Thoughts From Kansas answers:
A few days ago I asked “Why don’t Republicans all agree that women have to be allowed to vote?” I was worried that people would think I was making a little straw man there…. Women are people. How’s that for an argument? Women are people, and people have a right to self-determination, and voting is how people in democracies determine the direction their lives go. Vox apparently doesn’t think much of democracy, but I’m not going to refight the battles of 1776 right now.
If that’s a straw man, you’d think it would be a lot easier to knock down. What TFK proposes is not much of an argument at all. Children are people. Criminals are people. Tourists are people. Immigrants are people. Illegal aliens are people. And still, none of them have the right to vote. Therefore, voting is not predicated on personhood, which undermines his entire argument. Furthermore, the United States is not a democracy. However, TFK is right; like the Founding Fathers, I don’t think much of democracy. I would nevertheless prefer true democracy to the fraudulent bi-factional system of false representation we now have in place.
If the Will of the People is all, why don’t we move towards true democracy? We have the technology for it, after all. The truth is that most of those who consider themselves to be defenders of democracy don’t actually want it either.
Vox tosses out bullshit statistics (Correlation between rising government spending and a women’s vote? Do I really have to explain the gross methodological flaws in any such study?) and justifies his misogyny in various ways. And Jesus Christ, Singapore and Hong Kong are not democracies to be praised. One is a subservient to the repressive communist China, the other is a repressive regime that restricts free speech in ways that are intolerable. The fact that it’s undemocratic is the least of its worries.
Yes, you do have to explain the gross methodological flaws before you can dismiss any such study. I provided the link, either demonstrate how the study is flawed or concede the point. Surely TFK would not wish to imitate the defenders of women in the labor force by making the absurd assertion that adding billions of women voters over the past 85 years has had no effect on the nation whatsoever?
The problem voting rights fix is that some people can’t vote. They aren’t out there so that we can reduce crime, or have lower taxes, or whatever. Monarchal Great Britain abolished slavery before democratic America did, but that’s not an argument for monarchy.
That is circular reasoning at its worst. The end is the entire point of voting, which is why every quasi-democratic state has a constitution limiting what the people and their elected “representatives” are permitted to vote for. And yes, if slavery is considered to be evil, then the fact that a monarchy abolished slavery before a “democracy” would be an argument for monarchy. It might not be a clinching argument for it, but it is an argument for it nonetheless.
In a Kantian framework, he’s treating all women as means to an end. That’s not moral (it violates the Categorical Imperative) and it’s not fair. If Vox were to “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law,” would he advocate restricting the civil liberties of any person if some other person would benefit from that? What if that were a universal law, that anyone’s vote could be taken away if doing so would achieve some laudable goal? What if it were Vox’s vote, or Vox’s right to speak freely?
No, I am treating voting as a means to an end, which is precisely what it is. Kant doesn’t enter into the question. Not that it is particularly relevant to the matter in question, but I do act according to that maxim. I have lived for years in quasi-democratic societies where despite being a person, I am not allowed to vote, and yet my life, liberty and property rights were protected. I had no problem with that then and I would have no problem with it now. Bringing up freedom of speech is a red herring, it is primarily Democrats, with their speech codes and campaign finance reform, who wish to limit freedom of speech.
Thinking women who value their freedom, who value life, liberty and property rights, understand that allowing women to vote is demonstrably anti-freedom, which is why many of them support my position. Of course, even more women don’t value such things, which is why they are offended, and since they are fascists at heart, would very much like to eliminate my ability to espouse such offensive ideas.
In any event, I’ve concluded that it doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks. I estimate that within 40 years, Western women will lose most of their perceived gains, including the right to vote. It took 70 years for Soviet-style Communism to fall apart, and the sterility and social pathologies of the equalitarian society cause me to conclude that it is even more precarious.