Time to End Universal Suffrage?

Tom Tancredo makes his case:

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The uncivil debate over civic illiteracy

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Posted: February 13, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

After 35 years in politics, I am seldom surprised by the venom that flows from the mouths of liberals when one of their sacred cows is criticized. But the "fan mail" following my speech a week ago to the tea-party convention in Nashville has been truly amazing.

I spoke to the opening session of the event about why it is a good thing that John McCain was not elected president. I expected those remarks to be controversial in some quarters, but the only controversy in the news coverage of my speech was about my suggestion that we need a civics literacy test for voters.

Evidently, you cannot question the value of universal suffrage, and in the liberal lexicon, universal suffrage means not only that there should be no unreasonable or discriminatory bars to voting, but that all adults should be forced to vote, no matter how ignorant or disconnected to the civic affairs of the community.

I did not say in Nashville that all 67 million Obama voters are illiterate rabble who would fail a civics literacy test. What I did suggest and what I believe is that in the 2008 presidential election, the margin of victory for Obama was provided by people who would not be at the polls if we had meaningful civics literacy requirements for voting. Hence my statement that the lack of a civics literacy requirement is one reason we have a committed socialist ideologue in the White House today.

That statement provoked a stream of angry e-mail messages from outraged Obama voters, many of whom proudly proclaimed their advanced degrees in art history, Egyptology and political science. The message was as consistent as it was strident: What an ignoramus I must be to question the educational level of Obama voters!

My tea-party remarks had nothing to do with educational credentials or even IQ. We are all painfully aware that Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, got more votes from college professors than his Republican opponent. My remarks were aimed at the electorate's lack of civics literacy, which is quite different. Literacy in civics and American history is not necessarily enhanced by additional years of higher education devoted to increasingly specialized expertise in some field.

I have often suggested that new voters should be required to pass the civics literacy test already given to immigrants who want to become naturalized citizens. Yet, my suggestion was twisted into the idea that I want to see a return to "Jim Crow laws" that were used to keep blacks from voting.

This distortion of my proposal requires two acts of self-deception. First, it requires you to believe that minorities will fail any civics test, an idea that is highly insulting to all minorities. Secondly, it requires a willful disregard of the real history of Jim Crow laws. Blacks were not kept from voting by the laws themselves but the blatant discriminatory way they were administered by local officials. It is absurd to claim that any civics literacy test will be discriminatory, yet that is how my proposal was described by leftist bloggers and liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne.

Predictably, in this age of Internet video messaging

, left-wing blogs and liberal advocacy groups sent the video clip of my remarks to their members and asked them to "send Tancredo a message." The messages generated by this organized temper tantrum ran the gamut from questions about my patriotism to solemn prayers that I would get some horrible disease and die a painful death – and soon.

All our founders' inspiring, biblical quotes in one place – a must-have for your library: "America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations"

The potential for "elected despots" was well understood by our nation's founders, and they devised mechanisms in the Constitution to reduce that danger. They understood that throughout history, democracies had followed certain patterns and cycles, cycles ending in tyranny. So, instead of a pure democracy, they designed and established a republic organized as a representative democracy, with checks and balances and other innovations to help safeguard our liberties.

Voting your own short-term self-interest over the common good is a problem as old as Rome, but today it has taken on a new urgency. Using the powers of government to expropriate other people's wealth and property enters the pandemic stage when half the voting public pays no taxes

and a third of adults are government employees

or living on government pensions.

Can civics literacy programs in our schools and civics literacy tests for voters hold these forces in check? Maybe it's not the whole answer, but to me, it sure seems like a good start.

-End

Tom Tancredo's commentary was originally posted here.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rep. Tancredo. The votes of the stoopid and the illiterate (civic or otherwise) have pushed this nation right to the very edge of its destruction.

In fact, I would go one step further and restrict voting in national elections to only those who actually pay federal income taxes. Net tax consumers should have no say.

There is, after all, no constitutional right to vote in a national election.

If we continue to allow the non-productive to use the power of the federal government to take from the productive, the fate that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about all those years ago is going to become a cold, stark reality.

Since the beginning of recorded history all free republics have shared one common trait: They all managed to vote themselves right out of existence.

Perhaps we might be the ones to finally break the chain.

Obama is Spending Us Into Well Beyond Mere Oblivion

Let's face it, folks, George W. Bush did not exactly endear himself to we of the fiscal conservative persuasion, but Barack Hussein Obama, with no small amount of help from a slew of like-minded, out-of-control congress-critters, is on a blistering pace to make the Bush administration appear positively miserly in comparison.

I pulled this form Boortz.com a little earlier, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for future Americans:

THE TRUTH ABOUT GOVERNMENT

By Neal Boortz @ February 8, 2010 8:42 AM

Since we're talking about our wonderful Imperial Federal Government .... Here are some shocking facts to keep in mind:

-The cost of our federal government is 25% of our total economy (GDP).
This is compared with the average of 20.7% of the GDP during 1970-2009

- If you include the cost of state and local government, the total cost of government is almost 40% of our GDP

- Since 2008, the cost of our federal government has increased by one-fourth

- By 2020, Obama will have increased the federal government by one-half on a per family basis

- Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per household

- By 2020, Obama would raise that to $36,000 per household

Just remember these numbers folks. They have meaning.

-End

Obama and the far-left are very rapidly spending this country right down the financial crapper. Personally, I believe this is being done deliberately.

This idiocy must be stopped now, not in 2013.

From the Funny File

I have long believed that speed enforcement on the highways and byways of our fair land has always been more about raising revenue for the coffers of whatever jurisdiction is involved than saving the driving public from themselves. I always look upon new proposals for camera enforcement with a healthy dose of suspicion. If a private company is involved in the sharing of any revenues involved, I become more suspicious still.

I have never seen any credible study that links driving speed to the accident rate. I feel as safe traveling in a group of vehicles going 80 mph (which is the crowd I normally choose to cruise with) as I do in a group going 50 mph, as long as all the vehicles are traveling at the same relative speed. What bothers me is when the group doing 80 encounters a member of the Anti-destination League doing 50 mph in the left lane. Now there is an accident waiting to happen.

According to an article in theNewspaper.com, it appears the state of Washington is getting ready to implement the use of speed cameras throughout the state. Apparently, this effort is being pitched to the gullible public as a way that government is going to step in and make the motorists who travel the roadways of Washington much safer than they would otherwise be.

After all, who cares what will happen when a group of automobiles moving along at a merry clip round a curve and suddenly spot a lone white van parked beside the road. After all, this is government saving lives! The panic that will ensue when everybody jumps on the binders at once will undoubtedly be most destructive. Can you say hair, teeth and eyeballs strewn about? Perhaps not, but the news crews sent to cover the carnage will.

"Along with our Washington State Patrol partners, we place a high priority on highway safety," WSDOT State Traffic Engineer Ted Trepanier said. "The automated traffic safety cameras are just part of the highway safety program."

That may be the "official line," but according to another article linked in the above, the voters of Washington may be having other ideas. It seems a state ballot initiative coming up in November (Initiative 985) will prohibit local jurisdictions from keeping the revenues generated by camera enforcement. Better still, it will prevent these jurisdictions from sharing this revenue with the for-profit companies that offer ticketing services.

What is truly funny here (and more than a little telling) is that five cities in the state have dropped their plans to implement camera enforcement once the ballot initiative was announced.

Nice to see that voters in at least one state are not falling for what I believe is a revenue-enhancing move disguised as a "public safety" effort. Perhaps some of them are not exactly comfortable with the idea of private companies being so deeply involved in enforcing the law, either. After all, that is the sole responsibility of government.

Or, at least it should be.