Actually you failed it, at least if understanding the modern usage of the word "democracy" is a requirement.
Why do I get upset about O'Reilly, anyway?
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peptoabysmal
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You have disgraced the State before the masses. You have proven yourself a hypocrite, and a traitor to the ideals of the State; you have, as such, no function. You are OBSOLETE.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052520/quotes
But it isn't a requirement, is it? Strictly speaking the USA is a Republic and not a Democracy. That colloquial use might have change the meaning of the word "democracy" doesn't change that fact, does it?
Clearly not all high IQ people would vote left or right, but all the "high morality" people would indeed vote right. Why? because unlike inteligence or level of political/scientific/historical knowledge there is no way to measure or quantify morality.
Unless they simply wished to sow out the relatively small proportion of sociopaths all the high morality people would agree with whoever got to define what high morality was (is abortion a morally legitimate option for a potential mother? You said yes sorry not vote for you). The same cannot be said for high inteligence (given the following numbers 0, 3, 8, 15, 24 what is teh next number? it's not really clear that somebody who answers 35 is more likely to agree politically with the man who devised the question, than somebody who answers 76. the same applies to people who can correctly give the date for US entry into WW2, name the first US president or whatever other questions we might ask to test IQ or knowledge.)
Since when is this a fact? As I said I think that restricting voting to the intelligent would be, well frankly just plain stupid, but that doesn't change the fact that there are certain political positions left and rigth that are also just idiotic. an intelligent and wellinformed person can believe in higher taxes or lower taxes, be for the EU or against the EU, for Iraq or against Iraq and so forth.
There are however relatively much fewer intelligent wellinformed and intelligent individuals, who would for example champion teching creationism in schoold to take a right wing example. On the left wing there resently was a great outcry in Denmark, when the the law that made it illegal for the banks to charge for the use of the national credit card, was changed so they could now charge 10 cent for each use.
The outcry continued untill the governement succumbded to the presure and made it so that the banks could only charge this money from the shops rather than the costumers, at which point everybody was happy. Cause it's not like if the shops would raise their prices to get the customers to pay anyways, right?
Such examples of gigantic cluelessness form the voting population just makes me sad (admitebly it's possible you could costruct a reasonable argument why letting the shops pay was better, but such arguments certainly weren't the reason for the measure).
That argument only makes sense if we assume that there is a negative correlation between inteligence and morality, if there isn't then it pretty much falls flat on it's face. IMO the reason why only letting some people vote is a really idiotic idea, is that it would lead to direct or indirect discrimination of the nonvoting public. It would also likely mean a high level of social unrest since it removes the options these people would have for expressing their dissatisfaction within the system.
Well currently I don't believe there are any requirements for voting in the US other than being a citizen, above 18, registered to vote and not being punished for a serious crime.
No, strictly speaking the USA is a republic AND a democracy.
What fact? The meaning of words are defined by their usage. The US, (and Denmark and France and the UK and in fact probably most of the so called democracy in the world) fails to have a simple one man, one vote, what the majority says goes, political system. That doesn't change the fact that hey're all democracies, in the sense that the word is used by the general population, political scientist, politicians, and in fact everybody other than that perculiar "the US is not a democracy" subculture some Americans belong to.
Yep, I recall some line about how democracy was the worst possible system...
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Please, might we get back to pooping on the man whose photo is just to the left of the one of a young Jon Stewart?
The Painter
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No, that's what the second amendment is for.
This is true. I was reffering to a “pure democracy”. I should have been more specific, especially on this board. My apologies.
I'm not sure at all. At least historically, in many situations "high morality" people were among the most prominent in many left-wing causes, from socialism to the civil rights movement.
Certainly this is the impression I get from looking at the criticism that the left-wing and the right-wing throw at each other. By far the most common criticism I hear from lefties is that right-wingers are "stupid", and by far the most common criticism I hear from righties is that left-wingers are "immoral" and want to "Destroy our values". Clearly, they consider themselves of the opposite.
I was exagerrating the difference to make a point; my real point is that when morality and intelligence disagree, there is no arbiter to choose which way to go. IF morality and intelligence always agreed, then in theory it would not matter whether you let only "moral" people vote or only "intelligent" people vote. Now that they SOMETIMES disagree, then there is no way to decide whether it's better to let the "moral" people or the "intelligent" people make the decision.
The Painter
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I am actually in favor of letting gays get married. I don’t understand the big deal about it. There are gay couples that have been together for years. They are, in effect, married, just without a piece of paper that says so. I think in the long run the real benefactors of this will be the divorce lawyers. It would be a whole new cash cow for them.
Mephisto
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I find your views concerning gays refreshing for a conservative. Maybe it's because you are a northern conservative. Here in the South, conservative thinking is generally tied to religious fundamentalist fervor. It's hard to seperate being a Republican from being a White Protestant Christian Churchgoer. Any support for gays here would be against the church's view of what a conservative should be and what they preach about God's laws. You might actually be considered a liberal here, however I don't think the majority of professed southern conservatives know the definition of the word "liberal".
I like a voter test based on education. We have a test for those that want to be a citizen; why not for those that want to vote. Wouldn't that raise the educational level of the country in general. Isn't having educated voters in the best interest of the country for our future? I've heard it said that when a conservative goes off to college, he becomes a liberal. I don't know if that is entirely true or not, but I do think that education and the ability to think critically is important for our country's future.
ImaginalDisc
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Firstly, if petty arguments annoy you, get off the internet. It's full of it. Secondly, let's take seriousl your idea that ". . .unintelligent clods who can't be bothered to spend 10 f*cking minutes a day reading a newspaper or news website, and who can't be bothered to even learn the name of their governor, senators and representative." do not deserve to vote. What about those who spend eleven minutes? Those who spend 2 hours out of a month? Who gets to establish this rubric, and who gets left out in the cold?
Ladewig
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I said that I go back and forth on the idea because I know that such a test violates the spirit of democracy. I should be more clear in what kind of questions I would put on the test. I would not deal with trivia such as names of 19th century presidents or with number sequence questions. I would include only questions directly related to the office being voted on. For instance:
The president of the U.S. has which of the following powers (as defined by the Constitution): [choose all that apply]
a) appoint ambassadors
b) legalize prayer in public schools
c) veto bills passed by Congress with less than a 2/3 majority
d) outlaw political parties that work towards reducing the moral purity of the United States.
That's all I would include for a test to vote in a presidential election - stuff that any 15-year-old, civics-class student would know.
I don't think asking people who are voting for elected official to know what the most basic responsibilities of that office are is so discriminatory that it would tear the fabric of our nation.
The president of the U.S. has which of the following powers (as defined by the Constitution): [choose all that apply]
a) appoint ambassadors
b) legalize prayer in public schools
c) veto bills passed by Congress with less than a 2/3 majority
d) outlaw political parties that work towards reducing the moral purity of the United States.
That's all I would include for a test to vote in a presidential election - stuff that any 15-year-old, civics-class student would know.
I don't think asking people who are voting for elected official to know what the most basic responsibilities of that office are is so discriminatory that it would tear the fabric of our nation.
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Actually you just made a excellent argument why we shouldn't have such test since your questions have a clear left wing bias. A and C are fine, but B and D are most definetly not. First of all prayers in public schools aren't illegal, and both B and D are designed to make conservatives more likely to give the wrong answer. A much less biased series of questions would be:
The president of the U.S. has which of the following powers (as defined by the Constitution): [choose all that apply]
a) appoint ambassadors
b) appoint governers (this was what question a orriginally said right? I think so, but when I quoted it it said ambassadors and I'm not sure if I just misread).
c) appoint Supreme Court Justices.
d) veto bills passed by Congress with less than a 2/3 majority.
E) cast the deciding vote in cases of tied votes in the Senate.
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Could you name any currently living left wingers who you think could pass a "high morality" test devised by say Pat Robbertson?
I wasn't aware that your impresions counted as facts.
Still doesn't make much sense. There is no such thing as an intelligent solutions absent any theory of what outcomes are desirable (that is moral), and while some theories about what political outcomes are desirable, might contain the possibility of morally right but idiotic political descisions others don't. Could you give an example of a choice between a retarded, but morally right choice vs. an intelligent moraly wrong (or just amoral) one?
The true humor is that somebody who would advocate a civics test as a prerequisite for voting presumably believes he would qualify under the test. However, the evidence is that any restiction on the right to vote makes the resulting process less sound and a worse candidate is more likely to be chosen.
I highly recommend The Wisdom of Crowds, a book that goes into this in much detail.
Even if the test were non-partisan, even if it were accurate, even if it were unbiased, the result would still be worse than allowing all citizens to vote regardless of their level of education and/or ignorance.
And, yes, I know Shemp was being facetious in his advocacy. I just found it humorous that someone who is advocating informed elections would advocate, even in jest, a means of election that, had he been informed, he would know would be less effective than open elections.
I highly recommend The Wisdom of Crowds, a book that goes into this in much detail.
Even if the test were non-partisan, even if it were accurate, even if it were unbiased, the result would still be worse than allowing all citizens to vote regardless of their level of education and/or ignorance.
And, yes, I know Shemp was being facetious in his advocacy. I just found it humorous that someone who is advocating informed elections would advocate, even in jest, a means of election that, had he been informed, he would know would be less effective than open elections.
Ladewig
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I'll work on getting a copy, but in the meantime, would you explain what measurements were used to determine which candidates are worse than others?
I haven't read the book of course, and since only the conclusion and not the argument is there I can't tell whether I agree, but from what I read I think you misrepresent the book.
It appears to be about how crowds are smarter than single experts, but what Shemp advocates, facetiously or not, is not rule by experts, but by slightly smaller crowds of better informed individuals.
Let's say that we introduced trully draconian tests that allowed only 10% of all Americans to vote. That's still 30 million people - a sizeble crowd by any standard.
I don't see anything in the page you linked to that says that intelligent and wellinformed crowds make worse descisions than less intelligent and less well informed crowds.
Particularly for cognition problems, I'd think that the majority of the experts in a field is more likely to reflect the truth than the majority of the whole population.