Posted on 08/03/2007 4:07:47 AM PDT by theothercheek
Are some people simply too stupid, uninformed or mentally incompetent (second item) to vote? Though the very idea seems "un-American," Jonah Goldberg, suggests that "[m]aybe the people who don't know the first thing about how our system works aren't the folks who should be driving our politics, just as people who don't know how to drive shouldn't have a driver's license." Goldberg notes:
A very high percentage of the U.S. electorate isn't very well qualified to vote, if by "qualified" you mean having a basic understanding of our government, its functions and its challenges. Almost half of the American public doesn't know that each state gets two senators. More than two-thirds can't explain the gist of what the Food and Drug Administration does.
Goldberg hastens to add that this doesn’t mean Americans are stupid, "[r]ather, it's that millions of Americans just don't care about politics, much the same way that I don't care about cricket: They think it's boring."
No, Americans aren’t stupid – just ill served by the institutions that are supposed to educate and inform them.
Public schools are not turning out graduates who can perform basic calculations used in daily life – even using their fingers. Quick: If a pair of pants is reduced from $65.00 to $25.00 and the store takes another 15 percent off at the register, how much will you shell out for the pants†?
Even more calamitous than not being able to mentally calculate a store discount using grade-school multiplication and subtraction, a new study of 3,260 elderly patients published in the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that regardless of their state of health, those who were medically illiterate – that is, unable to read prescription labels, appointment slips and instructions on how to prepare for an X-ray – were 50 percent more likely to die within the next six years than those who could read and understand medical information.
Previous studies suggest that as many as 90 million Americans are medically illiterate.These same Americans may be voting on ballot initiatives having to do with stem cell research, global warming, universal health care coverage and other contentious and complex issues.
It’s not just the piss-poor public school education indolently doled out by unionized teachers getting paid private sector middle-management level salaries in large cities (teachers average $57,354 in NY, $59,345 in CA and $61,195 in Washington, D.C. per 10-month school year - nine months if you factor in Spring and Winter breaks). Commenting on Ann Coulter’s contention that the MSM routinely gets major stories wrong The Stiletto wrote (third item):
[T]hough many journalists are college and/or journalism school graduates these days, they are too often utterly innumerate and scientifically illiterate. They simply do not have the knowledge needed, nor the analytical skills required, to understand and explain many of the controversial issues on which they are asked to report. And whatever they don’t understand, they leave out. So the resulting articles and news reports are incomplete and inaccurate - and biased.
So in addition to being unable to process mathematical, medical, scientific and technical concepts and data, Americans get their information from journalists who are equally unable to process mathematical, medical, scientific and technical concepts and data.
The inevitable result? A confused, uninformed, easily misled electorate.
Goldberg wonders whether "cheapening the vote by requiring little more than an active pulse (Chicago famously waives this rule) has turned it into something many people don't value" and suggests that "the emphasis on getting more people to vote has dumbed down our democracy by pushing participation onto people uninterested in such things."
His remedy: "Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people on the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?" And if that doesn’t work: "threaten to take the vote away from the certifiably uninformed."
If only.
[† $21.25; 15 percent of $25.00 is $3.75]
Anyone without a high school education should not qualify to vote. Anyone that does not pay Federal Taxes should not be allowed to vote in Federal elections.
It happens that James Taranto is a high school drop-out. Despite my disagreeing with him on open borders (he doesn’t care who comes into this country and how as long as big business has a cheap labor supply to exploit; the existence of G-d (he is an atheist); and whether the Armenian Genocide is a historical fact (Taranto is an Armenaian Genocide denier), I think he can pass Jonah Goldberg’s test. Plus I think his income from The Wall Street Journal is high enough that he pays federal taxes. So maybe you should make an exception in his case.
How about anyone who pays property taxes gets to vote... even if they don't reside in the State? See any problems here?
Hmmm...can anybody, really?
I can: Not much.
Imagine if a legislator proposed such a thing. His career would be cinders long before it hit the ground.
And yet, going in the reverse direction - even suggesting that “Undocumented Americans” should vote - is somehow not a career-killer.
Since that would result in 95% of incumbents losing their seats the first election it was tried, don't count on seeing it happen any time soon. ;)
Yup.
hmm I don’t pay any federal taxes though I would if there was a federal sales tax. There was no federal income tax before the 16th amendment and we relied on tariffs.
I would not get the right to vote even though most Americans don’t know the difference between the 16th amendment and a Sweet 16.
BTW, like him or not, James Taranto is not a high school dropout. He attended Cal State Northridge but did not receive a degree.
Hey, it wasn’t my idea. I know there’d be all sorts of problems with that proposal. :-)
the test should be designed by the same people in charge of immigration. otherwise you’re going to have questions like “do you think gay marriage should be legal?” “No? sorry you can’t vote.”
It shouldn’t be all that difficult to design a factual politically unbiased test on basic American history and government. I remember taking those kinds of tests back in high school. That probably dates me, but so what?
it shouldn’t be all that difficult to design an simple, unbiased tax code but...do you see what the problem is? Government is in charge of the design.
Only strong competition from smarter countries will force us to institute smarter policies.
Designing tax codes is many times more complex than designing a factual test on history and government (civics). There is a heck of a lot more consensus on the year the Declaration of Independence was signed than on (for example) what the maximum marginal tax rate should be.
Smarter countries? We're just as smart as anyone else in the world when our government uses common sense - which isn't too often, I'll admit. We've already designed the smartest system of government. The problem is to get smarter people involved in the managing of it.
No, this isn’t the same article as the earlier Jonah Goldberg article. It’s a commentary on the earlier article.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.