Judson Phillips, president of Tea Party Nation, thinks that it makes sense that voting rights in the United States should be restricted to those who own property. He believes that property owners have more of a “vested stake” in a community than do people who do not own property. That’s what he claimed on a weekly program hosted by Tea Party Nation recently.
BTW, Phillips is the individual who sent an email to members of his organization in October telling them that they should vote for the Independent candidate over Rep. Keith Ellison in the November election for 5th Congressional District in Minnesota. Phillips wrote the following about Ellison in his email: “There are a lot of liberals who need to be retired this year, but there are few I can think of more deserving than Keith Ellison. Ellison is one of the most radical members of congress. He has a ZERO rating from the American Conservative Union. He is the only Muslim member of congress.”
Meanwhile—Rushbo ranted on about poor folks recently on his radio program. In a “media tweak of the day,” Limbaugh asked listeners if they thought that people who can’t feed and clothe themselves and who receive government assistance should be allowed to vote. It was just a “think piece” Rushbo said as he asked his listeners to imagine how different the political make-up of this country would be if such people couldn’t vote.
In a Psycho Talk segment on his MSNBC program, Ed Schultz “tweaked” Limbaugh back.
Maybe Phillips and Limbaugh ought to get together to establish an organization for the purpose of taking voting rights away from certain Americans whom they deem unworthy. Why not return to the good old political days when only property-owning white men had the right to vote. Right???
Sources:
– Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
I just couldn’t depart your web site prior to suggesting that I really enjoyed the usual info a person provide to your visitors? Is going to be again continuously to check up on new posts
ekeyra, knowing very little about Limbaugh I was only just able to interpret your comment as a reference to an addiction problem suffered by Limbaugh a decade or so ago. Looking at more recent events I notice that Limbaugh gave a keynote address to CPAC and extracted an apology from the chairman of the Republican National Committee after the latter made disparaging comments about his influence.
I suppose this really says more about the marginalism of Mr. Limbaugh’s many enthusiastic followers than it says about the plausibility of his opinions. He is an effective communicator, even though the American people having heard his opinions always reject them.
Tony
I think after you guzzle a pharmacy inventory worth of oxycotin from your maid you dont really get to be taken seriously?
I’ve always looked askance at those laws that disenfranchize community members. The most notorious of these are, I suppose, those that deny convicted felons the right to vote. We all know how well that worked out in the 2000 election.
It seems astonishing to of that just a generation ago many countries such as the United States and Britain were widening the franchize by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 and, in the southern US, getting rid of the ancient, disreputable racial impediments to voting. Now people who expect to be taken seriously are proposing drawing back the reach of democracy.
personally i like robert heinlein’s starship troopers model for voting citizenship. full citizenship requires military service. (air national guard doesn’t count).
Also, the inherent irony in limbaugh’s discussion of only allowing property owners to vote is rendered gut-bustingly funny if you acutally do have a libertarian mind-set because no matter how destitute, everyone is a self owner. You own your body, it is your property. Therefore you could deny noone the right to vote since everyone is technically a “property owner”.
Meps homework, ponder this:
Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
– Jean-Paul Sartre
Chan
There is no “solution” to chaos. It is inherent in nature, and the uncertainty of life is what makes it worth living. If someone told you how and when you were to die, wouldnt it syphon some of the exhileration of living? The not knowing? There will always be murderers and theives and rapists and frauds. Their number however, is relatively low in relation to the number of people who go about their lives harming noone. If this werent the case and the psychopaths outnumbered or even came close in number to ordinarily good people, we would have no way of stopping them anyway.
That being said, funneling widespread individual acts of aggression and the lesser qualities of man and condensing them into a “government”, which is nothing more than the organization and monopolization of violence is a much greater recipe for disaster than having faith in the general morality of your fellow man.
The example I always give is this: what is more frightening, hitler the furher with the might of an army and the resources of an entire nation, or hitler the guy who paints your house and mumbles about jews under his breath? Both are capable of acting on their basest instincts of hatred and predujice, but the scale of atrocity commited by the house painter can in no way match the scale attained by the hitler who organized an entire nation into genocide.
So I guess I dont have an answer for you but I do not feel uncomfortable not having an answer to the infinite possibilities that life presents us, good and bad, on a daily basis.
ekeyra:
what is your solution for the madness? Can Buddha’s democratic socialism eradicate it? In my opinion democratic socialism is what we have now. Democratic socialism is the problem.
People who are traders “deal with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment.” A society of traders would not want to engage in foreign wars because “trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble.”
Although “democratic socialism” has managed to profit on wars since WWI, progressives like Buddha call it fascism and blame capitalism.
Correct me if I am wrong but there is really very little difference between fascism and socialism. They both consider man to be subservient to the state.
In summation if you are poor in america you get food stamps, and free cell phone service. If you are poor and live in Iraq you get cluster bombs and perhaps a missing limb. Paid for and delivered by the same people. It is madness. It is the very chaos buddha wishes to eliminate.
Hmmm
To elborate more on my point about taxes funding wars, just as you advocate the punishment of people who do not contribute to the well being of their fellow man, the same government that enforces that code also punishes those that do not wish to pay for the destruction of their fellow man. It is a schizophrenic system that usurps the power of the many to fund what they believe is right and enhances their lives, and delivers it into the hands of psychopaths who dole out generosity with one hand and genocide with the other. Whichever you recieve being ultimately a matter of circumstance rather than merit.
Why would anyone prefer to live free of an enforced ethical system?
Perhaps the ethics you enforce are not they’re own. Perhaps they dont agree with or understand your ethics. You would be outraged if women were stoned to death for committing adultery, and rightly so. Yet there are societies that deem this moral, ethical, and good.
You’re also conveniently forgetting that those taxes which pay for your preferred social welfare also subsidize america’s grand adventures in mass murder across the globe. There is no way to seperate the two. You cannot petition the government to please only use your money to feed the poor and not blow them up. Its as far from ethical as you can get.
ekeyra:
“What you are actually advocating is a system of theocracy based on what you and adam smith deem to be “moral” behavior.”
********************
That is precisely what Adam Smith did and why I am an ardent follower. It’s not theocracy by definition but an ethical system. Would anyone really prefer to live free of an enforced ethical system? By the way, we enforce benvolence everyday with every tax dollar paid to social welfare. That’s what makes the conservatives scream.
Meps, i would actually agree with you that adam smith is not the laissez fare economist most people see him as. However, this was not our disagreement. Our disagreement was whether or his labor theory or value is correct. You still have not challenged that.
Also you cannot enforce benevolence. You disconnect the act with the sentiment if it is done so only in an effort to avoid punishment and aleviate ones own suffering rather than aleviate the suffering of the recipient of your generosity. To advocate that kind of enforcement of human behavior is not to advocate any type of economic system. What you are actually advocating is a system of theocracy based on what you and adam smith deem to be “moral” behavior.
Chan,
Sorry i missed your questions. My mom taught me how to read before i ever attended public school, so i dont know if that counts but that would be the extent that i was home schooled. As for economics, I would consider myself and amatuer but by no means would i classify my interest as merely a hobby.
see what you learn when you ask questions rather simply making huge assumptions like some people around here…
Radical opiner; floundering, lifting money aquired by others.
See what I mean about your poor English skills?
Probably not.
roflmao?
red opiner floundering lifting money aquired by others?
Yes. I did answer. You just didn’t like the answer, Mr. Selfish.
You make me laugh.
You still havent answered my question about the limits of the moral sentiment.
Good deflection technique, you learn that at the ACORN SCHOOL FOR LIBERAL PROPOGANDISTS?
roflmao
You run along little socialist apologist.