Gotta say, good as today's post was, I'm not sure it's all that much better than the reality. No doubt Roy trumps (pun intended) reality, just not so sure by how much.
And apropos the reality, let me do a copy+paste regarding same:
Williamson: "...we should have fewer but ‘better’ voters if you know what I mean..."
I dunno... The Rs get elected in large part because of a cohort of voters who believe their role in life is to suffer unless they can make themselves into, uh, ubermenches and, as such, everyone must suffer as well, no one's suffering can be alleived. Even people who don't believe in their need to have the shittiest life possible can't be helped.
And with the unfit pieces of shit they elect, we get continued racism, an extractive, exploitative, impoverishing economy and extremely fucked up and insensible foreign and military affairs.
To state the obvious, because that's my thing, all the unfit pols who've turned the nation into a failed state (see, response to the pandemic, 2020), were nearly all elected to office (or appointed by others elected to office). It's on the voters who elect them.
So I'm not so sure about the use of the word better. I have my doubts.
(Back in about 1990 or so, after listening to Rush Limbaugh for the first time, I said to myself, "This man *despises* democracy and the democratic process." And here we are.)
John Derbyshire - now there’s a blast from the past, if by “blast” you mean “wave of fecal sludge released from an unregulated Iowa pig farm.”
Meanwhile, Williamson is as terrible a writer as he is a human. His prose should carry a warning label, “Unrestricted exposure may induce Buckley Syndrome and Hindrocket’s Dementia.”
Some of us remember Antonin Scalia opining that there is no right to vote because it does not appear explicitly written in the Constitution. Therefore, the Founders never intended for "the people" to ever have any say in their government or governance.
In his desire for an electorate as he imagines it Should Be (rather than the rabble of Wretched Refuse he finds), he seems to be channeling Late Racist Georgia Governor Lester Maddox (a man who’d ride a bicycle backward at sports events because he could: perhaps a metaphor...), who said, regarding Penal policy in the Peach State: “What we need is a better class of prisoner...”
How I love a well-turned phrase wrapped up and warped out with a common sense modestly proposed sensibility. I must confess I had to look up Fleisch-Kincaid and found to my delight which I usually reserve for myself alone an automatic checker. Hours of checking pleasure await in my microcephalic future.
Have never read Kevin Williamson's garbage but if this is a fair parody of his writing style, it is ponderous and tendentious to say the least. I love the way, in your parody of him, he never really makes an actual argument against for or against voting; he just lobs ad hominem insults and dubious historical assertions that have been part of the tired cliches for what passes as conservative thought for decades. I much prefer Paul Weyrich's cynical but direct crudeness:
"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Unsurprising that Williamson's piece is as gutless as he is. He wastes 1500 words to tell us that voters are stupid (i.e., disagree with him), voters cast votes that are bad (i.e. result in policies he might disagree with), and, worst of all, voters are "unqualified." But not once in this sea of elitest bullshit does he actually have the balls to come out and say just what it is that makes some voters "qualified" or "better" and how such qualifications might be determined. With the exception of an aside that he would raise the voting age to 30 (without offering any rationale for it), he never explains whom he intends to exclude from his American dream of "fewer — but better — voters." The root of democracy is "demos," and that's his problem with it.
Here's one way to we might get his exclusionary purge started: the right to vote should be denied to anyone who doesn't believe it exists.
Really looking forward to 2024, when some Republican actually campaigns by attacking his opponent as belonging to "the party of Walter Duranty," and absolutely every Democrat says "...who?" and 48 hours later absolutely every Republican is acting convinced we hold secret weekly meetings to sacrifice animals on an altar dedicated to Walter Duranty.
Brilliant.
Kevin D. Williamson: standing athwart history, yelling “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
And what's underlying today's post is discussed here:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/04/time-to-set-the-days-since-national-review-published-article-explicitly-calling-for-the-intentional-disenfranchisement-of-voters-meter-back-to-zero
Gotta say, good as today's post was, I'm not sure it's all that much better than the reality. No doubt Roy trumps (pun intended) reality, just not so sure by how much.
And apropos the reality, let me do a copy+paste regarding same:
Williamson: "...we should have fewer but ‘better’ voters if you know what I mean..."
I dunno... The Rs get elected in large part because of a cohort of voters who believe their role in life is to suffer unless they can make themselves into, uh, ubermenches and, as such, everyone must suffer as well, no one's suffering can be alleived. Even people who don't believe in their need to have the shittiest life possible can't be helped.
And with the unfit pieces of shit they elect, we get continued racism, an extractive, exploitative, impoverishing economy and extremely fucked up and insensible foreign and military affairs.
To state the obvious, because that's my thing, all the unfit pols who've turned the nation into a failed state (see, response to the pandemic, 2020), were nearly all elected to office (or appointed by others elected to office). It's on the voters who elect them.
So I'm not so sure about the use of the word better. I have my doubts.
What a lovely human being.
(Back in about 1990 or so, after listening to Rush Limbaugh for the first time, I said to myself, "This man *despises* democracy and the democratic process." And here we are.)
John Derbyshire - now there’s a blast from the past, if by “blast” you mean “wave of fecal sludge released from an unregulated Iowa pig farm.”
Meanwhile, Williamson is as terrible a writer as he is a human. His prose should carry a warning label, “Unrestricted exposure may induce Buckley Syndrome and Hindrocket’s Dementia.”
Voting is only for those that vote Republican? If that's true, we'[re doomed. I assume you're being satirical.
Some of us remember Antonin Scalia opining that there is no right to vote because it does not appear explicitly written in the Constitution. Therefore, the Founders never intended for "the people" to ever have any say in their government or governance.
OK, I actually went and read his eviction column, just to see if he's as big a scumbag as everybody seems to think.
If anything, he's worse.
I swear, rich people will let ANYBODY blow them.
In his desire for an electorate as he imagines it Should Be (rather than the rabble of Wretched Refuse he finds), he seems to be channeling Late Racist Georgia Governor Lester Maddox (a man who’d ride a bicycle backward at sports events because he could: perhaps a metaphor...), who said, regarding Penal policy in the Peach State: “What we need is a better class of prisoner...”
LOL, the egghead kicker nails it: "the Fleisch-Kincaid score for this column is 20.1"
How I love a well-turned phrase wrapped up and warped out with a common sense modestly proposed sensibility. I must confess I had to look up Fleisch-Kincaid and found to my delight which I usually reserve for myself alone an automatic checker. Hours of checking pleasure await in my microcephalic future.
That KDW column reeks like old fish guts. I wish we could go back to Hog Holler with Maisiebell and Methedrine.
Have never read Kevin Williamson's garbage but if this is a fair parody of his writing style, it is ponderous and tendentious to say the least. I love the way, in your parody of him, he never really makes an actual argument against for or against voting; he just lobs ad hominem insults and dubious historical assertions that have been part of the tired cliches for what passes as conservative thought for decades. I much prefer Paul Weyrich's cynical but direct crudeness:
"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Unsurprising that Williamson's piece is as gutless as he is. He wastes 1500 words to tell us that voters are stupid (i.e., disagree with him), voters cast votes that are bad (i.e. result in policies he might disagree with), and, worst of all, voters are "unqualified." But not once in this sea of elitest bullshit does he actually have the balls to come out and say just what it is that makes some voters "qualified" or "better" and how such qualifications might be determined. With the exception of an aside that he would raise the voting age to 30 (without offering any rationale for it), he never explains whom he intends to exclude from his American dream of "fewer — but better — voters." The root of democracy is "demos," and that's his problem with it.
Here's one way to we might get his exclusionary purge started: the right to vote should be denied to anyone who doesn't believe it exists.
I regret that I have but one (stranger’s) cell phone to hurl across the theatre at Mr Williamson’s essay.
Really looking forward to 2024, when some Republican actually campaigns by attacking his opponent as belonging to "the party of Walter Duranty," and absolutely every Democrat says "...who?" and 48 hours later absolutely every Republican is acting convinced we hold secret weekly meetings to sacrifice animals on an altar dedicated to Walter Duranty.