Those Who Take Government Money Should Not Vote
Elected officials, appointed officials, employees of agencies and departments, soldiers, police, teachers, people on welfare...
You might think that if people on welfare could not vote, the Democrat party would be hurt (and it would) but the Republican Party would suffer more. People on welfare, as we usually think of it, as aid to families with children, already tend not to vote. The habitual turn-out at the polls comes from old people, Republicans on social security.
For myself, serving in the Texas Military Department, I decided not to vote in state elections.
(See my blog post here: https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2... )
What about people who work for Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, ArmaLite, or Wornick?
Where do you draw the line? By what standard do you decide?
You might think that if people on welfare could not vote, the Democrat party would be hurt (and it would) but the Republican Party would suffer more. People on welfare, as we usually think of it, as aid to families with children, already tend not to vote. The habitual turn-out at the polls comes from old people, Republicans on social security.
For myself, serving in the Texas Military Department, I decided not to vote in state elections.
(See my blog post here: https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2... )
What about people who work for Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, ArmaLite, or Wornick?
Where do you draw the line? By what standard do you decide?
While I see the logic on Federal Employees, theoretically they are providing a service for what they do. Certainly the military employees are.
A simple standard of services or products in a competitive environment Is where the standard should start.
Perhaps direct welfare would be better.
It sounds like a good idea to eliminate the ability of people to vote for their own subsidies. However, there are so many and of various kinds - food stamps to ethanol to electric cars - that reducing the quantity and variety of subsidies would have to be done first. Otherwise, there wouldn't be very many voters left.
https://youtu.be/nZMuBIJxmnA
“Landru, Guide us! Landru!”
(Stopping Landru required knowledge, reason and communication.)
Star Trek often was enlightening.
KIRK: “Yes. And we never got it. Just lucky, I guess.”
We have to turn the ship, not just take strong (and correct) positions and hope to stop it and reverse it. This is just like the underhanded gun control advocates starting with magazine capacity, bayonet lugs, registration and licensing, with an eventual intent of eliminating firearms.
1) Changing Welfare from a charity donation to a get off welfare program
2) Appeal to fairness, which clearly works. We are paying for these people, why are we having them decide our future.
This will work if the government INCREASES welfare funding, with an act to institute a privately run program to take people off it, and then as the welfare roles drop, appeal to fairness.
Getting people to agree welfare is inappropriate will NOT happen as a next step from where we are.
Taking a Boy Scout's position that "This is the right way" is L O N G lost.
The proletariat masses are willing, but we need to turn them back, against the messages of the totalitarians , who have already grabbed the wheel. "Eat your spinach" is a dead loser.
Whatever "messaging" is involved in the short term would have to be principled rational appeals to individualism and what is left of the American sense of life in commentary and in politics (not waiting for the eve of an election) to the extent feasible at this stage of the culture, not manipulative demagoguery pandering to the opposite.
What is a "circle jerk" and what does "like this forum" mean?
We use the word "right" ambiguously. When you lease a car, you buy the right to drive it. But you have no natural right to a car. I know that we are on the same page with that. In another post here, you differentiated true natural rights (LIfe, Liberty, Property, Happiness) from politcal contract rights such as voting and trial by jury.
We grant non-citizens the right to a jury trial (in most cases), 4th Amendment rights, etc., etc., But they have no right to vote.
Do you have a Citizenship Test that objectively determines who gets to be naturalized? What makes a 50-question multiple guess the objective standard?
Just my opinion.
My votes reflected a concern for smaller government (when I could find a politician who I felt at least wanted to concede government control over non-constitutionally authorized activities), fiscal responsibility, and sane foreign policy. I voted for Trump as a badly needed disruptive force, recognizing that big government people would fight him all the way. Just fleshing out the picture of my background as an individual, and not part of a monolithic interpretation.
I think it wise to determine who has a bias against the constitution's limitations on government, not to assume that all in a group have the same bias.
"I can't agree that military service is enough on its own to earn the right to vote"
Change "sacrifice" to "investment."
He followed the right course of action, not engaging in electoral politics while being a member of the government. That appears be the one idea that everyone here agrees on. It is why Washington DC never had a vote in Congress.
And if you look at World War II, is that not exactly what happened, that the collectivist parties entered America into a collectivist war? What was the outcome, the final outcome? The Marshall Plan and the Cold War. We did not defeat collectivism, we embraced it -- or at least the vast majority did. Was that not a betrayal?
When you serve in uniform, you swear an oath to obey the civilian government. That may be another error in philosophy, but the solution is much deeper than deciding who can vote and how.
Alger Hiss, Owen Lattimore, Harry Dexter White and the rest of them infiltrating government to influence actions on behalf of the Communists had nothing to do with the right to vote.
If 18-year olds could have voted in the late 60s a lot of them certainly would have voted against the war and should have. They were being forced into the military by conscription. The "old enough to fight - old enough to vote" movement began in WWII even though almost everyone supported the war after Pearl Harbor.
Assume the US had stayed out of the WW II conflict. What would have been the outcome? We would have had three major hegemonies (Nazi empire of all Western Europe, including Britain; the Greater Southeast Asia Japanese Empire including Australia and New Zealand; the Soviet empire, consisting of the USSR and Eastern Europe), all opposed to our form of government. South American countries probably would have fallen under an Argentinian version of Nazism, supported by Germany. How long would we have lasted, with all the world against the surviving North American countries? We have a very lucrative market for our goods, thanks to the Marshall plan, and we outlasted the USSR, essentially "winning" the Cold War.
The military does not swear an oath to obey the government. It swears allegience to the Constitution. One of the mainstays of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is the duty to refuse to obey an order from any level of authority that may be unconstitutional, so obedience is not automatic, and in theory gives the military the responsibility to restrain government abuse of authority it deems as endangering the republic.
I do agree that Welfare recipients and non-essential (and EXTRA-Constitutional) government employees should not be allowed to vote for raises for themselves.
People on social security should be able to vote until they have received in benefits all the money they were forced to pay into the socialist system. Then they should have the option to either keep receiving benefits or to be able to vote. I also think that the social security system should be ended now and taxes stopped for those no longer in the system. Everyone over 50 can stay in at current levels of taxes and benefits. Only those over 60 will still get a COLA to benefits. Everyone under 51 is out. We, the people, have to eat the future excess cost (over taxes paid in) of those who stay in. Medicare should be privatized with no guarantees to current recipients.
Government employees and employees of contractors and lobbyists should not be allowed to vote until 5 years after they are no longer pigging out at the government trough. Medicare recipients should be given the same option: vote or get benefits, not both.
I don't care what party gets hurt. The 2 major parties both reek of wallowing in the public trough and violating their oaths to the constitution.
I'd also put other restrictions on voting, requiring understanding of the original constitution and bill of rights with emphasis on government having no power to do anything unless it is specifically written overtly in the constitution. The "commerce clause" should be dead. The "necessary and proper" clause should be dead. Anything done with those in mind are invalid and must be overtly allowed only by constitutional amendment.
You are not personally outvoted anymore than anyone else. The election system is based on the total of those who vote and everyone knows it. It makes no sense to complain that your one vote is meaningless and doesn't count for more than it does. Elections cannot be held in which every one person demands that his vote determine the outcome. If you want a different outcome then spread the proper philosophical ideas that cause the majority of votes to be what they are. That includes the interpretation of the Constitution required to limit government. It is ignored because the people voting don't want that and the politicians they elect know it.
The idea that only "property" owners should viote is a hold-over from feudalism,. The idea offered here, that service to the state (military, etc.) should be a qualifier is also flawed. But like the idea of land-holding it is a way to approach the problem.
In The Secret of the League by Ernest Bramah, the defeat of socialism was sealed (not begun) with the sale of voting shares in the govenrment. As with.a corporation, you could buy more shares and have more votes.
We dont have any intellectually consistent objectivist-thinking politicians running, so I have to pick the least damaging to ME.
I suppose if you are proposing the government was acting like a corporation where I am a stockholder, I suppose voting for the board of directions would be appropriate.
It certainly makes me uneasy that despite that constitution , this country has become fascist and run by a leftist mob
Just makes me very uneasy that I can’t not support this government when it violates my rughts
I feel today that I am being subjected to the government that I do not approve of. Perhaps the solution is to move somewhere which has a government I do approve of. Not an easy solution though.
Today it is the opposite, with every election and bureaucratic decision putting your rights up for grabs as a matter of principle. That is the result of Pragmatism and Progressivism operating on a political premise of collectivism. That is why the government resulting from an election you lose does not in many important ways represent you. Voting was not originally intended to put your rights up for grabs in accordance with desires of pressure groups.
Wishing or demanding that political enemies not vote or not be permitted to vote is not the answer. All that can correct it is restoring (and improving) the foundations of government in accordance with reason and individualism, and that requires changing the philosophic ideas and premises that are broadly accepted across the culture.
Half the citizens are definite collectivists, and the other half are intellectually compromised people leaning more towards individualism.
The election is two weeks away. I can vote for the definite collectivists guaranteeing I will get taken advantage of and Trump will be stopped in his tracks for the next two years, vote against them and get less of my rights violated and perhaps get some of the things that violate my rights get repealed, or I can not vote at all and most likely let the collectivists convert Trump into a lame duck.
There are no intellectually consistent individualists running in any significant races, so thats not an option.
If there isn't anyone left you can vote for within the choices available on the ballot in front of your nose right now then there isn't anything you can do "now". If there is someone, at least enough to stop the latest surge from the new New Left, then help to get him elected by whoever is still open to it and willing to vote, at least with prodding. But whatever last minute backlash may be possible, it does nothing to stop the trend without advocating for better ideas.
If the Democrats do not this time take over the House because of a backlash against a new extreme as part of the trend, don't just sit and do nothing then come back two weeks before the next election wringing your hands and asking "what do we do now"?
This is like not keeping up a nation's defenses and otherwise not preparing for an impending war, then two weeks before the assault demanding "what do we do now"? "What is the shortcut I can employ here now in defiance of reality as a substitute for my failure to prepare?" There isn't one. You can fight with whatever you have and desperately try to hold them back, hoping that you can, and that it may be enough to buy time to do it right. But it doesn't substitute for having the necessary defenses to win the war through countless future battles that require knowledge, effort, and preparation.
I am proud of my voting record. I show up for primaries. I never cast a vote without an opinion: if I do not know anything about the candidates, then I do not choose among them. I always vote for the candidate, never for the party. (I also contribute money to campaigns, but that is another topic.
https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2...
That said, you vote for your own purposes. Unless you are in a village of 30, your vote hardly counts at all. The outcome is the same whether you vote or not. Back in 1960, Kennedy defeated Nixon by one vote per precinct and it was just about that: evenly distributed across the nation. But now, Red and Blue are ensconsed by neighborhoods, cities, and states.
At the local level, perhaps, yes, during a primary, even in a metropolitan city, your vote might count beyond how good it makes you feel. When the mobs arrive on Election Day, though, your vote is a waste of your time. It is a matter of selfishness. Do what makes you feel good, if you want, but you are not improving your life by voting.
The problem is not how you chose the leaders, but the political philosophy that builds the framework of government.
It is a good sounding concept on the surface. Very hard (impossible?) to define well enough for a workable rule.
I've been operating a one man letter writing campaign to get our agency to relax their firearms policy, for years. I've also been a strong advocate against unions collecting dues from unwilling participants. Finally, I spent some years in this nation's military and unquestionably, earned my right to vote.
Prohibiting Christians from voting would be against the Constitution ("no religious test" clause). However, that was never the problem. Rather, for about 200 years atheists were prohibited from voting, serving on juries, being witnesses in court, or running for public office. About a dozen states had such laws until about 1991.
The discssion here is theoretical, based on objective considerations, not the actual Constitution. By Heinlein's Theory, you get to vote after you serve your term in the military, not while.
I don't know Heinlein's Theory (though I'm a fan of his writing), but since it IS a theory, I will maintain my position and disagree with it. So far as I am aware, my copy of the U.S. Constitution doesn't have any wording that precludes U.S. servicemen from voting, though there may be some interpretation of that document I haven't been led to understand.
As you know from earlier discussions, I think that the most effective way to get people to think is to point out the failures of the collectivists. A philosophy of individualism , based in reality, will actually work better than one based on collectivism
Ayn Rand knew very well that the logic of the plot in Atlas Shrugged was playing out in this country. She gave the reasons why, which is how she knew how to write the plot. Ignoring the philosophy that made that possible while aping the plot in calling for nihilistic 'strikes', ant-intellectual appeals to "emotion", and resorting to Pragmatism will lead you to run out of last ditch attempts two weeks before an election as you wonder "what can we do now" one last time.
In the meantime each person can adopt and live by rational principles, which I try to do. But we live in fascist societies that take what I can make every day to support their collectivism. If they didn’t take my freedom, I wouldn’t care what idiotic philosophies they adopted. The characters of Francisco, Ragnar, and John Galt withdrew their support from collectivism and forced the people to see how collectivism failed- and got their attention. Only then were they at least open to listening to Galt
You can stand on a soapbox and preach objectivism while the country turns openly socialist, but So few people are listening that it’s not going to prevent a collapse in our lifetimes.
Hiding in plain sight seems a better approach. At least you get a better life now while u are alive.
If you can't rationally communicate your ideas to people, one mind at a time, you will not succeed by trying to force them with a nihilistic "collapse" making a mess with a global food-fight to "get their attention". Collapse and death are not an argument for correct ideas.
Those who take your freedom are motivated by what you call
"idiotic philosophies" that you don't want to care about. Ignoring that is thoroughly anti-intellectual; it will not change the ideas people base their decisions on.
There are no shortcuts to changing prevailing ideas across a culture, including global food fights deliberately causing destruction that would most likely destroy you -- especially if the people you hurt find out you urged and caused it to "get their attention", in which case they would most likely cannibalize you on the spot rather than suddenly decide to read "Galt's speech", let alone instantly absorb it and understand it in the middle of a panic in a crisis.
The prevalent philosophy in the USA is very irrational and getting worse. AS. Didn’t do very much at all to affect the dominant cultural philosophy so far
I suspect that real change will take generations far beyond the lifetimes of people alive today.
Ayn Rand has had an impact on the culture, but it is only the beginning and not yet in the establishment intellectuals. Positive change is possible, but a full flowering of reason and individualism is likely a long way off.
Meanwhile, if you fear an irrational mob that you can't reason with, then deliberately provoking it by hitting them over the head with a deliberate crash to "get their attention" is probably not a good idea.
I think most people today just bumble along in some emotional fog . When there is nothing to eat, they know something is wrong, but don’t know what or why. If they had thought about things in the first place they would never have let things get that bad.
I remember an interview with AR in which she hoped AS would get people thinking enough to stop the spread of collectivism
What is obvious is what a monumental task that is and how little impact writing a few books has.-Not zero impact, but a small impact on a country overall.
The beginnings of the USA was influenced far more by the very negative experience of being subjected to the collectivist English both in England and in the harsh new land. I think it did spark some intellectuals like Jefferson and the other founding fathers to produce our constitution as an alternative to the hated British rule. I wasn’t around then , but I suspect the average colonist st the time in 1776 just went along with the alternative to British rule because they hated British rule so much not because they were convinced objectivist principles were correct intellectually
Maybe what’s required today is emotional upset with the practicalities of the way the country is going, mixed with a leader or leaders who offer an alternative, just like happened in 1776.
I agree with you about it taking a long time for that emotional upset to get to the breaking point. I see the election of trump as an indication that upset is growing among the 5o% who were labeled deplorable. They don’t automatically have an intellectual basis , but I don’t think the settlers in 1776 did either
We are seeing the beginnings of the American revolution V2.0. The other 50% see the danger to their corrupt system and are fighting i to preserve it as the English did.
This kind of voting should never be allowed in a moral society,
“Let’s all vote to loot the earnings of this weathy individual so we can redistribute what they’ve earned to all of us. Who votes yes?”
(Repeat over and over and over)
The solution....give one vote per $1,000 in taxes paid. Every working person then would get to vote. If you made too little income and got the earned income tax credit...IE pay no taxes....you are incompetent and SHOULDN'T BE VOTING ANYWAY until you can structure your affairs in such a manner that you do pay taxes!
The founders did not let you vote unless you were a property owner and therefore paid taxes, so there is precedent for this. The liberals should be happy with this because they claim the rich pay no taxes.
Wishing and demanding that opponents not be allowed to vote is a concession that you have lost the battle and offers nothing as a solution. Not only is it hopelessly futile, the vote-buying scheme fantasizes about who is voting for what: The intellectual establishment and wealthy "blue states" are dominating support for the welfare state and more extreme versions of socialism without regard to the small portion who are on welfare. Do you want the wealthy likes of George Sorros, Nancy Pelosi and Bill Gates deciding who runs the country?
Equality before the law does not mean equal ability, effort, or income. Individuals have rights because of their nature as rational beings, not by how much government they can afford to buy, which itself implements statism.
If you want to stop a system based on looting then denounce the looting on principle and advocate a limited government that prohibits it. Jumping into the middle of a welfare state and conceding the looting premise, while advocating an impossible 'reform' consisting of victims having a "say" in their own torment, while giving more "say" to wealthy liberals, is typical Pragmatist avoiding of principles. Even if this bizarre, contradictory and immoral scheme could be imagined to "work" to get what you seem to want, your enemies are not going to allow you to disenfranchise them in the name of reform. That is a consequence of their premise that the looting is moral, which you won't challenge. How do you expect to put over such a blatant political end-run around their fundamental purpose without denouncing it on principle? Demanding that your dedicated enemies give up their power is not a strategy to convince anyone.
But, yes, the idea of voting shares is market-based and therefore just.
"Society" is not a "floating abstraction", it is a valid abstraction referring to a number of individuals associated with, in this context, a common culture in a nation. It is misused as a floating abstraction by those claiming to represent interests or 'rights' of a society as if it were an entity.
We are all "Created equal" but we diverge after birth. Society then assigns a value to us based on our particular skill set, this results in earnings and then ...under our current system.,...taxes.
You continue to confuse collectivism with a proper government. Everyone has a right to vote in a representative government. No one has a right to vote to loot others. Arbitrarily giving "the most say" to those who "have the most extracted" does not address the problem. Giving more "say" to wealthy leftist like Sorros, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Barach Obama, and the beneficiaries of the Clinton Foundation is not a solution to anything and evades the principles on which proper government is based. The rights of the individual come from his nature as a rational being, not his income taxes.
Nor does it make sense to even propose such a scheme. The looters are getting away with their looting because it is ingrained in the popularly accepted notions of altruism and collectivism. Telling them they can't vote (despite the high incomes of many of them) because their victims want more of a "say" evades their false premises and does nothing to counter them. They are not going to stop voting just because you don't want them to and won't refute their false premises. If, in fantasy, you think you can stop them by telling them they shouldn't have so much "say" in how much they take, then why not challenge their basic premises to begin with?
Ayn Rand identified or at least suggested that the Constitution was betrayed by its own internal contradictions. And as it was written, voting - which is controlled LOCALLY not by the federal government - is not a right.
-Ayn Rand
Another one pertaining to what she called the "right to vote" is, "Voting is a derivative, not a fundamental, right; it is derived from the right to life, as a political implementation of the requirements of a rational being's survival", from The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. 1, No. 21 July 17, 1972 "Representation Without Authorization".
The principle was stated in the context of discussing the limits on proper voting based on the philosophical basis of a right to vote for proper purposes.
Both essays are also in her anthology The Voice of Reason.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-m...
I vote when its a matter of having MY PERSONAL rights being perhaps taken away. Otherwise, I agree with you tht the vote of an individual citizen doesnt matter much. But, that said, in 2016, the deplorable ones did make a difference, as it does in this mid term. Without winning this election and retaining the congress, Trump will be a lame duck president and he might as well resign.
As government makes more and more people dependent on it, taking away the right to vote would be massive and result in dictatorship, but it can't done that way. The welfare state mentality will not allow removing voting rights for receiving government subsidies, but it has other ideas of how to rationalize disenfranchisement.
Most of my coworkers were libs.
So my being denied the vote along with the rest of my prisoin officer peers during that time woulda been me dino coming out on top.
Tee-hee!
"You know, we're all built on our formative experiences," Mattis said. "When I was 18, I joined the Marine Corps, and in the U.S. military, we are proudly apolitical. By that, I mean that in our duties, we were brought up to obey the elected commander in chief, whoever that is. And we've seen, over those -- since I was in the military longer than some of you have been alive, I have seen Republicans and Democrats come and go."
"(Mattis Hit Back at Trump's Claim" - https://www.foxnews.com/politics/matt... )
But as you point out, that could include many in government, those with special interests...maybe we should re-enact the 3/5ths clause on the outlying categories...
I am laughing but, first, I think, we need to vanquish the false idea that we are a demonocracy...that's Not going to go over very well...