Crafterman, with all due respect while I do wonder occasionally about the “gender gap” aspects of political choices I suspect electrical engineers pontificating about the root motivations of gender based differences in political choices worries me more. This is especially so when many Thanksgivings ago, my then (now ex) electrical engineer brother-in-law (employed at a fairly high level in the federal govt.), informed me that Hitler really didn’t have concentration camps and that the Holocaust was all just Jewish propaganda. I know this is an ignorant prejudice that EE + coherent political or social opinions are like oil and water but that’s just me.
“Creeping socialism” in the United States has a lot more to do with differences in age than gender. There are quite a few older Americans, who for reasons of fear or some sort of notion of entitlement, think that the government should take care of them into their dotage regardless of the social costs. On a purely personal experience basis I find the “I am owed” notion to be far more prevalent among seniors as a statistical cohort than women.
Combine this to the fact that in the current context, on average, seniors suck much more out of Social Security than they ever paid in, it is to their advantage to keep the
government as socialist as possible re the “state as nanny” aspects of social care.
With this in mind and following your logic I think only those who are not receiving social security should be allowed to vote. Only the “givers” should be allowed to vote not the “takers”.
…and yes this was (slightly) lounge in cheek but the Thanksgiving story is true.
Crafter_Man, please try to understand what a logical argument is. Saying that “4000 years of human history” backs up your assertion is bogus. You remind me of theists who say that “the universe” proves that God exists. You need to fill in a few gaps. Specifically, you need to demonstrate that throughout human history, men have valued freedom and women security. You have yet to provide a single example to back up your assertion. What specific incidents in the last 4,000 years convince you of the correctness of your beliefs?
Amen…Let those old foagies [how do you spell that] starve on the streets! Oh, hi mom.
Hey, with this logic, we could deny the vote to SUV owners since they are “takers” being subsidized by the rest of us…Cool! I am warming up to this idea.
Seriously, though, and back to the post. What you might try to do is actually look at voting patterns of men and women and see how different they are. The fact is that there has been a significant gender gap in the last few Presidential elections, although I vaguely had the feeling that this was a rather new phenomenon. And, of course, it is also important to remember that these are statistical differences that manifest themselves when you look over a large number of people (e.g., like a 10% difference in how they vote). The differences can clearly be large on the scale of swinging elections…But the differences are much too small to start generalizing on the scale of individuals. They are swamped by individual human differences. After all, the female sex brought us Ayn Rand and Margaret Thatcher too! [So, I can’t blame all of our problems on testerone! ;)]
Crafter, points for chutzpah. No points for logical thinking.
As has been pointed out by stoidela, these values are not mutually exclusive. Men also value security, safety and social cooperation. Ever heard of military brotherhoods? The Great Wall of China? Big ass guns? Women also value freedom, individual sovereignity, and personal responsibility. Ever heard of motherhood? Women’s sufferage? The equal rights ammendment?
I believe the most oft-quoted triumvirate is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Both triplets, of course, are over-simplifications of teh myriad reasons for teh American Revolution, but in the traditional triplet life seems to include safety and security, liberty addresses freedom and sovereignity, and pursuit of happiness is broad enough to include both social cooperation and personal responsibility.
Apparently not.
You believe incorrectly. Poor marks for historical erspective. If your thesis were correct, we would expect to see women granted the right to vote in contemporaneous (or preceding) republics and democracies not founded upon the same ideals as the United States. This is not the case. If your thesis were correct, we would expect that outside of teh right to vote, women would have been given all other rights enjoyed by men at the time our nation was founded. This is also not the case.
What you are saying is unsupported by fact.
The values are not diametrically opposite.
“Creeping socialism” in the United States, as undefined as such a term may be, is not necessarily connected to gender-based voting patterns. If you can demonstrate that gender-based voting patterns underlie some particular legislative initiatives, please do so.
It would not be surprising if public policies did shift after the majority of the citizens in this country were finally allowed to exercise individual sovereignity and personal responsibility in a context of individual liberty. Why, one might even say that such an outcome would represent a true reflection of those values you have described as traditionally male.
However you choose to subdivide them, it is clear that the values this nation was founded upon were empty promises for as long as basic liberties were denied to the majority of our citizens.
Since we have little (if any) reliable evidence for matriarchal societies, it is difficult to deduce “female political values” through historical precedent. Absent the power of self-determination, opportunities to express one’s will are seldom straightforward. Looking at male dominated societies, however, I am hard pressed to think of an example of a culture in which safety, security, and social cooperation were not valued. Please provide some more specific examples than “4000 years of human history”.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Please also explain why, if you are able to demonstrate the pattern you assert, the differences must necessarily be genetically determined ans not socially imposed. While you’re at it, since we are obviously discussing a continuum of possible human values, and you have already admitted that exceptional individuals exist, please specify whether you are arguing that for an “average” discrepancy based upon mean, mode or median.
O, shame! Truth is finally revealed!
“Do not forget the ladies…”, constitutional enclusion of the disenfranchised…gender, color, property ownership– This is what happens!
Give wimmin the vote and they’ll muddy up the electoral process with touchy-feeley, stupid things have have nuffin’ to do with public policy. And next they’ll wanna drive and equal pay!
People of color? Furriners? Well, everybody knows what makes them vote the way they do…they all vote the way the way they’re told to vote!
This is so undemocratic in–in the purest sense–it turns the stomach. People don’t fit into slots.
And why does the OP imply that only “militant liberals” would have a problem with this post? Crafter Man has just declared at least 95% of the population a luntic fringe.
Let me entertain your assumptions for a momement to show that even if they were true your speculations do not follow.
In what sense are freedom and social cooperation diametrically opposite values? Surely they are two sides of the same coin. By “freedom” and “liberty” presumably you mean the capacity to make of your life what you will. How is cooperation different to this? Unless I agree to contribute to something, I am not cooperating, I am coerced. As for security, surely this a prerequisite for meaningful freedom.
Now - continuing to suppose (for the sake of argument) that men and women seem to have different priorities about greater freedom/ more security - if men and women have exactly the same underlying “preferences” for these things but are granted different amounts by a social order then they would appear to have the priorities you posit.
Grant me without cites that women’s rights have been less well enforced than men’s over the centuries and your speculations about voting and creeping socialism completely disappear.
If you had few rights to protect your property or your person through the courts, wanting greater security would simply reflect your current lack of it, not any innate preference for it over other elements of autonomy. If your ability to pursue goals through enforeable contracts was curtailed, it would not be surprising if you pursued your goals through informal cooperation.
Besides, if you think about it, when there is relative security and cooperation, your freedom stands a better chance.
Face it, freedom in anarchy does not exist.
Allow to quibble with just this one statement. Freedom i sperfectly viale within anarchy for those who can ammas enough individual power to guarantee their liberty against their neghbors.
Alternatively, of course, one could use social cooperation to build alliances for mutual security. Of course, that type of thing oftn leads to shudder guvm’nt.
Well of course men value freedom more than women…they’re the ones that have had it for all these thousands of years!! They don’t “value” it - they’re just plain scared to death of losing it and ending up in a Matriarchal society where they are treated as nothing but chattel!
Oooh, what fun that would be! Being able to sell & trade men like slaves! rubs hands with glee
Women were denied the right to vote because of the founding fathers valued liberty and the freedom to choose so highly?
How did they rationalize protecting personel rights by denying 50% of the population the right to choose their own gov’t. It would be like saying that everyone can choose, so long as they make the same choices as we do.
Well, since you seem to think 4000 years of human history backs this up, allow me to point out that 4000 years of human history appears to illustrate that men in general have valued freedom/liberty, individual sovereignty, and personal responsibility for themselves – not for women and not for “minorities,” as that term might apply in various societies. Unless you would argue that human history reflects the automatic extension of these rights to all people at all times?
I don’t think you get to claim to be unequivocally “for” something when what you really mean is “I’m ‘for’ it for me, but not for you.”
Hmmm, no recent responses from Crafter_Man in this thread, no recent responses from jenkinsfan in the thread where he misrepresents the ACLU’s position on school prayer…High five, gang, I think we may actually have succeeded in fighting a little ignorance!!
