Jefferson is still having trouble grasping the intrinsic difference between “freedom” and “the right to vote”:
What I’m looking for is any reason why these things on the whole would be good for either the country or humanity. There are none.
There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of examples to the contrary, wherein individuals voluntarily choose to give up their right to vote in favor of obtaining more freedom.
If you have the right to vote in country X, but have no rights to property, speech or your body, but then move to country Y wherein you have those rights, you are giving up your right to vote… at least for the time it takes to become a voting citizen.
Now, to draw an absurd example that may help Jefferson clarify his thinking, suppose there were a large group of cannibals who were vehement eaters of human flesh, large enough to force through mandatory cannibalism based on their numbers. Would one argue that their right to vote should be respected and everyone should be forced to eat human flesh, or would one agree that everyone, (including the cannibals who are all suffering from kuru), would be better off were their right to vote denied?
Once this question is answered, it is merely a question of demonstrating that certain groups’ political influence are reliably destructive and therefore must be denied for the benefit of those very groups, to say nothing of everyone else.
But I am curious as to Jefferson’s opinion on this matter. Which is right? Do we all eat flesh, or do we prevent the cannibals from voting?
UPDATE – Jefferson rightly, according to his previously stated views, opts for the long pig. Very good, now why don’t we all vote on who goes to the death camps, gays, blacks, Jews, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Scientologists, smokers, fatties, or ugly people. As ye vote, so shall ye make right. Thus spake the suffrage fetishist.
And some still insist there’s no logical consequence to rational atheist morality….