I’m very sure that the society you’re a part of feels that way.
Watching you guys change your stripes when the writing is on the wall is going to be damned hilarious.
Sure. Listen, I believe in democracy, even though you do not. If state legislatures vote to stop requiring photo IDs, then I’ll think that’s a perfectly legitimate (albeit unwise) exercise of legislative power.
So I have no idea what you think might happen, stripes-wise. Voter ID laws are legitimate because they were enacted by the mechanisms of a democratic republic. If those mechanisms undo that enactment, then I no longer think the enactment is legitimate.
In other words, I respect democracy.
Literacy tests. Poll taxes, public segregation. All “enacted by the mechanisms of a democratic republic”. Time for you to “clarify”.
You’ve made a number of reasonable points and arguments in this thread, but this is not one of them. Any argument that could have been made, word for word and thought for thought, by supporters of legal voter-suppression tactics in the Jim Crow South is pretty obviously meaningless.
I don’t need to clarify. I said “The mechanisms of a democratic republic” and that’s what I meant: those mechanisms include judicial review (Brown v. Board; Harper v. Board) and include the passage of Amendment XXIV and the Civil Rights Act.
So I’m just fine with the final results of the mechanisms of a democratic republic. ALL of them.
Hey, about that knee-slapper you told:
That was your first “joke,” right?
Then I (not seeing the humor) replied:
At that point, you saw I wasn’t getting the “joke.” But rather than explain it had been a joke, you said:
I understood this to be an attempt at humor, but it wasn’t clear me then – nor is it now – that the entire claim of searching was a joke. Or simply a lie.
Did you actually do any searching at all?
Did you just add the phrase, “Search search search” to your post in lieu of actually searching, to joke about searching? Because it sure seems to me like you put it in to give the reader the impression you had searched without actually searching.
What actually happened?
Those tactics were ultimately overborne by the same processes that I venerate, though: legal expression of the democratic republic.
Look, suppose I came along and said, “Owning pets is a terrible wrong. It’s just like slavery! And yes, pet ownership is legal now…but so was slavery at one time. And slavery was bad, therefore pet ownership is as well.”
That seems a weak argument.
Well, kinda. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the legal history of the civil rights movement, but my impression is that much of Jim Crow, which was state law, was dismantled only by federal-level laws and court decisions. Hard to view that as one in the plus column for the democratic institutions we’re actually discussing, which are the state-level ones which both instituted, and were affected by, those laws.
You’re missing (or avoiding) my point entirely. Voter ID laws may or may not be a bad idea. That’s what we’re arguing about. Clearly we disagree. Which is fine, people disagree about things.
But pointing out that something is legal doesn’t make it right. And someone disagreeing with a position that is currently legal doesn’t make that person hate democracy, and vice versa. In fact, I’d argue that there are some issues in which the person who loves democracy ought to oppose the will of the majority.
Isn’t it remarkable how someone claiming to revere democracy can use that view to rationalize limiting others’ participation in it?
Why? I’m not advocating a return to the Articles of Confederation. I view our democratic republic as a holistic system, including shared sovereignty between the states and the federal government, with the federal law being the supreme law of the land. Why isn’t a triumph of federal law in this circumstances a “win” for the system?
Yes – but pointing out it’s legal doesn’t make it wrong, either.
It’s funny – in the abortion thread, the vocal posters show much reverence to the established law that makes abortions legal. There, no one is pointing out that slavery was once legal. Here, since the law doesn’t help the cause, it’s abandoned without a backwards glance.
Sorry – I aver that while “legal” doesn’t mean “right,” the fact of the matter is that when there’s disagreement about what “right,” is, and the answer is not objectively verifiable, “legal,” is what you have left.
Because there was a system (the individual state) in which the system failed. In that case, the system was part of a larger system, which (very very eventually) corrected the subsystem. But the larger system (the US) does NOT have a larger system that it’s a part of. So if the kind of systemic anti-democratic issues that plagued Jim-Crow-South-states for so long is also present in the US as a whole, there is NOT a larger system to bail us out.
A point I’ve repeatedly tried to make is that in any electoral biosphere, having the elected body also be in charge of the laws that elect it is dangerous and can lead to feedback loops of injustice. Jim Crow laws are an example of such. And in that case the feedback loop was only broken because that particular electoral biosphere was part of a larger one. Which is not always the case.
That’s obviously far too vague a description for me to really meaningfully respond to.
Going down that tangent because it is interesting, however, I can envision at least one case in which the legality of something is very relevant, which is the case in which some legislature (presumably at the state level in this instance) doesn’t like something that is a legally recognized right at the federal level, and tries to nickel and dime it into effective illegality through various restrictions.
For instance, suppose the supreme court rules specifically that individuals have the right to possess marijuana for personal use. Then some states might try to pass a bazillion regulations on owning pot in their own state which don’t make it outright illegal, but put so many restrictions on it that it might as well be. In a case like that, I think it’s reasonable to argue that those individually restrictive laws are themselves wrong not so much because of whatever individual policy or limitation each one tries to impose, but because working as a whole they are trying to forbid something that is a guaranteed right. (There are clear analogies here to individual states trying to put limitations on both abortion rights and gun rights, so you can imagine this sort of argument coming from both sides of the aisle.)
But that’s very different from saying “is it RIGHT and ETHICAL that abortion is legal? Well, abortion IS legal, so I win the argument” or something like that.
No sir, I don’t believe that you do. I think you believe at some level that the legislative system might result in “democracy” at some level, but I don’t think you’re actually that concerned with the spirit of democracy.
The mechanisms you refer to aren’t democracy. And further, I don’t find your claim that you regard the laws in effect as legitimate credible. I suspect you find yourself at odds with many extant laws.
We’re not just limited by process in judging an outcome. We can also compare the results to the intent. The democratic spirit means that competent adult citizens should be offered every opportunity to vote. Registering to vote should be just as easy as voting, which I did earlier this month by walking less than a block to my polling place and signing my name next to my address.
Further, we can evaluate the math of people that think inhibiting the vote of any number of people who can’t afford the cost of clearing the extra registration hoops being imposed is worth it if they “feel better” about the likelihood of individual voter fraud being reduced to an even more microscopic number than probably exists.
But I think you’re so focused on arguing procedurally that you’ve lost touch with and probably even ridicule the notion of “spirit”.
I remain somewhat amused that criticism of a legislative effort or legislative result apparently indicates a wish to abolish the legislature.
Oh. So, we have to objectively verify our opinion that one political party using the law to cheat is wrong? And if we can’t, then we are obliged to accept the legitimacy of the law, by default.
That is a sophisticated argument, which I mean in the most pejorative sense of the word,
Are you Sylvia Browne? John Edwards? Edgar Caycee?
Can you point to any posts I have made here in fifteen years of membership in which I decry a law as illegitimate?
You have any evidence, other than your “suspicion?”
That might be YOUR vision of the democratic spirit. But the very act of declaring that your vision is THE vision, and no one can have any other legitimate vision, is itself destructive of the spirit you claim you support.
I don’t ridicule the notion of spirit; I reject your nomination as the sole authority thereon.
You are obliged to objectively verify that this is any kind of cheating.
Oh, I have the testimony of an acknowledged expert, who’s candor and honesty is universally applauded and admired, that the motives of many, if not most, Republicans were malign.
We might be using different definitions of legitimate.
It’s as likely that I think my vision is the sole legitimate (by the way, I see you do use that word in different ways) vision as it is that I’m the only one that shares it.
That I think you’re wrong doesn’t mean I think I’m right. I do think your view is less complete and I think most people would agree that everyone should get to vote that satisfies the basics (adult, non-ward of the state…that kind of thing). And I think a hell of a lot of people would think it’s cheating the intent by deliberately reducing opportunities to vote because it’s “legal”.
“Cheating.”
The word means several things, but “having malign motives” isn’t one of them.
But most people also favor requiring Voter IDs. So I’m perfectly happy to take the opinion of most people. You’re not.
Had malign motives in creating laws to control voting, but stacking the electoral deck wasn’t one of them? Were they trying to impress Jodie Foster?