Jonah Goldberg’s Pre-Voting Rights Act Mindset
In his latest Los Angeles Times column, National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg endorsed Jim Crow election law.
Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?
A voting test would point the arrow of civic engagement up, instead of down, sending the signal that becoming an informed citizen is a valued accomplishment.
Naturally, upon reading this, Oliver Willis was floored because you see, Jonah, we already tried that. In fact, in the American South they were referred to as Jim Crow laws until a little thing called the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Department of Justice notes this in their Frequently Asked Questions about the legislation. Take, for example, this passage:
What does the Voting Rights Act do?
The Voting Rights Act bans all kinds of racial discrimination in voting. For years, many states had laws on their books that served only to prevent minority citizens from voting. Some of these laws required people to take a reading test or interpret some passage out of the Constitution in order to vote, or required people registering to vote to bring someone already registered who would vouch for their “good character.” The Voting Rights Act made these and other discriminatory practices illegal, and gave private citizens the right to sue in federal court to stop them. In recent times, courts have applied the Act to end race discrimination in the method of electing state and local legislative bodies and in the choosing of poll officials. [emphasis added]
Goldberg, by his own standards, may be unfit to vote. Wouldn’t that make him even less qualified to engage in political punditry?
9 Comments, Comment or Ping
Matt Ortega
There are a few other really good pieces out there regarding Jonah Goldberg’s campaign to strip people of their most basic fundamental right as citizens of a democracy: their right to vote.
David Neiwert, as always, produces top-notch quality stuff. (Note the image the Los Angeles Times decided to run with the headline, “Should everyone vote?”)
Robert J. Elisberg picked up similarly on a point Neiwert makes: immigrants don’t take tests to vote. They take them to become citizens — a hugely significant difference. (Yet another civics lesson Goldberg botches in this piece.)
August 1, 2007
Matt Ortega
Jonah’s column reappears at the National Review Online under the title, “YouBoob.”
Oh the irony.
August 1, 2007
Doug Arnold
Has anyone considered that if such a law were enacted most of the Republican base wouldn’t be able to vote, snce they pride themselves on their ignorance and stupidity, and they believe the United States was created to be a toy for George Bush?
August 2, 2007
erick
Hey matt, the jim crow laws were an attempt to stop a certain race of people from voting, simply because of their skin color. Jonah’s idea is just a little bit diffrent, his idea is just to keep people who dont give two craps about polotics from voting. If you have to bribe someone to vote, do you really even want them to vote? I don’t think so.
August 2, 2007
kbrew
This article is ridiculous on it’s face. Jim Crow voting discrimination laws were anything but intended to induce a more educated voter pool — they began with the intent of creating a more white, in some cases purely white voting pool, and used voter registration tests as a means to that end. While wholly unpractical and borderline constitutional, if not completely unconstitutional, the concept of requiring voters to know what they are voting on is anything but ridiculous. How many voters each year are rounded up onto busses by party operatives and herded to the polling booths with specific instructions on exactly which lines to punch. Both parties do this. You can tell me that this is their undeinable right, but don’t tell me the country is any better off with these people making uninformed, if not misinformed, decisions on how much of your and my tax dollars will be spent and on what; or what freedoms you and I should be left with and which should be forfeited to whichever version of jack booted facists, right or left, happen to occupy the white house and capitol hill at any given time.
Witness last month’s debacle over the $1 Million earmark for the “Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure”. Despite the inability of any individual on the house floor to answer the simple question, “Does the center currently exist?”, the house rejected the measure to strip the earmark from the spending bill by a margin of 3-1. Were our esteemed representatives demonstrating good government by making decisions for us based on what was unarguably a complete lack of understanding of what they were voting on? How many citizens take the same careless attitude to the polls each year?
This is exactly the vision of democracy run amok that the founders deplored when they established our Republic — which is not the same thing as a direct democracy. Think of the last election you voted in. How many Judges and local representatives did you vote for having no prior knowledge of either candidate other than the following information printed on the ballot: Candidate A - Teacher, Candidate B - Lawyer? Would you feel your rights were severely abridged if that choice was taken away from you? How many americans vote for school bonds, levies, senators, representatives, even presidents with the same lack of knowledge? Requiring voters to pass a test is a concept so full of holes it makes your head spin. The consequences of an uneducated electorate, however, are no doubt worthy of discussion. How does an interest in this discussion make someone supportive of the Jim Crow era?
August 2, 2007
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