Typical conserva-think: women vote for Democrats, so women shouldn’t have the vote.

Instead of the logical: if we want women to vote for Republicans, perhaps the Republicans should serve that constituency, instead of demonizing them.

The Republicans are just pissed that their women-oriented scare tactics—abortions bad! homosexuals comin’ for your children/husband!—aren’t working anymore.

They went to the trouble to draft scare tactics specifically for you women, and this is how you pay them back?

Tsk, tsk.

But the real argument, if you can call it an argument, against women’s suffrage is that a majority of women don’t [vote] the way that The Derb wants them to.

You left out a word there, presumably “vote.”

I was making the exact same point in Pam’s thread, but I think it’s very important to add the following thing: the Republicans have a policy of systematically disenfranchising demographics who vote for Democrats.  All of their unneeded laws to supposedly prevent voter registration and voting fraud, the draconian policies on disenfranchising convicts who’ve served their time, sending the police out in force during election day to minority districts, electronic voting machines—they pursue them because they know that it prevents people from voting who would vote against them.

Eliminating women’s suffrage is just the extreme of a continuum whose more moderate spots they practice.

Oh what – you mean Derbyshire has emerged from the swamp of his own stupidity just long enough to advance another risible “idea”? I thought that Humbert-wannabe was too busy ogling nubile young teenagers to be concerned with what adult women do.

I’ve heard his “argument” before – that woman are inclined to vote out of self-interest, which is somehow vastly different from how men vote, and so women can’t be trusted to do what’s right for the state. It’s a remarkably….collectivist….position coming from the sort of person that believes Rugged Individualism™, and a rifle with lots of ammo, are all that’s needed for the average Randian He-Man to survive after the collapse of civilization.

The tea-baggers, for example, are all about self-interest – and stocking up on guns n’ ammo. But they’re also the most likely to harbor this kind of idiotic misogyny – because self interest, while absolutely fantastic most of the time, is evil when women do it.

Fuck, but the Derb is stupid.

We all seem to forget that somewhere, some group of think-tankers decided that the best way to proceed, philosophically, was to say things that make liberals angry. This grew into an entire political philosophy, until it was actually copied over as the Republican Party platform.

Why would Glenn Beck say that he left his car running for ecology? Why do conservatives “slip” and call blacks “colored”, Asians “Oriental”, etc.? Because somebody had the great idea that to be an asshole was the best way to “win” their ideological arguments.

Derbyshire, who once suggested that Chelsea Clinton had to be murdered, for some reason, is a complete idiot who subscribes to this line of attack. Because if a liberal calls him an idiot, then all liberals are name-callers. If a liberal reaches back to their heels and punches the guy’s teeth out of his head, all liberals become unhinged and resort to violence.

There is no logical argument why women’s sufferage should be rescinded, just as there is no logical argument why the government shouldn’t save money by administering health care. And the press giggles, and plays along.

In 50 years, I will be dead. I sometimes look forward to that time.

That’s why I suspect they aren’t even being serious so much as using this issue as a way to stir up hatred and resentment[.]

This is what right-wingers are always doing. They are never “serious” about what they say. They don’t even meet the weakest condition for being “serious” about anything: possession of a conceptual framework within which there exists an objective “reality” in relation to which factual assertions are “true” or “false”. Their minds just don’t work that way. All they are ever doing is shoveling shit against the tide.

Conservatives: one step forward, 50 steps back.

Change of any sort scares the bejesus out of those people. And once that change has been established as the norm, even scarier, ‘cause it will only mean more forward motion.

Women voting - booga, booga! Women voting for a black president - booga, booga, booga, booga!

Women can no longer be trusted to vote for the old white guys who ignored them.

Ergo: women don’t deserve the vote if the’re only going to abuse it.

“If you think you can just repeal half the population’s right to vote because you don’t like the outcome, then why even bother with democracy in the first place?”

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?  They don’t really want “democracy” with its small chance that things won’t go their way. 

What they want is one of those dictator elections where the Great Leader gets 99% of the vote and you’re left to wonder why they even bother to pretend there were 1% who voted for somebody else.  They want the imprimatur of an election without the element of chance, and, of course, without any real competition.

They were serious when they were talking about a permanent Republican majority.  Seriously disturbed, but still serious…

I was making the exact same point in Pam’s thread, but I think it’s very important to add the following thing: the Republicans have a policy of systematically disenfranchising demographics who vote for Democrats.

I think it’s even simpler than that, courtesy of an interesting commenter at Balloon Juice who was a poll worker for many years.  She came to the conclusion that Democrats thought of voting as a right, and Republicans thought of it as a privilege.  So when people came to the polls with their IDs, Republicans were looking for any reason to refuse that ID and not let the person vote.  For them, even common things like a recently married woman who was registered under her maiden name but brought her marriage license with her to show why the name was different meant she should be turned away and not allowed to vote because her papers were not in the proper order.

That’s another reason for the “felons can’t vote” laws—if voting is a privilege like a driver’s license, then, sure, the state can take away privileges all day long.  However, if it’s a right, then they have to show how it’s in the interest of the government to deny someone their right.

Derbyshire has the emotional intelligence of a toddler.

We all seem to forget that somewhere, some group of think-tankers decided that the best way to proceed, philosophically, was to say things that make liberals angry. This grew into an entire political philosophy, until it was actually copied over as the Republican Party platform.

No. Just…no. For too long, those assholes have gotten away with their excesses by making this very claim: they weren’t serious. It was a joke. ‘Hyperbole is what pundits do.’ When Dan Riehl suggested the murdered census worker was lynched for being a pedophile, he was just kidding. When Ann Coulter suggested killing abortion providers was merely an extreme form of late term abortion, she was joooooking.

Not only is that their strategy; it’s their excuse—for everything. That way, they never, ever have to own the chunkets of fecal matter that falls out of their lying faces.

Now that their “jokes” are racking up a very real body count, they can either admit they’re serious and defend their sociopathic nonsense against all comers, rather than being permitted to back-peddle, or they can shut the fuck up. Those are the only options they should be permitted.

In other words, I don’t care if they’re “joking”: I’m going to treat them as if they’re serious—which includes forwarding threats against public figures to the appropriate authorities, and pointing out the gigantic, mac truck sized flaws in their idiot arguments.

Maybe men’s suffrage should be rescinded. And then, maybe, restored on the basis on some kind of basic sanity check, you know, the kind that Derb would fail with flying, uh, colors.

(Seriously. Imagine the career length of a progressive writer who devoted a chapter to arguing that men should be denied the right to vote because they’ve done such a bangup job with it during the past 200 years.)

Tell me am I being naive here? Maybe we should be glad that conservatives like Derbyshire and Coulter are making the argument that women should not be able to vote. Maybe we should encourage conservatives to get as loud as they want to on this subject, and as shrill. I wonder if they are actually making a strategic error. What do y’all think, am I vastly underestimating the intelligence of the American public?

Excuse me, I meant vastly overestimating the intelligence of the American public. And myself apparently.

atheist, too many of these people would happily take away women’s right to vote…and then the next day complain that Republican women can’t vote and it’s ACORN’s fault…

The “Christ, what an asshole” caption never, ever, ever grows old, as it is always appropriate.

Comment #8: Mnemosyne on 09/30 at 07:33 PM

I think it’s even simpler than that, courtesy of an interesting commenter at Balloon Juice who was a poll worker for many years.  She came to the conclusion that Democrats thought of voting as a right, and Republicans thought of it as a privilege.  So when people came to the polls with their IDs, Republicans were looking for any reason to refuse that ID and not let the person vote.  For them, even common things like a recently married woman who was registered under her maiden name but brought her marriage license with her to show why the name was different meant she should be turned away and not allowed to vote because her papers were not in the proper order.

That’s another reason for the “felons can’t vote” laws—if voting is a privilege like a driver’s license, then, sure, the state can take away privileges all day long.  However, if it’s a right, then they have to show how it’s in the interest of the government to deny someone their right.

I have to agree, except that I don’t think the Democrats are very good at defending the right to vote either.  This is one of the things that has struck me the most from my 10 years living in the USA (moved to California from Puerto Rico)—for a very rich country that prides itself on being a democracy, it doesn’t seem like there is any serious committment to making sure that people can and do vote, not even among the Democrats.

There’s all sorts of big and little things I’ve observed that make me think this.  Voting in many states is regularly supervised by partisan state officers (alternative: an independent office with commissioners from all registered parties who choose the electoral commissioner by consensus).  Voter registration drives are done by partisan private organizations, while the state governments do very little to help people register to vote, like, for example, by regularly operating mobile voter registration vans (that’s how I first registered to vote in college).  Election days are not holidays; you usually have to get time off from work to vote (which the employer must grant by law in California, but yeah, right, get serious).  Felons not only can’t vote while they serve their sentence (which I disagree with, though I can half-understand it), but are barred from voting in many states after they’ve served their time.

Comment #10: The Devil’s Advocate v 1.1 on 09/30 at 07:45 PM

For too long, those assholes have gotten away with their excesses by making this very claim: they weren’t serious. It was a joke. ‘Hyperbole is what pundits do.’ When Dan Riehl suggested the murdered census worker was lynched for being a pedophile, he was just kidding. When Ann Coulter suggested killing abortion providers was merely an extreme form of late term abortion, she was joooooking.

Not only is that their strategy; it’s their excuse—for everything. That way, they never, ever have to own the chunkets of fecal matter that falls out of their lying faces.

There’s also the fact that joking about somebody is one of the prime forms of expressing contempt about them.  It’s why children call other children names.  Getting other people to join in the joke is a form of communal contempt.  (And the joke doesn’t need to be genuinely funny on its own merits.  It’s all about portraying the target as contemptible; laughter at the “joke” is not so much appreciation of good humor as it is a performance of contempt.)

comment #10 - Actually, Devil’s, I said nothing about joking. It is an abject hatred of “duh librul” that lends sense to doing anything that makes liberals angry. Thus, anything anti-left fits the frame.

It’s only then that Glenn Beck can joke that he’s letting his car run for ecology. It’s not a joke, it’s his way of whipping it out and pissing right on your living room rug.

None of it has to make sense. But if they make liberals angry, and that liberal anger is palpable, then both sides are equally to blame for the partisanship, etc, blah, blah, blah. And all they have to do is run out the clock until the next election. They could hop on one leg and cluck like chickens if the media would report on that in their chosen frame of partisanship.

I’ve always contended that liberals should start picketing churches. We should start pushing for laws that dictate that children can’t be taught religion until they’re adults and can decide for themselves. Make conservatives waste their time fighting bills that are complete nonsense, instead of us fighting arguments that are designed to waste time, exhaust motivation, and stifle real debate on real issues.

Any time spent countering arguments that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote is time not spent advancing productive arguments.

We’ve basically spent the first year of Obama’s presidency fighting for a fraction of a basic right that the rest of the Western world enjoys, and to a much richer degree than we’re even proposing.

Think about that. We’re arguing with paid picketers over passing laws to stop insurance companies from commiting fraud.

atheist, too many of these people would happily take away women’s right to vote…and then the next day complain that Republican women can’t vote and it’s ACORN’s fault…

I’m with atheist.  They have no chance of actually taking away the right to vote for women, so why not trumpet their desire to do so from the rooftops?

Hell, start up a grassroots “Republican” group to have it put on the agenda as a Constitutional amendment, on the grounds that you poor little darlings are too affected by your hormones and cycles to exercise the vote responsibly, and should stick to the kitchen. Or whatever other language would be most likely to get right up people’s noses.

The reason we’re seeing this is because of the regurgence of Rand into the American discourse. She believed very strongly that women were too emotional to vote (well, not her naturally, but she reserved a lot of exceptions for herself) and that the emotional side of us would make us succumb to the machinations of the socialists.

As for Coulter, of course she parrotted that opinion. Good God look at the woman and tell me she hasn’t spent her entire life in pursuit of being a living, breathing Dominique Francon.

Maybe men’s suffrage should be rescinded. And then, maybe, restored on the basis on some kind of basic sanity check, you know, the kind that Derb would fail with flying, uh, colors.

(Seriously. Imagine the career length of a progressive writer who devoted a chapter to arguing that men should be denied the right to vote because they’ve done such a bangup job with it during the past 200 years.)

Oh man, I love that idea. Not the idea of men actually having their voting rights rescinded, but the idea of somebody making that argument.

And then when people ask them if they’re serious, they could respond with “I am exactly as serious as (X conservative pundit) was when they said (Y ridiculously wingnutty thing that people get all “they were just jooooooooooking” about when they totally weren’t). You tell me how serious I am.”

Me, I am basically just sitting on my hands waiting for one of these jokers to propose reinstating primogeniture. These are exciting times!

That’s why I suspect they aren’t even being serious so much as using this issue as a way to stir up hatred and resentment against women for being uppity and voting for who they want, instead of who they’re told to vote for.

Or they’re playing bad cops—even the bigger misogynist dumbasses I’ve known wouldn’t go along with this idea, but it’s excellent cover for their more mundane woman/feminist hatred “of course I think women should be allowed to vote, but...”  Kinda like the GOP minority-kid photo ops; nobody actually thought they were going to be good for minorities, but the more susceptible-to-guilt swing voters felt better about their self-serving votes because of them.

She came to the conclusion that Democrats thought of voting as a right, and Republicans thought of it as a privilege.

Republicans think of everything as a privilege except possibly gun ownership—that’s how some groups of people know they’re superior to other groups.  And just for the hell of it & because I’m a Jane Austen fan, I’m including this quote:

“Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved.’‘

Oh man, I love that idea. Not the idea of men actually having their voting rights rescinded, but the idea of somebody making that argument.

Robert Heinlein did this years ago.  He then went on to add the suggestion taht the franchise be limited only to mothers.

I believe it was an essay in the “Expanded Universe” collection.  Assuming I still have them around, I try to remember to take a look tonight.

The reason we’re seeing this is because of the regurgence of Rand into the American discourse. She believed very strongly that women were too emotional to vote (well, not her naturally, but she reserved a lot of exceptions for herself) and that the emotional side of us would make us succumb to the machinations of the socialists.

I’m more interested in the irrationality of the male discourse.

The real question: how many cigars and how much liquor has he offered Doug Giles for a night of abstinent buttfucking with “Kenya”? 

Or is she too far past her prime for Perbyshite?

I remember Starship Troopers suggested that only the military be allowed to vote.

No, it was people who had served in the military (or related service).  You earned the vote after your designated enlistment service (whether you went back to civilian life or re-upped and stayed int he military).

Sometimes I’m firmly of the opinion that people really should adopt the Buzz Aldrin Debate Method.

For those of who don’t know, Buzz Aldrin was confronted by one of the lunatic “Moon Hoax” idiots, who acted much like Coulter or Beck or Limbaugh or some other crank would on the topics they go on about.  He accused Aldrin of being a liar, in on a conspiracy to mislead the world, and insulted Aldrin’s daughter (who was there) for good measure.

Aldrin decked him.  One punch.  Google it, and you should find the video.  It’s hysterical.

Can we expect Derbyshire to call for taking the vote away from blacks, Hispanics, Jews, atheists and so forth, all of whom predominantly vote Democratic (I believe in each case more so than women do)?

alternative: an independent office with commissioners from all registered parties who choose the electoral commissioner by consensus

Or here is another alternative - take the election process away from registered parties altogether.  I get that the US system is more permeated with political appointees, I really do, but it is entirely possible to have purely administrative task run on a purely administrative basis.  See:  nearly everywhere else.

(I speak from the perspective of the UK here, btw.  We have occasionally had our voter fraud scandals, most recently surrounding the ability to manipulate the wide-ranging postal vote system, but nothing that would be solved by having party political appointees anywhere near the voter registration system.)

Also, to whomever accused this man of having the emotional intelligence of a toddler - on behalf of my toddler, I object.  She’s got a lot of emotional intelligence - most children do.  It’s a child’s emotional intelligence, which is different from an adult’s, but present nonetheless.

More accurately, this man has the emotional intelligence of a rock.

His “argument” is that a) women didn’t used to have the vote and b) anyway, they vote for Democrats.

Revisionism—yuck.  Most men didn’t have the vote either in most nations in the west until relatively recently, too.

You guys call this “extremism” (and I see why) but in a way, women’s suffrage is still an extreme, fringe view, taken within the context of human history and globalism.  What I mean to say is, it’s not surprising this crops up, still, even in the so-called “enlightened” West.  My rights (to work, to have sex before marriage, to use birth control, to have an intellectual life, to own property and my own person, to not be beaten, raped, chattelled, whatever) are so frighteningly recent and, as I see it, very tenuous indeed.  It was when I realized that what I view as “normal” and “entrenched” has only really had a 40-year lifespan, and only in parts of this world, that I embraced feminism with a vengeance.  The weight of human history and dissenting traditions press in.

Y’know, Derbyshire sure doesn’t sneak up on anybody and surprise them by being an asshole. He’s never felt the need to pretend he’s anything but and it was amusing when he turned his ire on Jonah Goldberg. I’ll give him that. He pretty much wears a metaphorical cowbell at all times, clanging away “asshole, asshole, asshole.”

You know, when Derbyshire lists the reasons why women vote the way they do, it sounds like this is the only correct way to vote to maintain a stable, humane society, and therefore, since men don’t vote that way, I suggest we take the franchise away from *men*. After all, we are a larger percent of the population than they are, and we live longer, and we prioritize children higher than men do (since children can’t vote, having proxies who prioritize their needs highly is the only way kids can get representation). In short, women, both as themselves and as proxies for children, represent about two-thirds of the human population, and therefore we should take the vote away from that pesky selfish one-third that keeps voting to go to war.

Sadly, that crap I just spouted actually makes more logical sense than Derbyshire’s suggestion, which can only even be *envisioned* in a world where women and children are not people…

As for giving suffrage only to women, you could actually make a ton of arguments to support that.  Of course, I wouldn’t want to take the right vote away from any citizen (I think the right should even be extended to felons and some teenagers).  However, it’s the conservatives who insist that women are so empathetic and caring, and men are just selfish and only look out for themselves unless you trick them into helping you out (by withholding sex or whatever).  So from their own point-of-view, women would vote for candidates that actually help society and everyone in it, including the menz, whereas the men would just vote for their own personal interests at the expense of everyone else.

Can we expect Derbyshire to call for taking the vote away from blacks, Hispanics, Jews, atheists and so forth, all of whom predominantly vote Democratic (I believe in each case more so than women do)?

I believe a compromise of giving them 3/5s of a vote might be acceptable to our friend.

...it was amusing when he turned his ire on Jonah Goldberg.

Details! NOW!!!

For a really fascinating read on the cultural roots of why the Republicans are insane, please click on the following link:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/21/784599/-Yo,-Pundits!-Heres-Whats-Up-With-the-Republicans

I did not write the above article; I just find it absolutely fascinating how the seeds of the extreme right appear to have started in the borderlands of Scotland prior to the establishing of the American colonies.

Trust me - it’s eerie how Derbyshire’s “women don’t need to vote” comes straight out of the Scottish borderlands male-dominated, women-should-be-submissive-and-obedient-or-else culture. 

Great read.

You know, I think that women like a certain 97 year old who remembers when her mother was first permitted to vote would happily beat this bastard to death with their walkers for saying shite like this.

“Details! NOW!!!”

It’s not quite as pissy as I’d remembered, so I may have found the wrong thing, but here. Edroso, naturally, details it. Goldberg says people with Darwin Fish on their cars are hypocrites because they’re attacking Christianity, but would be mad if Goldberg attacked Islam. Derbyshire responds along the lines that ‘Na-ah, some people with Darwin fish may hate Islam just as much as they should, which is a lot.’ Goldberg suggests Derb shouldn’t be disagreeable and that they should get together and hate a stupid feminists’ essay on “Firefly.”

Seriously.

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/search?q=“Jonah+Goldberg”+and+“Derb”

then why even bother with democracy in the first place?

It took me a while to notice this (though it should be obvious), but modern conservatives aren’t big fans of democracy.  It seems that most of them would be fine with having government run by corporations, without the formality of elections every few years.