To be fair, it’s possible that a good purpose could happen to have a perceived personal benefit, yet still be a good purpose.
This isn’t a good purpose, though, or perhaps more accurately one can only claim it is good after one decides to be willfully blind to the larger bad part of it.
Maybe. I like to think not, but until we find ourselves in a world where encouraging citizens to participate in the democratic process gives a nudge to the Republican party and throwing up all manner of unnecessary obstacles in an effort to minimize the electorate helps out the Democrats, I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Speaking for myself, I support it either way. I think the vote should be protected. No legal voter should have his vote potential cancelled out by an illegal vote.
I’m also not convinced that more minority democratic voters are potentially negatively affected by protecting the vote than white republican voters. My reasoning is poor white republican voters are likely to live in very rural areas, while minority democratic voters tend to be concentrated in cities. So, the group that is likely to be far from a place to get the proper papers are republican white voters, not minority black voters, where services will likely be closer.
Oh, so none of this is actually happening, then? Just something to whine about? A scheme cooked up by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to score more cocaine?
Whereas I think no legal voter should have unnecessary obstacles placed in their way in order to prevent fraud that is negligible-to-non-existent, particularly where those putting the obstacles in place are doing so for blatantly partisan reasons. Effectively disenfranchising 1,000 legal voters to stop 10 illegal ones is far more damaging to the democratic process.
Yes, I do.
And as evidence I point to the lack of any posts from you defending a Republican about anything ever. Yes, on this issue my defense aligns with my preferred party, but I’ve made a boatload of posts in GD defending Secretary Clinton over the idiocy of this manufactured e-mail “scandal.” Because although I don’t want her to succeed politically, I want her policies to be rejected, not some bullshit that vaguely hints at unspecified laws or laws that only came into existence after she left the post. I spent dozens of posts correcting right wing morons who called Ted Kennedy a murderer. I spent time defending Patrick Kennedy after his legitimate Ambien use caused false accusations that he was drunk.
In other words, what drives me is principle, every single time.
That’s true of many commentators here, of course. But not you. Your principle is: whatever helps the Democrat.
I don’t see how any of this absolves you of a fair accusation of dishonesty on this particular issue. The fact that you’re capable of defending a Democrat without retching doesn’t magically make voter disenfranchisement okay.
Incidentally, magellan’s still holding out hope that gay marriage will be shown to be harmful. Even a tenuous demonstration will “convince” him far more rapidly than any number of accounts of hassled voters.
Why am I not surprised that the lefties are unable to grasp that someone might take a stance based on principle? Hmm.
There are bad principles. Just sayin’.
That does not address what I wrote.
But if you were just shooting for “Stupidest Post in the Thread”, good work. You’ve got a real shot.
Let me translate for the mentally-challenged: Just because you claim to be standing on principle does not make your position admirable. Standing on bad principles is worse than standing on none at all.
How so? I’m not generally an ends-justify-the-means guy, but I don’t see what difference standing on bad principles makes.
If I claim, “I stand for the principle that marriage equals one man and one woman”, then point at liberals and accuse them of being unfamiliar with standing on principles, I don’t see how that makes me better than liberals.
Would you in this hypothetical be a better person if you didn’t have any principles to stand on at all, and were against gay marriage just 'cuz? Because that’s what it would mean if standing on bad principles is worse than standing on no principles.
It depends on what attack you’re trying to rebut.
It makes you better than liberals who support same-sex marriage because the Democrats support it. Frankly, there are probably not too many of those. The same-sex marriage divide doesn’t really threaten traditional dividing lines; most liberals probably favor same-sex marriage for the same reasons that they are liberal in the first place just as most conservatives who oppose it are probably doing so for the same reasons that they are conservative in the first place.
The question arises more in topics that would otherwise run counter to professed principles. Liberals who inveigh against “state’s rights” but suddenly discover an abiding respect for the concept when discussing legalizing marijuana, and conservatives that valorize state’s rights except if the state in question legalizes assisted suicide are better examples of the phenomenon.
Sure I can, most famously for Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights laws due to his adherence to State’s Rights. He said he agonized over the choice, and I believe him. It was a principled stand, and it was also wrong. There are valid principles that can be trumped by other, more important, valid principles.
Civil rights, voting rights are, by the light of my principles, primary core principles. Without Federal oversight and effort, the racist states would have dragged out the process forever. The situation was urgent, and if a principle must be compromised in a state of emergency, then"state’s rights" was the one to be compromised. Because equal rights for citizens exceeds even the core importance of the Constitution, something had to be done!
(I’m often reminded of Dick Gregory’s line regarding the “take it slow” approach:
“Get your foot off my Grandmother’s neck! Now, goddamit, not one toe at a time!”)
Goldwater was wrong. He was wrong on principle, but still terribly, terribly wrong.
Still, perhaps it is heartening to see someone stand on principle, without reference to facts and citations, which is so often the support of the unprincipled reality based community! And the heartening news that there is nothing racist about all of this because the Republicans despise poor white people as well! Brings a tear to my eye, it does…
Looks like **Bricker **is a little upset that John Mace has won the SDMB Non-partisan Homecoming Queen six years in a row. Making a stab for it, it seems…
Meh. If the abiding principle is to maximize freedom and equal treatment under the law, there are two similar but somewhat independent sources of problems in the U.S.: the federal government and one’s state government, and idiotic legislation can come from either. If idiotic legislation can be challenged on the basis of states’ rights or federal civil rights, then that’s just the way the game is set up.
Yes, I do believe that that is the more honest argument, because it expresses an opinion, and does not try to justify by dressing up as a “principle”, as if that makes it more worthy of respect.
Ah, I think I understand. I was taking “bad principle” so as to mean a principle that is unpleasant or nasty, when I think reading this what you really meant was a principle that is not genuinely held. If that’s so, fair enough, I’d agree, a false declaration of a principle designed to lend an appearance of fairness to an opinion is worse than just holding that opinion openly.