Posted on 10/17/2001 10:00:53 PM PDT by Benighted
Benighted, perhaps you could ship it off to Bill O'Reilly....and Carrie_Okie could write a novel!!!!
I agree.
Doesn't it, though? And a sad "lifetime" at that.
Best wishes in return, nunya. Take good care.
Hmmm.... Seems to put the State in the same league with serial rapists and murderers, doesn't it?
But, of course, they do so disingenuously, don't they? All of the hand-wringing and cries of despair over "low voter turnout"--could they have ever profited otherwise? (rhetorical questions)
It's interesting that Kitzhaber (apparently) decided against a run for the US Senate after the publication of this article. That's a victory not to be overlooked, I suppose (small though it is). Of course, in a perfect world....
...January of 2003, President Bush’s new federal prosecutor will have come into office, Dan Rather will be sniffing around the state capitol building, Oregon will have a new governor, the new governor will have a new staff attorney, the attorney general will have a new deputy, the Court of Appeals will have a suddenly vacated seat for the new governor to fill and, under minimum sentencing guidelines, the federal corrections system will have four new residents for a very long time to come, the rest of the government will confess their sins and retire to monasteries, and sweet reason will descend upon the land.One can always hope.
And then they wonder why the public is becoming apathetic about voting.But, of course, they do so disingenuously, don't they? All of the hand-wringing and cries of despair over "low voter turnout"--could they have ever profited otherwise? (rhetorical questions)
My own thesis is that statist politicians are striving to achieve a pair of divergent goals. On the one hand, they want to represent their deeds as having a mandate from the masses. On the other, they want to prevent those outside their charmed circle from being able to block, oppose, or question their actions. When the subject is voter turnout, this puts them in a position of some discomfort.
If the voter turnout were to fall much lower than it is today -- say, down to the 25% level -- the political class would no longer be able to claim a mandate with a straight face. It would be entirely too obvious that the electorate had despaired of the vote as a tool by which to rectify political problems. All by itself, that might force them to change their agendas, even to introduce real differences between the major parties. (GOP loyalists must swallow hard here, but there has not been a detectable difference in principle between the two major parties in at least sixty years. They work toward the same ends, albeit at different rates, and decorated by different rhetoric.)
But a surge in voter turnout to the 65% or 70% level would mean that the time-tested strategies for manipulating the electorate, upon which the major parties have come to rely, would no longer be reliable. There would be too many independent voters who studied the candidates and the issues closely, too many persons who cast their ballots for reasons other than party affiliation, too many persons who cast their ballots for rather than against. I'll go deeper into this at some later time; check the Palace in a week or two.
So the status quo of roughly 50% participation in national elections and 30% participation in state and local ones is probably the degree of voter turnout the statists want. And though they clamor like champions at voter "apathy," I am persuaded that it's a facade that conceals a satisfaction we must not see.
Who was it who said "If voting could change anything, it would be against the law" -- ?
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
I guess if one must resort to hope, then one might as well hope BIG. ;-)
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