Jarlaxle
Gold Member
So...people who CANNOT enlist can't vote? Piss off.The problem is, voting for a government has two very distinct considerations, which have nothing to do with each other, and they are in tension with each other:
(1) Consent of the governed. Allowing everyone to have a chance to have their interests defended, to exert influence, to keep the ruling powers from just doing whatever they like. Taxing all left-handed red-heads, for example ... give the left-handed red-heads a vote, and that's less likely to happen. If someone is not allowed to influence what laws exist, then why, morally, should they obey them? Just force majeure? This is the 'moral' argument for the universal franchise.
(2) Getting the 'best' government, the wisest one. Here is where the argument comes from for restricting the franchise to property owners, to males, to high school graduates, to those who can read .. people in government face difficult problems ... surely they should be chosen by thoughtful, intelligent, responsible individuals ... not low-IQ naifs who will vote for the politician who promises them the most free stuff.
This is why 19th Century liberals like Thomas Babbington Macaulay were in favor of restricting the vote. It's why even Leftists, sometimes, were in favor of restricting the vote, as were the Spanish Republicans and other Leftwingers in the early 1930s, when it was proposed to extend the vote to women in Spain. The Left feared, with good reason, that the newly-enfrachised women would vote as their priests advised them to. (The only instance I know of, of the Left opposing votes for women.)
My solution, which I know is just for fun, for provoking argument (and triggering sensitive over-emotional Lefties): everyone should be able to vote, but only by undergoing something that shows they're not completely self-interested, namely, successful completion of military service. If you want to help decide what the state does, you must show you're willing to, if necessary, sacrifice yourself for the state. This idea is not new with me -- it's stolen from a wonderful science fiction author, the late Robert Heinlein, developed in his novel Starship Troopers.