Universal Suffrage created a situation where wives are cancelling out their husbands votes, and not in favor of limited government, the presence of a child or children notwithstanding. There are scores of childed liberal women, who can and do possess the ability to take care of themselves, voting out of their husband's pockets as well as their own. Stick in their faces a picture of a starving child of whatever color and their reactions, for the most part, are based on feeeeeelings, not logic......
Not necessarily -- teens and children as a group are "disenfranchised" in this context and suffer no abuse and persecution -- and we have right now abuse and persecution of groups that DO vote via Affirmative Action. "Minorities" enjoy its benefits but are largely not responsible for its enactment and continuation.
You do bring up an interesting question - is a Married woman sitting at home going to be considered "capable of taking care of herself"? After all she is a dependent of her husband. I wouldn't want to create a situation where Marriage or stay-at-home child-rearing would be discouraged. Perhaps only functional families should get a vote.. i.e. Two parents, with children? Or Does one need to stay at home? Problem is, I don't want encourage people who should never get married and have kids to get married and have kids either. I guess I would prefer that individuals were allowed to vote vs. opening this tangled can of worms.
You can also have a liberal metro-sexual man's vote cancelling out a rational woman's vote because of the War on Manliness. I will grant that the number of times that occurs is less, but preventing women from voting isn't going to solve it. The effeminate man's vote will cancel out the manly mans vote. We are playing statistical games with individual rights- and those statistics may change over time. Men may no longer even be a "safe" constituency.
Affirmative action is the same sort of game- where statistics are used to "prove" discrimination- its just rigged to benefit them instead of us. The minority in that case is "White conservative Male" and the Majority is "entitled asshats". The liberals invented the "have not" as their faction- the fact they they "have not" because they provide little or no value to others for which they are voluntarily paid being dismissed as unimportant. What we need to ensure is that "entitled Asshats" never have a majority, because the first thing they will do is use political power to abuse the rights of those who "have" because they do provide value. They will never be able to achieve power if they can't bribe people to vote with tax dollars, and you are disenfranchised because you choose to be a non-contributing zero.
As for children, one could argue ( and you know a liberal would) that children were not protected by law until the "progressives" came along and implemented child labor laws, mandatory education laws, etc, and they would have some color for it. But what is the "entitled asshat" party if it isn't the party of infantile adults trying to shirk adult responsibilities? They are the party of children- who, almost by definition, cannot care for themselves. But yes, Children are disenfranchised, and they have in years past suffered abuse, enslavement, and worse at the hands of govt- particularly if there was no loving, hard working set of parents around them to protect them. And it will happen again.
Disenfranchising those who cannot take care of themselves means that those who can't or won't be responsible adults will suffer. Why do you think the "entitled Asshats" are in lala land talking about infinite money supply? Support systems under what we propose will be "inadequate" and will not offer such people "security" nor "dignity"-- and that is by design, because they should have neither- at least not if obtained at gunpoint. . Sadly that also means the children of such people will probably also suffer. That is why before the ascension of the "entitled asshat" party children were forced to work dangerous jobs in factories - they were made to by their entitled asshat parents. Crime will also go up, because the barbarian horde who have a tendency to disregard the rights of others ( all liberals) will no longer be receiving the tribute required to keep them quiet and non-aggressive. Like Jefferson we can chose to pay off the Barbary Pirates or go to war with them. There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
Butterworth's NAR has the advantage of using a tried and true system that we know worked for a long time. However, its also the same system that eventually failed. It was men who voted to give Women Suffrage. It was men who were convinced of the justice of it. Its was men who loved and respected the judgement of their own wives and daughters that approved of it.
It's not just the bonds of love; it's a Biblical prescription for the respect of a man toward his wife and a proscription against the abuse whether or not love is present.
I think is it a mistake to accept the (very Liberal) idea that the Government (or the Nation) is like a family. The govt is our servant. Not our Mother. Not our Father. Not our Nanny. Any viewpoint that assigns a parental role to govt functions is liberal invention ( ala George Lakeoff and his model) - The Bible speaks to the role of a Christian Father- it is not a good model for the role of a govt.
Porretto's take also rebuts Butterworth's
I understand Porretto's point about the Civil War vets ( and the same happened again under FDR with WWI vets) becoming their own special interest group, but those who have served and placed their life on the line for the nation, should never have their right to vote revoked. If they volunteered ( weren't drafted) and put themselves in harms way for the nation, it should be presumed that they have enough interest in the nation to want to to the right thing. The same should be assumed of their spouse, who let them put the nation before even the well being of their own family. That of course doesn't mean that every vet is a saint that won't abuse such power, but if there is anyone whom our society owes an unpayable debt, it is to those who make such sacrifices. I would love for our nation's largest problem to be how to pay the unreasonably large pensions of (war) veterans. If you served but didn't see combat, then I think Porretto's restrictions are reasonable.
I don't much like Porretto's landed requirement either. We have seen that abused too many times. Being "landed" in this country still requires many to get a loan, and those loans are only available because "entitled asshat" FDR forced banks to provide them. The whole thing is far too easily manipulated - and you would end up with a very small and select number of people being able to vote. Again, this is a return to "tried and true" - and it was also eventually rejected by the same people who set it up as unjust.
Suffrage should be as widespread as it possibly can be while still protecting the inalienable rights of the individual. The second Mob Rule Democracy is used as justification to use the government as a weapon to violate the rights of any individual and sacrifice his interests to the common good, is the second where suffrage has been extended too far.
