<I thought your claim was that it is Liberals and Democrats who are elitist.

Your argument here appears to be that if only people were smarter, they would vote the same way you do.

Like many of your arguments, this one is fallacious.



What exactly is fallacious? A more intelligent electorate (not necessarily the most "educated," which would probably put a Marxist in office) would probably vote more intelligently. I never said they would vote like I would, but given the voting patterns in the past elections I can see where you might jump to that conclusion. ;)

As for elitism, I'm sorry, but some people ARE smarter than others (again, don't confuse this with "more educated."). This does not automatically class them as better than others, but they ARE smarter, more skilled, more talented, etc. This is not really "elitism," it's just common sense.

I've always thought of the word "elitism" to define people who think they are better or more important than others for irrelevant and stupid reasons, like who your grandfather was, where you live, how much money you have, what color you are, what clubs you go to, and other dreck.

Many politicians in Washington definitely think they are the elite. You only have to listen to one for ten minutes. You know which ones they are. They claim near-absolute power, the ability to control almost every aspect of your life, based on the fact that they were elected from a voter base which simply requires the voter to be breathing, and in some parts of the country like Chicago, not even that.

I find this a little disturbing. Imagine being at an airport, getting ready to fly a plane cross country. The announcement comes that the pilot will now be selected, and would volunteers come up please for selection? About six people come forward, each gives a little speech on their qualifications, and a vote is taken from the rest of the passengers on who gets to fly the plane. With many of the voters, the fact that only one has a pilot's license is important. With other voters, how the prospective pilot looks and speaks is important. With others, the promise of one of the candidates to provide first-class service through the whole plane is important. With other voters, how their friends are voting is important. With some, they just pick the first one in line. The vote is taken, and someone is selected. If you are lucky, and the passengers reasonably bright, it'll be the guy with the license.

Do you fly, or decide to take the bus?

Like I said, we've chewed over this problem of Pure Democracy before. Granted, it might be a good idea to restrict the right to vote at least slightly, but how? Many ideas were put forth, including a lot of good ones, but all had problems. I'm not sure anyone wants to open this can of worms again.

At a bare minimum, in my opinion, we should insure that only legal citizens can vote. Is that too much to ask, that at least a voter be a legal citizen? Also, some form of valid ID should be shown at a voting booth. I have to show something with my mailing address on it, in addition to an ID, to get a dumbass library card downtown, but right now in California my dog could show up, sign my name, and vote for me. Given our current representation in State government, I suspect that a lot of dogs have actually done this.