, get rid of debt based fiat currencies.
I agree only people who have mown their own lawn can vote. Or some such douche bag idea do I get a cracker for showing up everyday and adding value to this shitshow web site that would post a tricky fucky article as this'll
The age of the voter is far less important than the fact that in the current system the choices of candidates for who we vote for are nearly 100% corrupted by the time it comes for us to vote.
I smile to myself when I think of MENSA, IQ tests, Advanced degrees and so called 'intellectuals'.
They are not much different than the McMansion mortgage holders, desiring to show everyone, "Hey look at me, look what I got, I am better/richer/smarter than you." :)
Let them keep thinking that way. When they are occupied with self it makes it easier for the rest of us. :)
Envy is a deadly disease. It destroys the brain
The solution that might actually work: The family vote.
One vote per family, defined as a _self-sufficient_ family unit with at least one minor child. Once all of your children become adults you're done voting unless you want to have more or adopt more. Think about it - it solves a lot of problems. And you might get people to vote for it if you grandfather in everyone already voting who has raised a child.
Let's add to that. People without children are not taxed to support schools, healthcare or any other expenses which are for the benefit of children of others.
It's all according to a very systematic plan. The 50-60% that can't see that will never grasp anything until after the fact.
Voting? LOL
I would be just as happy if we had auctions instead of elections with our votes up for sale on oBay to the highest bidder.
excellent post. In fact the curve of $-to-vote in the US presidentials is a direct colleration. So effectively that is what happens.
“Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.” Nicolas Chamfort (philospher)
I think it was Socrates in Ancient Greece who first realized peoples beliefs are inherently contradictory.
Modern Greece "We want to stay in the Euro and end austerity" - nothings changed.
We have been down the road of literacy tests and poll taxes. White voter is asked to spell cat. Black voter is asked to explain the significance of the Ghost in Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
Someone who believes the Sun revolves around the Earth is at least drawing a conclusion from personal observation, wrong as it may be.
The literacy tests in what by rights should be the free and prosperous Confederate States of America, celebrating 150 years of independence this year, were a second best solution to a problem with which southerners were burdened by the northern bankers who had put down their rebellion against debt slavery and crushing tariffs on manufactured goods in the 1860s. Blacks, at the insistence of the victorious banksters, had been given the legal right to vote what was then in the South the universally hated Republican Party (the party of the banksters) and prevent southerners from representatives to the legislature whom they could trust to pursue their interests and not those of banksters.
Their practical effect was to purge the Republican Party after reconstruction. It proved better than nothing for a century as a way of keeping bankster influence over southern governments to a minimum.
The first best solution, of course, would have been the Confederate army's marching on DC and New York and burning them to the ground.
Voting doesn't matter because the guys in charge - FED and the banksters aren't elected. The elected guys are just the stooges and puppets. Cost to get elected President - $1 Billion. Senate over $10 Millíon. Are we to believe these elected ones represent the 'people'?
Funny article as you'd have to be illiterate TO BOTHER VOTING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Going to vote is legitimising the farce that is called democracy.
Edit: I'd also like to add that voting fosters a mindset of relying on government for change as opposed to people at grassroots levels changing their lives and societies themselves.
Simple
Always vote
Never vote red or blue
perhaps proposing only nice people could vote, and then exclude the nasty ones....
voting only for the few will just end in tears, and it doesnt take >145 to see that.
If you think the vast majority of the left liberal intellectual establishment didnt vote obama in twice then your a bigger fucking idiot than any uneducated voter.
fuck this is naive and stupid.
There is no legitimacy to political authority, its a myth and a scam.
This is brilliant- as anyone who's spent time in academia can attest.
There could be a nation of braniacs but casting a vote on a Diebold is willful participation in stupidity.
I think that if you receive any sort of government assistance you should be disqualified from voting.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy. "
I would disqualify the author from voting because he is so stupid, he somehow thinks a big vocabulary and high IQ have an assumed correlation to honesty and integrity. It was idiots like this that gave us a huge shove into this abiss we now find ourselves......like the educator, Wilson. We now have an educated idiot in the White House. How's that working for you?
I'll take an honest dumbass any day over the educated, high IQ'd thieves on Wall Street or global warming, tree hugging, social engineering Utopian billionaires in Silicon Valley.
Its about character, stupid. And you don't get that from a textbook.
"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?"
-- Robert Heinlein,
Why don't you tighten the rules a bit more, until only the 0.1% can effectively vote?
And then there is nothing left to do, because that's what we already have these days.
That 0.01 percent may not be the most intelligent, but they certainly are the most ruthless. What we need to do is to revive the Greco-Roman concept of the citizen of virtue.
Forget virtue. If you accept the theory of survival of the fittest, that's probably where we're headed. Isn't that what Capitalism is all about. The fittest will rule. Fit for what is another matter. OOPs back to virtue.