# Killing the Campaign to restore sanity to US politics

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-the-campaign-to-restore-sanity-to-us-politics/555994>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 4, 2010, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-the-campaign-to-restore-sanity-to-us-politics/555994 "2010-10-04T12:22:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![godix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@godix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godix)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-the-campaign-to-restore-sanity-to-us-politics/555994/41 "2010-10-04T22:19:31Z")

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> [@Acid\_Lamp](#):
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> I think that while people should have the right to vote based on whatever they like, the candidates themselves ought to be held to a standard of accountability in their speech in direct media.

They are. It’s called an election.

> [@](#):
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> What I am advocating is that if candidate McCoy runs an ad calling Brashaw a child eating cannibal puppy raper, he better have the police reports to back it up.

Do you realize this sort of situation is already covered under libel and slander laws? Granted, politicians being public figures, they have to prove actual malice was involved. However, I suspect that actual malice wouldn’t be all that difficult to show in a case where someone was accused of fucking dogs while fricasseed baby.

> [@](#):
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> Limiting their speech to their own platforms and factual matters would be a good help in curtailing social idiocy.

In other words, everyone else is stupid but you. So this idea is needed to force us lowly retards to form our opinions in the way you believe we should. The entire idea here is to control what arguments people can hear, which in turn controls the very way they think. 1984’s newspeak wasn’t intended to be an actual suggestion ya know.

> [@](#):
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> People may have the right to be morons, but that does not make it an equitable position to those who bother to learn about issues and make an informed decision.

Actually yes it does. Under a democracy, it doesn’t matter if the person is a moron or making an informed decision, their votes are treated as ‘an equitable position’. If it was otherwise, it wouldn’t be a democracy.

You are, of course, free to disagree for whatever reason you want, be it cold logic or pure emotion. It would be nice if you’d give me permission to do the same though…

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**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/killing-the-campaign-to-restore-sanity-to-us-politics/555994/42 "2010-10-04T23:54:49Z")

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Even in a democracy not everyone votes. Felons don’t, people who can’t get it together to register can’t vote. But I agree that having any one person or group decide which candidate lied would be a disaster.  
The only solution I see would be to have a test on basic logical thinking and on very basic knowledge about the country and world - nothing nearly as hard as people wishing to become citizens would have to take. There are big obvious problems with this, I know, but it would be a lot fairer than setting anyone up as a judge. Then, the results of the election will give the answer.

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