Whatever the
outcome with the latest wars and rumors of wars, folks interested in creating a
brighter future, wherever they are in the world, need to find ways to defend
and rebuild what is essential to human flourishing in society – in particular,
one of the most foundational of those elements, the family.
Last July,
J. D. Vance, a candidate for US Senate in Ohio, made a policy proposal in this
regard to a gathering of conservatives that sounds somewhat unorthodox: Give parents with children more political
power than people without any. In his own words –
‘“The Democrats are talking about giving
the vote to 16-year-olds,” Vance noted. “Let’s do this instead. Let’s give
votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes
to the parents of the children.” He continued, asking, “Doesn’t this mean that
nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that
parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions?” He answered with a simple
“yes” after saying “the Atlantic and the Washington Post and all the usual
suspects” would criticize him.’
The ‘usual
suspects’ did go about criticizing his proposal as ‘anti-democratic’ and so forth, but it is
actually Mr Vance and not his opponents who can make a better case for the
morality and fairness of his position.
And it is in the interest of conservative-minded people that a case in
his defense be made.
Since the
Civil Rights era in the middle of the last century, there has been an
ideological crusade in the United States to make the vote of one person equal
in power to that of every other person.
This is an absurdity worthy of the philosophes of the French
Revolution, with their ruthlessly geometrical redesigning of their political
order driven by their burning desire for Equality. But inequalities in voting strength will
always exist because of a number of factors:
eligible voters who don’t vote, people who move to another location
before legislative redistricting occurs, etc.
And perfect political equality wars against the truth of hierarchy, that
the opinions of some people are of more worth than those of others.
The
political tradition of the US and of Mother England has always tended to reject
the abstract, revolutionary notion of voting and representation and to accept
the more practical and historically rooted notion of them.
Dr Russell
Kirk gives us the traditional English view in The Conservative Mind:
‘The genius of English polity is a spirit
of corporation, based upon the idea of neighborhood: cities, parishes, townships, guilds,
professions, and trades are the corporate bodies which constitute the
state. The franchise should be accorded
to persons and classes insofar as they possess the qualifications for right judgment
and are worthy members of their particular corporations; if voting becomes a
universal and arbitrary right, citizens become mere political atoms, rather
than members of venerable corporations; and in time this anonymous mass of
voters will degenerate into a pure democracy “inlaid with a peerage and topped
with a crown,” but in reality the enthronement of demagoguery and mediocrity’
(7th edn., Regnery, Washington, D. C., 1985, pgs. 130-1).
Samuel
Taylor Coleridge offered a concise summary of it all when he said, ‘Men, I
still think, ought to be weighed, not counted.
Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value’ (p. 140).
A definitive
American statement on the subject was given by Justice Frankfurter in his dissent in Baker
v Carr. The mass of evidence he produces from England
and the States refutes handily the idea that there was ever intended to be a
perfectly even distribution of political power in either place, and shows
rather that a prudent proportioning of political power amongst the various
communities that make up a polity is the better arrangement.
To give but
one example from the US of this healthy disproportion, consider briefly the
federal Senate, which grew out of the historical reality of separate, unique,
sovereign States, because of which each State has equal representation
regardless of population, and which still draws the ire every now and then of
egalitarians.
Given all of
this, as well as the indisputable truth that strong families are one of the
cornerstones of a healthy society, we arrive at a certain conclusion, the same
one as Mr Vance: The votes of married
mothers and fathers should weigh more than those of others in society. They should wield political power within the
community commensurate with their importance to it; they should have access to
political weapons with which they can defend the family from the depredations
of harmful government policies, monopolistic woke corporations, and whatever
other enemies of that salutary institution may arise.
In addition
to Mr Vance’s proposal above, another basic outline of how this could work
might resemble the following: When a
married man and woman have their third child (i.e., going beyond the bare
replacement rate), the vote of the husband and of the wife would be counted
twice in every election instead of once.
If they divorced, each vote would be counted only once, as before.
By adopting
such a proposal, whatever form it takes in the end, we would be returning to
the saner political practices of the past.
It mirrors in particular the ‘fancy franchises’ found in England not so
long ago, ‘plural votes for the educated, the thrifty, the propertied, the
leaders of men, to ensure that votes might be weighed as well as counted’
(Kirk, p. 277).
. . .
The rest is
at http://thesaker.is/thinking-about-the-future/.
--
Holy Ælfred
the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to
the Union!
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