Author: VD

KS writes: You must live in a different universe than I. You are so wrong. You must have some kind of brain disease to even think up the crap you wrote in The Cowardice of His Convictions. Perhaps you should visit your doctor for a check up.

My dear Ms S,

That’s quite the eloquent rebuttal. I’m really going to have to rethink my position based on your exquisite reasoning and stunning grasp of the salient facts.

Kisses,

Vox

UPDATE – actually, KS is all right. She emailed back this: “Thanks for your thanks, just trying to help.”

AS writes: Your argument so far seems to be a pragmatic one: Women gaining the right to vote has lead to illegitimacy, divorce, abortion, etc. This from the king of ideals. I can’t find it right now, but I remember you made a post saying that people should stop their pragmatic view of the world and start standing up for their ideals. Isn’t your argument against women’s suffrage a perfect example of pragmatism? I would say that every adult who has proved a minimal interest in being a good citizen–namely, not being convicted of a felony and registering to vote–has the right to vote. It is immoral to deny citizens the right to vote for their representatives at all levels of government.

If I had ever stated that I believed voting was a fundamental human right, I would certainly be guilty of sacrificing principle for pragmatism. But I never have, nor do I believe it to be a fundamental human right. Most people should not be permitted a voice in government; they should, on the other hand, be permitted to live their lives in peace without the constant threat of government intervention. History suggests that universal democracy is strongly susceptible to collectivization and thus directly at odds with human liberty and freedom.

I have long been leery of democracy, in part because so many great thinkers that I admired despised it so. The fact that its self-professed champions don’t actually trust it either but feel the need to hedge it about with judicial and structural limitations proves that the common equation of freedom and democracy is incorrect. I find it very easy to choose between the two, without any sacrifice of principle required.

I wonder, what morality is it, precisely, that is offended by denying citizens the vote? And if it is a basic human right, why should residents who are not citizens be denied? If the will of the people is the foundation of all authority of government, does this same hypothetical morality not demand that anything that dilutes the will of the people – judicial review, constitutional restrictions or representative bodies – must be considered immoral as well?

Bartholomew leaps into the arena: Here’s my response to your unpalatable idea, as recently posted on my own blog. You will note that I have separated the two questions of a) has allowing women to vote led to harmful results? and b) should a group be banned from voting because its members tend to vote for things that lead to harmful results? I am concerned here mainly with the latter proposition.

Fair enough. We’ve mostly been dealing with (a). But (b) is another reasonable point for discussion.

Your recent comment about children is not valid: it is not discriminatory to deny them the vote because everyone was once a child and so subject to the same restriction.

No, it is perfectly valid. By this reasoning, we can discriminate freely against the elderly because almost everyone will be old one day. Furthermore, discrimination against children is justified on their inability to make responsible decisions, not the universal nature of childhood.

1. Democracies use constitutions and independent judiciaries to guard against mobocracy, rather than denial of the franchise to particular groups ofadults. While this may not be perfect, there is no evidence that there was less mobocracy in times when women or others were denied the franchise.

Sure there is. The Founders were concerned about a mob voting itself bread and circuses, while Joseph Schumpeter predicted the inevitable devolution of any universal democracy into socialist tyranny. An analysis of federal spending per capita easily illustrates this playing out right now.

Perhaps this is not spelt out in the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, but if Vox Days interpretation of those documents is correct that only means that the USA is not the very best example of democracy after all, and could learn from others (Im British, by the way).

The USA is not a democracy, never was, and was expressly designed not to be. In his first formal point, Bartholomew demonstrates that he has no understanding of the source of American rights and liberties.

2. If women as a whole can be denied the franchise because a majority of them support views of government he dislikes (leading to what he considers the social ills outlined above), then why not apply this rule to other groups should they show the same preferences? Answer: because if such a rule were applied to other groups it would be manifestly unfair, and in many examples would be racist.

First, it would indeed be very good sense to deny those groups who are determined to sabotage their self-interest. Precisely this reasoning is presently being used to deny the Iraqi people the right to self-determination; I don’t know any so-called “democrats” who actually favor allowing open elections in Iraq as I do. Are they racist too?

Second, women are a unique group in that they are provably biologically different. These biological differences have a direct effect on their ability to think and reason, as numerous scientific studies have proven that women have measurably different brains than men. There are spiritual (Christian), scientific (evolutionary), and psychosexual reasons that women are inordinately inclined to favor the “security” offered by Big Daddy government intervention. This is not true for any other group, except, possibly, the homosexual community, if one accepts the homosexual argument that their abnormality has a genetic base.

3. His argument is that he has judged certain ideas to be bad, and because a majority of women support those ideas they therefore should not be allowed to vote. So why shouldnt I call for religious conservatives to be disenfranchised on the grounds that they vote for what I consider bad ideas?

What are hate crimes for? I fully expect the openly religious to be disenfranchised in the future. They’re already being fined. We’ll be fortunate if it stops with only losing the vote.

Well, a) I would be supporting an undesirable principle of exclusion; b) I understand that without the accountability that only comes with a universal franchise even good ideas will not be implemented well; c) I have confidence that as long as democracy endures the good ideas will eventually triumph. Vox Day does not have that confidence about his own ideas, it seems, which is why he wants them imposed by banning people from voting. 4. If women were denied the vote, they would protest,as they did in many countries before they got the vote, and many men would support them. The civil strife would be overwhelming.

He sees exclusion as undesirable; neither I nor the Founding Fathers do. What accountability comes with a universal franchise? I obviously don’t have that confidence, as I believe that most people, given the chance to vote themselves largesse from others, will do so every single time. History would seem to support this very strongly. The civil strife would be as nothing as what is going to happen once the present system collapses under the weight of centralization. One of the many nice things about women is that they’re not prone to serious violence.

No doubt Vox Day, who is willing to contemplate the mass murder thousands of Palestinians for a greater good, would not shy away from quelling the complainants with brutal force. But thats not libertarianism. Or Christianity.

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 2,233 Palestinians have been killed in the present conflict since mid-2000, more than 1,000 since I wrote the offending article. Apparently Bartholomew was more upset by a suggestion that might actually help bring a final end to the conflict than he is by the actual “mass murder” of thousands of Palestinians. Or perhaps he believes that refraining from the intentional murder of children is hopelessly beyond those dusky savages now that the British Empire has laid down the White Man’s Burden. But I don’t have to contemplate anything; the world is witnessing it. As for a need for force, I’ll take my chances. Generally speaking, the ladies would rather talk than fight.

Universal suffrage is neither libertarian nor Christian. A perusal of either philosophy would demonstrate that, as would the fact that voting is mandatory in many totalitarian states. Even the UN Declaration of Human Rights tempers Article 21 (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. with Article 29 (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

JR writes: I wanted to thank you the other day for an article that you wrote that helped me in my personal life. The message was men want respect and support from their mates. I started complimenting my husband more on his hard work, I made a daily effort….and also of my son. I found it worked tremendously in how they treat me now…. Your article works for both sexes. I just naturally assumed that the men were getting it from each other, at the golf course, at work, etc. You showed me a deep secret of truth that has helped me.

Hmmmm. I may have to rethink my mysogynistic master plan to oppress women and make miserable, powerless sex-slaves of them all. They seem to like it too much.

Papapete writes: Yours is the affirmative position. You have to prove your case. You have not done anything to credibly explain or describe the relationship.

Papapete is avoiding answering the points I raised previously. A broken clock is right twice a day, and incorrect 1438 times per day; since he can’t remember one, much less 2,872 of the anti-suffragists faulty predictions, it’s impossible to give any credence to his analogy. I never laid out a perfect chain of causality; as I stated before, there is no mathematical proof possible in matters as nebulous and complex as this.

Now, if women’s suffrage has had no effect on society, why would anyone object to it being eliminated? If it has had an effect, then what are those effects? Surely women have made some difference somewhere in 84 years! As for a specific description of the relationship, I thought it was obvious by implication, but apparently some people couldn’t follow it.

1. For whatever reason, women are inclined to favor security, (as represented by interventionist government), over freedom, (as represented by limited government.)

2. Women were given the right to vote in the USA in 1920.

3. Since 1920, women have reliably voted for politicians at all levels who are dedicated to increasing government intervention in society.

4. Government intervention in society has increased significantly since 1920.

5. Among the consequences of this increased government intervention is the forcing of women into the workplace and increased stress on the family due to steadily increasing inflation and taxes.

6. The resultant familial stress combined with the increased financial independence of women created an increased desire for divorce, the rate of which began to rise quickly ten years after women began entering the work force en masse. The combination also led to the development of modern feminist ideology, the direct result of which was widespread and legalized abortion and increased illegitimacy as more and more women substituted dependence on the government for dependence on an invididual man and her extended family for food, shelter and childcare.

7. The doubling of women entering the work force finally surpassed the two-thirds of 65+ men leaving the work force, (who were leaving as a result of the Social Security entitlement granted by the interventionist government), leading to the peaking of real wages in 1973. This has only increased the aforementioned stress, as it is now impossible for a single median wage earner to support a family.

Now, it is clear that women’s suffrage is not the only factor operative here, but given women’s reliable 9-12 percent bias towards increased government intervention and the average margin of victory in presidential, gubernatorial and senatorial elections, they can reasonably be considered a decisive factor.

D69 writes: What Reagan began was clearly a revolution. He was clearly on the road to re-establish the “founding principles”. I believe Eisenhower attempted this as well, but was in no way as successful. “Ike” was simply not the communicator that Reagan was. Our nation has been clearly downhill since Lincoln. There were some bright lights with “Teddy” and “Ike”, but Reagan may have been our last hope to restore the republic. I don’t think we will ever see anyone like him again. I hope I am wrong, but “everything is cycles” proves to be not the case. The second law of thermodynamics is more aptly applied here I’m afraid…

This is interesting to consider in light of the concept of socionomics. If Elliott is correct and society is broadly driven by waves of human emotion, the Reagan Revolution was a natural reaction to a down wave that brought the country to a cycular low. At such lows, it appears that the country moves in one of two directions – towards more “security” in the form of increased government as in the case of FDR, or towards more freedom in the form of decreased government as in the case of Reagan.

Now, the foremost Elliott wave theorist, Bob Prechter, is standing by 2000 as the beginning of a grand super-cycle wave down. He sees the current conflict as a minor prelude to what is inevitably coming next, which means that the country will be forced to face another opportunity to make its choice between freedom and security. Based on his technical system, Prechter is extremely negative in this regard, but even if he turns out to be correct about the grand super-cycle wave down, that does not necessarily require that people will embrace more of what got them into trouble in the first place. They probably will, but as long as there are those of us who will point to another, better way, the possibility of a third Reaganite revolution remains, the failures of the previous two notwithstanding.

I’m not saying that I think the odds are great, but that doesn’t trouble me much. Indeed, I take some reassurance from the helpless flailings of Republicans and Democrats alike, as the failures of their power-hungry ideology lead inevitably to enacting the same concept at the next level up. Hence the starry-eyed hope in the United Nations. The truth always comes out in time, the only difficulty is that it usually requires several generations to remember what was learned the last time around.

What we’re seeing with the destruction of the family, the destruction of the currency and societal loss of faith is nothing new. Students of Greece, Rome and China all recognize these things as symptoms of a society in the early stages of decline into Empire. Humanity has always survived such declines; it will survive this as well, and from the ashes of empire freedom and human liberty will rise again.

The Evangelical Outpost compares the suprisingly similar platforms of the Texas Republican Party and the Libertarian Party.

The primary difference, of course, being that Libertarians mean what they say. The Republican leadership, quite clearly, does not.

Discordia writes: Have you ever heard of the phrase “post hoc ergo propter hoc”? It’s a fallacy that states that because A happens after B, then it stands to reason that B caused A. I haven’t yet seen any actual concrete evidence that women’s sufferage actually caused any of the things you claim it did. Do you have any, and if so, can I see it? That’s not all. You seem to be arguing that women’s sufferage has caused “divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality and falling real wages”. How is this possible? You yourself point out that we don’t have a pure democracy, but a representative one. No one could selectively vote to relax divorce laws, or vote on a specific series of economic plans to cause a drop in wages.

Furthermore, I don’t even know how one would go about voting for illegitimacy or homosexuality. You have fallen prey to another fallacy – confirmation bias. In order to prove that sufferage is bad for America, you selected four things that have (at least in your opinion) worsened since. Again, can you actually prove that any of these things are connected to women’s voting rights?

Unlike the Human Pinata, Eris is taking a correct line of argument against my anti-suffragism. Can I prove the connection between the various social ills and women voting with mathematical certainty? No, because the social “sciences” do not permit such precision. But I believe I can make the case to a reasonable individual’s satisfaction.

First, a non-causal relationship is non-predictive. If one knows that it is raining in China, this does not help one predict the movement of gasoline prices in Wisconsin. Furthermore, as readers of science fiction know, long-term predictions are extraordinarily difficult. To accurately predict events 80 years in the future is hard enough, to do so based on wholly unrelated factors is massively improbable. One need only peruse predictions made in 1980 about what the world would look like in 2000 to see how difficult future projection is. As the Original Cyberpunk likes to say: “where’s my flying car?”

Despite this daunting improbability, the opponents of women’s suffrage were able, prior to 1920, to correctly predict the increase in divorce, illegitimacy and even homosexuality that we have seen realized 80 years later. As late as the mid-1980s, newspapers like the Star Tribune were mocking these old anti-suffragist predictions as being Neanderthalian lunacy disproved by subsequent events. (This was around the time of the introduction of the Susan B. Anthony dollar and I remember thinking what a bizarre concept it was, given the obvious increases in divorce and illegitimacy – although clearly we hadn’t seen anything yet.) Now, these accurate predictions do not prove the causal relationship, but they either indicate that a) the anti-suffragists were wildly and improbably lucky, or b) there is in fact a relationship of some sort, possibly causal.

Second, Eris appears to suggest that there is no link between voting and social changes This is shallow and silly, so I suspect mild disingenuousness here. No, one seldom votes for no-fault divorce, but one votes for the judges and state politicians who create the institution. The easiest way to demonstrate the probability of a historically causal link is to note who is defending such ills and attempting to perpetuate them. Unilateral divorce is initiated about 80 percent of the time by women and women are 40 percent more likely to live in poverty (and presumably receive welfare – no stats on that). Welfare reform, anti-abortion laws and divorce reform are all bitterly opposed by women’s groups and the political party that is primarily dependent on women; it would seem most strange to argue that these groups now defending existing laws did not support enacting them in the first place, and even stranger to suggest those now opposing such laws were originally in favor of them.

However, relevant law is not the only influence. The huge 250 percent jump in American divorce began in 1960, while the first no-fault law was not passed until 1969, halfway through that 20-year period. (The law was signed by Ronald Reagan, ironically enough). The salient factor was the massive entry of women into the workplace that began in 1950 – AFTER the war, before anyone starts up with that misguided line – and the direct connection between women voting and women working was made by both suffragists and anti-suffragists prior to 1920. I’ve already written on falling real wages, you can read that here if you like.

As I said before, none of this completely proves my point beyond any shadow of a doubt, but should suffice to demonstrate this is not a simple matter of post hoc propter hoc here. Still, the social changes brought about by the 50-year Congressional rule of the Democratic Party could never have happened without the women’s vote, for as the Party Chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party said: ““When women vote, Democrats win.” And the Center for American Women and Politics states that there is an average nine-point partisan gap in Congressional races, ranging to twelve percent in the previous Presidential election.

Left-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either it makes no difference who wins office – in which case the venom directed at socially conservative Republicans makes no sense – or the boost that women’s voting has given the socially progressive Democrats has made a significant impact on society over the last 84 years. “Progress” does not just happen on its own, the accident theory of history notwithstanding.

Finally, a comparison with Switzerland, where women received the right to vote 51 years later than in the USA, is telling. Only 30 percent of women now work outside the home, (59.8% in America), the divorce rate is less than half the American rate, (although it has risen five-fold since 1950), and abortion was only legalized in 2001. This comparison thus tends to support my contention that women’s suffrage is indeed a causal factor with relation to three of the four various social ills I mentioned. I’ll get to the fourth in my forthcoming response to Bartholomew.

BP writes: As usual you liberals try to make a Republican president sound “idiotic”. As you know ( because you are in “Mensa”) the quote you have taken out of context regarding religion was – CLEARLY – an attempt to say that the barbaric behavior of the Taliban was not part of the spirit of Islam. Meaning, most obviously to all but the most critical observer, that barbaric behavior has nothing to do with religion.

Right, that barbaric behavior has nothing to do with the religion of peace. Now, how about the barbaric behavior in the 34 other wars that are being waged in the Dar-al-Harb by the Taliban’s peaceful co-religionists. I’m sure those have nothing to do with religion too.

While I will agree it could have been stated better in THIS particular speech, you wait for one poorly worded sentence out of hundreds of speeches given each month – and use THAT quote to imply the president is an idiot. You go on to say, “all attempts at negotiation and reasonable accommodation are doomed to failure”. I say – you are EXACTLY correct. This is why this president has taken out the Taliban, restored some level of order to Afghanistan, taken out Saddam Hussein and his terror regime, began rebuilding and committing political suicide by asking for many more billions of dollars in an election year ( I guess this did not require any leadership on his part either?).

Political courage is spending taxpayer money? Are you sure you’re not a liberal? And what is it with people and math this week? Do you really think President Bush gives a minimum of seven speeches every day? Ten, if he takes weekends off.

In the same breath you liberals argue that we should not be there. Am I to assume you are saying that we should let these people continue to operate “status quo”? After we have been attacked AGAIN. Which is it folks? Pick a side, or at the very least pick a position!! As you say negotiating won’t work, apparently war is a bad idea too. Must be easy to sit there, wait for a bad quote and also not support ANY solution on the Islamic fundamentalists whatsoever, no matter what it is. You apparently support NOTHING.

If we get attacked again by Saudi-funded Saudi terrorists, what country will we invade next, Venezuela? They’re in OPEC too, after all. I have on several occasions suggested two very different alternatives, either of which will work better than the present course of action.

Great job….is what your (not) doing cowardice??

Perhaps, there’s a lot of things I’m not doing. Among them, writing to a notoriously illiberal columnist under the wildly mistaken impression that he’s a liberal. Are you feeling a little uncomfortable, conservatives? You should. This sort of thing is precisely why some left-liberals have rightly responded to my “Argue like a liberal” column by saying, hey, the right wing does it too.

There are no sacred cows. Passion is no substitute for logic.

JW bids us adieu: Let’s recap, shall we? 1) You refuse to seriously address any of the points I raised, particularly that of “original intent”, a point which you refuse to either justify or concede,but prefer to accuse me of “randomly blowing hot air”. 2) You confuse my letter with someone else’s, and then make sarcastic comments about MY reading comprehension skills. 3) You give me the nickname “Ace”.

Therefore I see little point in further correspondence discussing your ill-informed, ill-conceived opinions about women’s suffrage. You, sir, are nothing but a pompous big mouth— and you ain’t foolin’ nobody with that MENSA shit, neither!

For the third and last time, my dear Ace, I never made any argument based on “original intent” nor so much as even mentioned those words. Nor did I confuse your letter with someone else’s, I was simply trying to explain to you how you’d originally misconstrued my response to someone else’s comment as an original intent argument.

C’est la vie. Run along now.