So some citizens are more equal than others.
I was asking about Canadian Voter ID laws which didn’t exist prior to 2007. I was wondering if he knew why in 2007 it suddenly became important to have an ID to vote.
No. But some citizens, by their choices, have more effect on the decisions of our government. Even you agree that a person can decide not to vote. The inevitable result of that is those who do vote have more sway over the government than those that do not. Other citizens may choose to run for office, and of those, some win. Yet we don’t describe any of those situations as making some citizens “more equal,” than others.
Why don’t we? Because “more equal,” is a tautology. “Equal,” is an absolute and has no comparative. In Animal Farm, the phrase was used to justify the assumption of additional privileges by Napoleon’s pigs, a way to circumvent the simpler principle that all animals on the farm were equal.
All voters have equality of legal opportunity to cast ballots. But this does not translate to absolute equality in each and every life circumstance that might affect their casting of a ballot. A woman may go into labor at 5 AM on Election Day. She can’t vote. But that does not mean that men are more equal than women, women are less equal than men, pregnant women are more equal to non-pregnant women, or any their formulation that involves using “equal” in a twisted rhetorical attempt to prop up a bankrupt argument like yours.
Are there any other constitutionally guaranteed rights that should be limited to those who meet an arbitrary “skin in the game” standard? Should we raise the bar for buying guns or worshiping god, so that citizens will appreciate their freedom?
Bricker, you often trot out the “what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly” argument, but it has a fatal flaw.
The poor already are at a disadvantage, in just about every aspect of life, in terms of the esteem needed per unit effort. If you and a poor person both “esteem” an inexpensive used car equally, you can still obtain one cheaply, but the poor person cannot. They have to save longer, work harder, make more sacrifices, even though they want it just as much as you do. It’s a shame, but I accept that as part of our capitalist society.
But in terms of exercising the franchise, Voter ID laws, especially combined with all the other shameless attempts to reduce Democratic turnout we’re seeing, do little more than exacerbate that further. I’m pretty sure there are poor people who esteem the vote more than you do, but because obtaining the documents to acquire a “free” Voter ID will cost them hours in lines and on buses, lost hourly wages because they work multiple crappy jobs, not to mention this week’s food money to get their out-of-state birth certificate because God forbid we let them use their electric bill, they’ll end up not voting.
It’s an easy thought experiment. If “free” Voter ID required you to present a gold-plated document that would cost each person $100,000 and require 36 hours standing in line, even you might throw up your hands and say “screw it.” It’s a continuum. Every barrier of time and money you set in front of ten million people, that will inevitably push hundreds across that “line of esteem.” The laws you defend, along with all the reduction of early voting hours, elimination of polling places in poor neighborhoods, even the intentional lack of effort in educating the populace about the new laws themselves, push the line past an increasing number of our society’s most disadvantaged. Past citizens who need ever increasing amounts of “esteem” to obtain what you and I can get quite cheaply.
If we all started out on equal economic footing, your quote would apply. But “cheap” is a relative term, not an absolute one, so as things stand, to use that as reasoning to place obstacles between people and the voting booth is decidedly un-Christian.
Me, I feel sad for all those voters who simply walk in with their driver’s licenses that they obtained without any special effort. When do they get THEIR chance to show that they care enough about their civic burden to make an effort.
Maybe we could set up a special booth where they could wait for a few hours in the middle of a day they’d have to take off from work, just to show that they care enough about their vote. They’d get a special sticker to put on their licenses that says “I care”.
if they wait out in the pouring rain, the sticker would have sparkles on it.
We already do. We charge a fee to every gun purchaser to pay for the ID and background check. And we require a photo ID.
Please direct me to the many posts you have made here over the years condemning this practice. I look forward to reading these volumes of words of yours I have missed.
Surely you don’t want social policies to be religiously based?
Interestingly, your post acknowledges there is a “line of esteem,” which is moved somewhere based on the policies we enact. You implicitly acknowledge that some line must exist somewhere.
How do we, as a society, know where to draw it?
You lump in Voter ID with “…reduction of early voting hours, elimination of polling places in poor neighborhoods, even the intentional lack of effort in educating the populace about the new laws themselves…” and then demand that I agree that the aggregate effect moves the line past the point of what we should judge as unduly burdensome.
But I am not defending reduction of early voting hours, elimination of polling places in poor neighborhoods, or whatever intentional lack of effort in educating the populace about the new laws might actually be in play. I am defending Voter ID laws. So the only question I have to answer is: does Voter ID, alone, amount to an unduly burdensome requirement – does it push back the “line of esteem,” to an impermissible place?
No, it does not.
You may disagree. But that is undoubtedly because you weigh the importance of the interests advanced by Voter ID differently than I do.
In a representative democracy, many people many weigh many interests differently. But we have a method to distill these many interests to a single social policy. That has been done. So your view, while persuasive to you, is not persuasive to the majority of voters, who generally favor Voter ID.
Now, of course you may argue that these people have been deceived. But if I were to argue that abortion should be forbidden, notwithstanding the majority support for it as a legal procedure, because the majority support arises from deception about a “blob of tissue,” not being a human life… I assume you would not agree with me.
So what makes your position on this issue privileged in a way that my preferred positions are not?
I’ve yet to see a federal agent checking ID at the entrance to any churches.
Sure, nor are you likely to. So what?
I am tired of creating your argument for you and then rebutting it. I have to write paragraphs refuting your single sentences.
So my answer is: yeah, so?
I thought getting a license was a huge effort? Who are these magical unicorns?
So you haven’t thought through the unintended consequences of your “skin in the game” standard for freedom. Which is par for the course with you. “Skin in the game” is fine when it advances your partisan goals, not so much when it impedes them. Thanks for making that abundantly clear for the readers once again.
Wow, that’s an absurdly generalized statement. The idea that we should never demand that a voter prove he is entitled to vote is not only wrong, it’s contrary to actual law. We have always expected voters to prove, at some point in the process, that they are entitled to vote. We require them to register, and we require some kind of proof then. Nobody has ever claimed that is immoral or unconstitutional.
General statements like this only feed into the opposition’s hands.
Weren’t you the one who said it wasn’t the same effort for everyone?
Of course not; that was directed at you personally, since from what I know of you, you derive your morals from your religion. Read that as “uncharitable” if it clarifies things for you.
I’d be surprised by anyone who didn’t acknowledge that. You’d get few posters, I imagine, who would feel that everyone below the poverty line should be given free limousine service to and from polling place.
I think it’s pointless to argue about Voter ID laws in a vacuum. I would personally support such laws, IF they were accompanied by a serious effort by state governments to get ID’s into people’s hands, and if they were NOT accompanied by obvious efforts to make voting more onerous to the disadvantaged. Defending ID laws without taking those other things into consideration is a pointless exercise in theory divorced from the reality of life.
This is another line of reasoning I find unpersuasive. The history of our country is one of laws, and even the will of the majority, lagging behind what is ultimately revealed as just and moral. If we were discussing Jim Crow in the 30’s, would I be wrong to argue against discriminatory laws just because they were both legal and popular? I post on the Dope on this topic because I’m arguing morality. I’m arguing to help accelerate our society to the point where we come to the same collective conclusion we did about Jim Crow. I believe that when an archivist looks back at this thread 100 years from now, they’ll consider your posts on this topic to be similar to those years ago arguing for “separate but equal” because, hey, legal and popular.
As for your “blob of tissue,” I don’t find that analogous. In the case of abortion, you can only argue “deception” from a religious standpoint. But I can argue voter ignorance from a logical and reasoned standpoint. When people are polled about Voter ID, a vast, vast majority of them don’t understand, and in many cases literally don’t believe, that there are millions of adults in this country without IDs. “Hey, if it’s easy for me, surely it must be easy for everyone!” An inability to fully comprehend a life different from one’s own seems to be a certain psychological phenomenon…so when people are polled about whether Voter ID is a good idea, they are not being deceived, but neither do they understand or consider the implications for the poorest cohort in the nation.
A strange question. Nothing about my position is “privileged,” and I never said it was. You have every right to your positions and opinions, and I hold your understanding of the letter of the law in high regard. I just happen to think that your position is morally reprehensible, and am trying to make good arguments as to why I think that.
That’s strange, I had to take a driver’s education course, pass a written test, AND pass a driving test to get my license. What state do you live in that just gives out driver’s licenses?
I’ve seen this bit from Bricker before. I suspect there’s some mild religious backing to it, along the lines of:
- Suffering is a sign of virtue. The more suffering, the more virtuous.
- Therefore things that don’t involve suffering are not virtuous.
- Therefore making a process easier and more efficient to decrease suffering is evil.
Bricker combines this with Thomas Paine’s:
And concludes, where convenient, that it’s good to make things more difficult. It’s a tempting club to use, because one can arbitrarily decide that someone else isn’t showing enough “esteem” or they lack a sufficient amount of “skin in the game”. What is a sufficient amount of either? You can make up any amount you want and declare that it’s not being satisfied.
I just decided Bricker isn’t holding his privilege to operate a motor vehicle on public roads (and in all honesty, this is a pretty awesome privilege which can hugely improve and expand a person’s opportunities) in sufficient “esteem”, therefore I mandate that he must demonstrate greater “dearness” by spending an extra five hours waiting at every DMV visit, and he must fill out multiple documents by hand in quadruplicate giving his family’s legal history and writing an essay on why driving is important to him. Only then will he be allowed to join the body vehiclic, assuming the requirements haven’t been increased by then.
Is it hard to imagine a government official reasoning along similar lines. That official could claim he’s acting to ensure driver safety (a laudable goal in itself), when it’s more obvious the real goal is to discourage Bricker from driving, though if he wants to drive badly enough to prove he’s not holding the privilege too “cheaply”, I’m sure he can summon the necessary effort. If not, it’ll just demonstrate how lazy he is and probably undeserving of the privilege in the first place.
Really? Advocating pointless suffering for oneself and others strikes me as very Christian.
And if it’s exclusively for others, very Christian/Republican.
No, I’ve thought it through just fine. YOU have not thought through your efforts to find a comparison.
But once again, you force me to write more words than you use.
OK, why shouldn’t federal agents check ID at church entrances, if “skin in the game” is a valuable concept?
(1) Because religion occupies a special place in the supreme law of the land, the government is forbidden from requiring any particular religious skin in the game. No such prohibition binds the government as to voting.
(2) Because the information collected by checking IDs of church attendees means nothing. Unlike voting, which is an act limited to non-felon citizens of a certain age and US citizenship, as well as residence in a particular precinct. The act of checking an ID for voters bears a relationship to the qualifications for voting. There are no analogous qualifications for churching.
(3) If there were no such legal bar as (1) describes, and even if there were some society-agreed value in collecting the information such that (2) was inapposite, I would have no problem with it.
BUT who cares, because the answer to “Why you don’t see federal agents checking IDs at the church door,” is (1) and (2).
How did we get from society as whole, acting through its legislatures and courts, approving a scheme, and you, personally, approving a scheme?
Magic? Was it magic? Did you wave your wand and say Ego sum culus, and it happened?