When the United States was first constituted, it was left up to the states to determine who was eligible to vote. In most states, only property owners were eligible. In most states, that included women and free blacks, though a few states did limit the vote to white male property owners.
Now, however strongly cultural Marxism conditions us to react negatively to such ideas, let us not forget that white male property owners are precisely the people cultural Marxism exists to defeat.
So let us put prejudice aside and consider the matter on its merits.
If you want a well-run country, you want savvy voters. And if you want savvy voters, property owners are the people you seek.
Why? Because a fool and his money are soon separated.
If you’re savvy enough to raise the capital to buy some property, or savvy enough not to lose the property you inherited, then you’re savvy enough to vote.
In that regard, property owners of both sexes and all colours are effectively indistinguishable from each other.
But.
John Lott and Lawrence Kenny have shown very clearly that that the real decline of America commenced about the same time as the 15th Amendment extended voting eligibility to women.
Specifically, in every state, they found the government growth curve to be a hockey-stick curve. And, in every state, the kink in the hockey stick happened exactly when women started voting.
Take a good look at figure 2 on page 1171 of the linked paper. It shows the per-capita size of government over a span of twenty years, centered on the time women started voting. For the first ten years, the size of governmnet remained roughly constant. Then women started voting. In the next ten years, the size of government doubled.
Recall that women who owned property were already eligible to vote, so the women who started voting at that time were mostly those who did not own property.
Bottom line: those who own property vote to limit government, and people who do not own property vote to make government bigger.
If Hillary Clinton gets in, the globalist plutocrats will embrace her and the rape of America will continue unabated.
If Donald Trump gets in, the globalist establishment will reject him and the resulting economic downturn will cause untold hardship.
However, the latter would be much easier to recover from.
The fact of the matter is, Trump resonates with the disenfranchised masses in fly-over country. It is only the progressive prisses of the left coast who find his positions “offensive.”
What we are seeing in this election cycle is the continued strengthening of the trend which has been apparent in the last three elections: the people are turning their backs on the false left-vs-right paradigm and voting according to the true schism in America: normal people vs politically correct epicenes.
This trend will continue to strengthen until something breaks.
The longer it is suppressed, the more violent its ultimate eruption will be.
He appeals to intelligent people who have managed to escape being lobotomized by the cultural Marxist propaganda that has passed for education and art for the last century.
Unfortunately, he has no hope of being elected, because there aren’t nearly enough such people to elect him.
Well, well… according to a poll conducted by Monmouth University, Johnson would take 11% in a three-way race against Trump and Clinton.
This is very encouraging!
Firstly, it signifies a huge gain over the 1% he got in the 2012 election.
Secondly, it means he has an excellent chance of exceeding the 5% threshold needed to qualify the Libertarian party for federal campaign funding in the 2020 election.
I think the United States should reform it’s election system so third parties have a fighting chance.
First of all, elections are decided by popular vote. Not by delegates, party leaders and electoral college.
Second, third parties can form coalitions with other parties to gain a critical mass against major parties, so everybody’s vote counts for something.
This means, for example, neither of the two major political parties could not afford to refuse working with the Libertarian Party (the country’s largest third party).
The problem with direct democracy is that crowds are easily stampeded.
This is especially true now, when news articles are written by software using artificial intelligence techniques to spin the story any way they want, where “they” can be, for example, a commercial advertiser, political action committee, or government agency.
The optimal way to spin the story served up to you is determined by the psychological profile of you, constructed by data-mining your internet click stream, google searches, credit- and debit-card purchases, social media posts, and the content of your email and voice conversations.
Spinning news stories is nothing new, but the technology to custom-spin each story for each individual reader in real time, so as to manipulate that reader’s opinion and behaviour with scientific precision – that is new.
And extraordinarily dangerous.
Direct democracy, under these circumstances, is no democracy at all. It amounts to a completely secret, plausibly deniable psycho-dictatorship.
The whole purpose of the electoral college is to counteract the danger posed by the easily-stampeded public.
Thus the area in which reform should take place is the structure and function of the electoral college, the mandate of electors, and the manner of their choosing.
No. I’m not in favor of direct democracy. I’m in favor of a democratic republic. We elect representatives and those representatives make decisions on our behalf. While we, as people, should not be able to directly vote on legislation and such, we have the right to select who our leaders are and we have the right to a meaningful choice. Representatives need to be selected by the people and not by bureaucrats.
The United States, currently has stripped us of our rights to do that.
Look at Canada. We elect our government directly. And we are every bit as disenfranchised as the US.
You are having another Clinton rammed down your throats, and we have just had another Trudeau rammed down our throats.
What could potentially work is a system whereby each county (or riding, in Canada) chooses an elector, and the electors choose the government.
But that wouldn’t work either unless voting were restricted to property owners.
Indeed, the details of the electoral system matter, but at this point they are secondary.
The primary root of disenfranchisement is, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, “the corruption and falsification of law, religion, education and public opinion.”
Why? Because it ensures that indoctrinated indigents will always drown out the voices of responsible and competent citizens.
This is how the people are effectively disenfranchised in every Western country.
It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.
– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, 1840
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
February 3, 2016 at 09:43
I LIKE this! Dr. Sowell is the best! 🙂
On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 8:59 PM, Xanthippas Chamberpot wrote:
> xanthippa posted: “https://youtu.be/29PuL5upmJs” >
February 24, 2016 at 13:35
I completely agree with Sowell. Elections are not homecoming pageants. Uninformed voters can show their patriotism by staying home.
March 3, 2016 at 02:58
Xanthippa:
When the United States was first constituted, it was left up to the states to determine who was eligible to vote. In most states, only property owners were eligible. In most states, that included women and free blacks, though a few states did limit the vote to white male property owners.
Now, however strongly cultural Marxism conditions us to react negatively to such ideas, let us not forget that white male property owners are precisely the people cultural Marxism exists to defeat.
So let us put prejudice aside and consider the matter on its merits.
If you want a well-run country, you want savvy voters. And if you want savvy voters, property owners are the people you seek.
Why? Because a fool and his money are soon separated.
If you’re savvy enough to raise the capital to buy some property, or savvy enough not to lose the property you inherited, then you’re savvy enough to vote.
In that regard, property owners of both sexes and all colours are effectively indistinguishable from each other.
But.
John Lott and Lawrence Kenny have shown very clearly that that the real decline of America commenced about the same time as the 15th Amendment extended voting eligibility to women.
Specifically, in every state, they found the government growth curve to be a hockey-stick curve. And, in every state, the kink in the hockey stick happened exactly when women started voting.
The published paper is here: Lott Jr, John R, & Kenny, Lawrence W, 1999: How dramatically did women’s suffrage change the size and scope of government? Journal of Political Economy, 107(6):1163-1198.
Take a good look at figure 2 on page 1171 of the linked paper. It shows the per-capita size of government over a span of twenty years, centered on the time women started voting. For the first ten years, the size of governmnet remained roughly constant. Then women started voting. In the next ten years, the size of government doubled.
Recall that women who owned property were already eligible to vote, so the women who started voting at that time were mostly those who did not own property.
Bottom line: those who own property vote to limit government, and people who do not own property vote to make government bigger.
March 3, 2016 at 10:16
Funny you should say that, CodeSlinger!
Actually – say and document….
Recently, a friend of mine has sent me a video – and I think that your comment and that video would make a perfect post together. I shall do so now.
March 24, 2016 at 14:17
Xanthippa:
Still waiting for this video to be posted…
March 24, 2016 at 15:02
CodeSlinger – it is posted as part of this post, scroll to the bottom:
http://blog.xanthippas.com/2016/03/03/the-role-of-women-in-the-destruction-of-the-western-society/
March 23, 2016 at 14:32
Sowell said in the video “I didn’t vote in the Nixon-McGovern election. It all depended on which kind of disaster you wanted.”.
I feel that way with the Clinton-Trump election.
March 23, 2016 at 21:31
Agreed…
Having said that: Gary Johnson IS running – and the candidate I would vote for were I an American, which I am not, so this is a bit of a moot point…
I may not agree with him on everything, but he is the best of a sorry lot…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Gary_Johnson
March 24, 2016 at 14:09
Juggernaut:
Yes, agreed.
If Hillary Clinton gets in, the globalist plutocrats will embrace her and the rape of America will continue unabated.
If Donald Trump gets in, the globalist establishment will reject him and the resulting economic downturn will cause untold hardship.
However, the latter would be much easier to recover from.
The fact of the matter is, Trump resonates with the disenfranchised masses in fly-over country. It is only the progressive prisses of the left coast who find his positions “offensive.”
What we are seeing in this election cycle is the continued strengthening of the trend which has been apparent in the last three elections: the people are turning their backs on the false left-vs-right paradigm and voting according to the true schism in America: normal people vs politically correct epicenes.
This trend will continue to strengthen until something breaks.
The longer it is suppressed, the more violent its ultimate eruption will be.
March 24, 2016 at 19:45
If the election were held today and I had to choose by gunpoint between the two, I’d probably pick Trump.
Bad changes can eventually lead to good changes but stagnation always results in stagnation.
March 24, 2016 at 14:14
Xanthippa:
Yes, Gary Johnson is a breath of fresh air.
He appeals to intelligent people who have managed to escape being lobotomized by the cultural Marxist propaganda that has passed for education and art for the last century.
Unfortunately, he has no hope of being elected, because there aren’t nearly enough such people to elect him.
March 25, 2016 at 12:50
Well, well… according to a poll conducted by Monmouth University, Johnson would take 11% in a three-way race against Trump and Clinton.
This is very encouraging!
Firstly, it signifies a huge gain over the 1% he got in the 2012 election.
Secondly, it means he has an excellent chance of exceeding the 5% threshold needed to qualify the Libertarian party for federal campaign funding in the 2020 election.
And that could make a huge difference in 2020.
March 25, 2016 at 15:28
This is most awesome news!!!
March 25, 2016 at 14:29
I think the United States should reform it’s election system so third parties have a fighting chance.
First of all, elections are decided by popular vote. Not by delegates, party leaders and electoral college.
Second, third parties can form coalitions with other parties to gain a critical mass against major parties, so everybody’s vote counts for something.
This means, for example, neither of the two major political parties could not afford to refuse working with the Libertarian Party (the country’s largest third party).
March 25, 2016 at 22:30
juggernaut:
The problem with direct democracy is that crowds are easily stampeded.
This is especially true now, when news articles are written by software using artificial intelligence techniques to spin the story any way they want, where “they” can be, for example, a commercial advertiser, political action committee, or government agency.
The optimal way to spin the story served up to you is determined by the psychological profile of you, constructed by data-mining your internet click stream, google searches, credit- and debit-card purchases, social media posts, and the content of your email and voice conversations.
Spinning news stories is nothing new, but the technology to custom-spin each story for each individual reader in real time, so as to manipulate that reader’s opinion and behaviour with scientific precision – that is new.
And extraordinarily dangerous.
Direct democracy, under these circumstances, is no democracy at all. It amounts to a completely secret, plausibly deniable psycho-dictatorship.
The whole purpose of the electoral college is to counteract the danger posed by the easily-stampeded public.
Thus the area in which reform should take place is the structure and function of the electoral college, the mandate of electors, and the manner of their choosing.
March 26, 2016 at 15:21
No. I’m not in favor of direct democracy. I’m in favor of a democratic republic. We elect representatives and those representatives make decisions on our behalf. While we, as people, should not be able to directly vote on legislation and such, we have the right to select who our leaders are and we have the right to a meaningful choice. Representatives need to be selected by the people and not by bureaucrats.
The United States, currently has stripped us of our rights to do that.
March 27, 2016 at 17:37
juggernaut:
That wouldn’t help.
Look at Canada. We elect our government directly. And we are every bit as disenfranchised as the US.
You are having another Clinton rammed down your throats, and we have just had another Trudeau rammed down our throats.
What could potentially work is a system whereby each county (or riding, in Canada) chooses an elector, and the electors choose the government.
But that wouldn’t work either unless voting were restricted to property owners.
Indeed, the details of the electoral system matter, but at this point they are secondary.
The primary root of disenfranchisement is, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, “the corruption and falsification of law, religion, education and public opinion.”
Why? Because it ensures that indoctrinated indigents will always drown out the voices of responsible and competent citizens.
This is how the people are effectively disenfranchised in every Western country.
It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.
– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, 1840