The American Conservative: If Your Side Wins, Do You Care How the Winner Was Selected?
The American Conservative: If Your Side Wins, Do You Care How the Winner Was Selected?
Divisions over the nature of voting are pushing American democracy into a new phase.
The great constitutionalists, from Aristotle to Montesquieu to Madison, believed that the populace should have a voice, but they also thought, with Cicero, that the well-being of the people was the highest law. Survival and flourishing is most important, not pandering to popular passions.
Any small “r” republican knows that a good society divides up power among authorities, repositories, and mysteries, such that all are checked and balanced; neither the bounder nor the mobile vulgus can become tyrannical. Pluralist theory seeks both safety and stability in multiplicity. The wisdom of crowds—and brokering institutions.
This article seems like an oppinion piece that is fear mongering
I found it talks way too much about ancient Greece and Rome and France in 1789. To me, I read it as: "The way elections work in the US means almost nobody gets a real say anyways, so why even have a voting system? Voting wasn't even a thing for most of history." I'm scratching my head wondering why someone would argue elections should be eliminated instead of reformed.
Why do you think it's fear mongering?
I'll concede the other two. It is an opinion piece after all.
They frame voter fraud as a widespread thing happening everywhere, but their own source link in the article says 1500 proven voter fraud, 1200 something convictions - which is a small fraction of the whole.
They fear monger about immigrants and undocumented voting but I've yet to actually see a real source that says this has happened and is happening on a large scale.
The whole thing is fear mongering fraudulent elections but there's no proof that happened at a scale large enough to actually influence the result in 2016 2020 or 2024.
I thought this was a good read but a flawed conclusion from a flawed premise.
I greatly disagree with the author's characterization of the VRA.
And his victim mentality that conservatives have been discriminated by the federal government since the 80s the same way that blacks were discriminated against in the south is pathetic.
That being said I agree that the growing entrenchment is a problem, that tit-for-tat gerrymandering is a problem, and there is not an easy solution when we cast our political enemies as world-ending fascists that we must defeat in elections. No one wants to weaken the advantages they've given their side when they delude themselves that winning the election is life or death.
I wish the article's author would have presented a solution rather than just summarizing the problem. Maybe he did, and I just missed it. Until we de-escalate the rhetoric surrounding "the other side" I don't know if there is a solution.
and there is not an easy solution when we cast our political enemies as world-ending fascists
I think this misses the mark of our current situation.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/jack-posobiec-jan-6-2024-cpac-rcna140225
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nbc-news/
"If there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you got a table with 11 Nazis."
It is a justified characterization of conservatives as fascists.
Until we de-escalate the rhetoric surrounding “the other side” I don’t know if there is a solution.
Why would we seek to de-escalate the rhetoric surrounding "the other side" when the other side is openly embracing and defending neo nazis?
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/gop-popular-front-white-nationalism/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-nation/
How much of this can they do before you're OK with labeling them as fascists?
I think it is currently a HUGE problem that the current conservative political machine is courting neo-nazis and white supremacists. The fact that Jack Posobiec spoke at CPAC is a travesty and shows how unserious the current GOP has become. I have no problem calling these people fascists. Thats exactly what they are.
I still don't believe that is representative of even the whole or even just the majority of conservatives. I think it's valid to call out the "normal conservatives" for siding with the extremists because they have to in order to have a shot to win elections. I think thats the problem that the article author Identified but got wrong when he whined that Democrats are empowering election fraud by supporting the Voting Rights Act and not taking the draconian measures like some red states have. They've deluded themselves that the ends justify the means.
Maybe it shouldn't be our responsibility to listen, but that just entrenches the existing divisions. If we want the 10 conservatives to stop sitting at the table with the 1 Nazi, (and I do) you have to let them have a seat at the serious table. If the only person that will talk to them is the 1 Nazi, they are gonna be 11 Nazis pretty soon.
I don't like the path we are on with current political polarization of every aspect of American life. Like the other article from Discourse that was posted said, I think we get along fine when we don't talk about politics. I want to be able to have disagreements and still get along because when we interact we moderate ourselves and each other. I want conservatives to have a voice because the tit-for-tat politics we have now lead to these big pendulum swings where we empower once fringe voices such as Donald Trump.
Did France get better amidst that radicalism? For the answer, we can brush up on our Burke.
This guy read some book, and confirmation biased himself.
And yes, yes, supporters of the VRA have their arguments, based on past discrimination. We might acknowledge that and then reply, what about present-day discrimination? The federal government has been discriminating against conservatives for the past six or so decades—doesn’t the right now have the right of redress?
Indeed, if Blue thinks about designating favorites to seats, why shouldn’t Red? Maybe sometimes—oftentimes, in fact—what’s most important is that your side wins. After all, fair is fair: Since they’re doing it to you, you do it to them.
The result of this approach would be a kind of representational equity
Oh gosh, Republicans have been so oppressed! Republicans have suffered so much discrimination for the past 6 decades! It's unfair! We need representational equity!
Absolute nonsense. 6 out of the last 10 presidents were republican. if you look at the history of congressional elections since Johnson, republicans have been overall pretty evenly represented in Congress with some notable majorities.
What makes republicans nervous is that over the past presidential cycles, they have been winning with decreasing popular vote margins, decreasing to the point that the last republican president won without the popular vote. To win the presidency at all, republicans must now rely on the electoral college, an unfair system that artificially boosts the voting power of rural and sparsely populated states - red states.
But that doesn't stop them from crying that they are the victims of unfair oppression and discrimination, while relying on gerrymandering and trying to restrict voting in ways that disproportionately affect minority (read: democrat) voters. They keep repeating the große Lüge (big lie). Shameless.