Posted on 09/15/2015 12:09:46 PM PDT by Steelfish
Now Is No Time to Be Voting for President Based on Emotion
by Thomas Sowell September 15, 2015 In a country with more than 300 million people, it is remarkable how obsessed the media have become with just one — Donald Trump. What is even more remarkable is that, after six years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor. No doubt much of the stampede of Republican voters toward Mr. Trump is based on their disgust with the Republican establishment. The fact that the next two biggest vote-getters in the polls are also complete outsiders — Dr. Ben Carson and Ms. Carly Fiorina — reinforces the idea that this is a protest. It is easy to understand why there would be pent-up resentments among Republican voters.
But are elections held for the purpose of venting emotions? No national leader ever aroused more fervent emotions than Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. Watch some old newsreels of German crowds delirious with joy at the sight of him. The only things at all comparable in more recent times were the ecstatic crowds that greeted Barack Obama when he burst upon the political scene in 2008. Elections, however, have far more lasting, and far more serious — or even grim — consequences than emotional venting.
The actual track record of crowd-pleasers, whether Juan Peron in Argentina, Obama in America, or Hitler in Germany, is very sobering, if not painfully depressing. The media seem to think that participation in elections is a big deal. But turnout often approaches 100 percent in countries so torn by bitter polarization that everyone is scared to death of what will happen if the other side wins.
But times and places with low voter turnout are often times and places when there are no such fears aroused by having an opposing party win. Despite many people who urge us all to vote, as a civic duty, the purpose of elections is not participation. The purpose is to select individuals for offices, including president of the United States. Whoever has that office has our lives, the lives of our loved ones and the fate of the entire nation in his or her hands.
An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship. If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship. If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on Election Day is stay home. Otherwise your vote, based on whims or emotions, is playing Russian roulette with the fate of this nation.
All the hoopla over Donald Trump is distracting attention from a large field of other candidates, some of whom have outstanding track records as governors, where they demonstrated courage, character, and intelligence. Others have rhetorical skills like Trump or a serious mastery of issues, unlike Trump.
Even if Trump himself does not end up as the Republican nominee for the presidency, he will have done a major disservice to both his party and the country if his grandstanding has cost us a chance to explore in depth others who may include someone far better prepared for the complex challenges of this juncture in history.
After the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, we are entering an era when people alive at this moment may live to see a day when American cities are left in radioactive ruins. We need all the wisdom, courage and dedication in the next president — and his or her successors — to save us and our children from such a catastrophe. Rhetoric and showmanship will certainly not save us. Donald Trump is not the only obstacle to finding leaders of such character.
The ultimate danger lies in the voting public themselves. All too many signs point to an electorate including many people who are grossly uninformed or, worse yet, misinformed. The very fact that the voting age was lowered to 18 shows the triumph of the vision of elections as participatory rituals, rather than times for fateful choices.
If anything, the age might have been raised to 30, since today millions of people in their 20s have never even had the responsibility of being self-supporting, to give them some sense of reality. We can only hope that the months still remaining before the first primary elections next year will allow voters to get over their emotional responses and concentrate on the life-and-death implications of choosing the next president of the United States.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3336954/posts
Now is no time to be re-posting articles already posted this morning.
One of the few times I’ve disagreed with Sowell.
Yeah! You Conservative Tea Party types will vote the way we want you to, after all, we know how to run this county!
So, let’s review — What, exactly, has a majority in the House and Senate got us with your “logical” candidates?
How about the Corker bill, which our leadership basically gave Obama the ability to force the IRAN deal without 50% of the vote? Yes, that’s right readers, our REPUBLICAN leaders GAVE OBAMA the ability to go around congressional approval for the Iran deal.....
Oh, trust us, vote for the pig in a poke.
Trump support isn't pure emotion but it can't be understood only using one's mind.
Vote Jeb or die!
I usually agree with Sowell but other than Cruz, I don’t think any of the other candidates besides Trump that will fight that hard for the American people and can be elected. Walker has good ideas but can’t generate the emotion from the American people that will push Congress in the right direction - I believe the GOPe will ignore him and likely will hamstring him. The governors are showing themselves to be compromised and Rubio is too green, soft on immigration and shows that he will buckle also.
I think we need someone to take over the bully pulpit and yes, emotions are extremely important in moving people - intellectuals and political junkies like a lot of us on the board are get attracted to Constitutional arguments. Sadly, our educational system under the leftists has gutted and distorted the knowledge and understanding of the Constitution to mean whatever leftist want it to say. A political campaign is not about detailed policy statements, it’s fundamentally a job interview and a sales pitch.
Bump
Now Is No Time to Be Voting for President Based on Emotion
OK so when IS IT TIME to vote based on emotion?
BOOB!
I am not emotional. I am not voting for losers like one of that harem of whores for the CoC and the GOPe have to offer.
My pledge:
I will, without emotion, vote for Trump!
See ya on primary day suckas!
Can’t we examine the evident Trumpoonery-Buffonery that is being dished out by a faux conservative who has no clue and cannot tell us how he plans to identify, locate, detain, and deport over 11 million illegals to over 20 foreign countries presumably using planes, buses, and ships,in the face of a likely rainstorm of court injunctions? And has no problem with reverse discrimination; gay marriage, funding Planned Parenthood,and abortion? What are we supposed to be? Trumbots?
Don’t we have a true conservative who is also electable like Ted Cruz?
Trump is causing the masks to fall off.
Tom? Get stuffed. You and your GOP or Die BS got us to this point with the help of the other talking head frauds who scream conservatism right up until the elections and then say “Oh just forget everything we said and vote for the people we trashed for 2/4 years.
Some of us see you have no more clothes than The Emperor when the chips are really down.
Here;s an idea...Go help Levin find his last inch. Apparently it’s galactic in it’s size and he can’t seem to find it.
National ‘GOP-E’ Review moving closer to 1000 anti-Trump articles.
Emotions? Not Trump, he has specifics, what about your candidate that is owned by a super pac???
Specific Details:
Secure the border, keep America safe.
Bring back jobs from China and Mexico.
Re-energize America’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Preserve Social Security and Medicare via Strong US growth
(not by raising taxes)
Make America energy independent.
Rebuild our Military and world-standing.
(not slow them down)
Re-establish trust with our allies.
Undo all America-harming Obama policies/deals.
Require countries we protect to contribute financially instead of taxing America.
Rebuild our roads, bridges,electrical grid, airports.
Support our military personnel ad veterans.
Stop corporations from moving jobs out of America.
Restore national pride and the American dream.
Stop countries from stealing our military technology.
Reduce our crushing national debt.
Prohibit countries from manipulating their currencies so US companies can compete.
What Trump is rallying is the desire to fight back against the demagogues who are destroying our heritage. Why tie our hands by automatically rejecting someone who shows he knows how to fight back? Trump is talking about restoring traditional America. Hitler, Peron & Obama were preaching "new orders."
Here is my piece on Obama's adoption of Hitlerian tactics, which includes not only what he was doing, but to what purpose he was doing it--an absolutely essential distinction, that Dr. Sowell ignores. (Leftwing Chickens Coming Home.)
EXACTLY
I can’t believe Sowell equated Trump with Hitler and Obama.
W.T.F.
My theory is that if Trump can’t survive the coming political Armageddon from our already transformed country, then who among our most conservative candidates can?
Certainly not Cruz, after the GOP unites with Wall Street and the George Soros funded interest groups join forces to take out Trump, who has become a movement, then anyone else who survives is done, or else is a dupe deemed acceptable to the progressive GOP. Who will fill that bill, with Trump gone? Jeb, or Kasich? Milquetoast.
What Sowell doesn’t get is that we’ve lost our ability to choose if Trump’s run out of the race. If he gets out, the establishment has it.
And 1775 probably wasn’t the best time to ditch the Brits either. Should have been other less deadly options. But there wasn’t, and there’s not.
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