More Proof of the Left’s Fraudulent Claim of Voting Rights Under Threat

A Texas trial is challenging that state’s new voting law. A New York Times article, ‘My Vote Was Rejected’: Trial Underway in Texas Over New Voting Law, covers this issue. The sub-heading reads, “Voting rights advocates say the law, intended to curb fraud, is impeding people with disabilities, older voters and non-English speakers.” As Edgar Sandoval opens the report:

For years, Stella Guerrero Mata, a 73-year-old retired school bus driver who lives near Houston, has been able to cast her vote through the mail with little hassle. Ms. Mata, who uses a cane to walk and suffers from a long list of ailments, including diabetes, worsening eyesight and back pain, expected the 2022 midterm elections to be no different.

But sometime after she placed her ballot in the mail, she received a letter with news that left her angry and confused. Her ballot was not accepted because she had failed to include her driver’s license number and the last four digits of her Social Security number, a requirement of a contested new voting law that was approved in 2021.

“My vote was rejected,” Ms. Mata said, adding that she had realized it was too late for her to correct her mistake. “It made me feel angry, because my voice was not being heard.”

The article provides an example of the new mail-in ballot form. Note that the section for her license and Social Security information is prominent among the other lines she presumably had no trouble filling out. 

Does this rise to the level of Ms. Mata’s draconian claim the “my voice was not being heard?” Of course her voice was heard. She got a response letter of explanation—her own oversight. 

Sandoval goes on to report:

The law added new voter identification requirements for voting by mail; made it harder to use voter assisters; set criminal penalties for poll workers if they are too forceful in reining in people at polling places; and banned 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, measures that were notably used in Harris County during the pandemic.

Other than the mail-in example of Ms. Mata’s encounter with new voter identification requirements cited at the outset of the article, no other examples of how the new law hampers anyone’s ability to vote, except near the end where a disabled man objected to providing proof of disability related to his need to have someone assist him in voting. He was still able to use a voter assister, and cast his vote. Maybe some other examples of voting difficulty under the new law will emerge as the trial proceeds. As of now, only assertions.

Note that no one is claiming that the law makes it too hard to vote. It only states that the new requirements make it “harder” for some people. Perhaps these points are arguable. Perhaps some tweakings of the law may be in order. But how easy does voting have to be? Any voting procedure requires some effort, thus making it harder. The term “harder” begs the question, “Is it a real hardship, or just marginally harder?’ 

The law is intended to minimize the possibility of voter fraud, although little evidence of fraud has surfaced in recent elections under the old laws. It also “allows for expanded early-voting hours to encourage more voter participation.”

My frustration over the Dems’ hyperbolic voting rights hysteria boiled over a little when I posted this comment, which is slightly edited:

 

A driver's license and SS number? That's it?!? And she's "angry"?; "confused"? Well, maybe she should be embarrassed for her own incompetence. Maybe if she followed the ultra-simple instructions, she wouldn't have to worry that her "voice was not being heard" (whatever that means—we're talking about her vote, not her freedom of speech). I know this is the age of "it's-all-someone-else's-fault." But give me a break! This woman should take responsibility for her own actions. Instead, she blames the law for her own screw up. That's a new low. Shame on Ms. Mata. And shame on the simpletons who cite examples like this as somehow "proving" some kind of  conspiratorial GOP attack on the right to vote. If this is the best the Left can come up with, it's much ado about nothing.

I've said this many times. Nowhere in America is it hard for any reasonable, minimally motivated person to vote. Yes, some novel, COVID era emergency voting procedures are being streamlined or removed. But they were, after all, emergency measures. And yes, some reforms may be debatable. That notwithstanding, the Left's manufactured hysteria over voting rights is second in irrationality only to its fraudulent, Chicken Little climate crisis-mongering. In fact, never in America's history has voting been easier. If someone can't follow simple procedures, they should blame no one but themselves.

Related Reading:

Jesse Jackson’s Big Lie: ‘American Democracy is Under Siege’

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

The Strategic yet Self-Defeating Hyperbole of 'Democracy in Peril' Journalism by Matt Welch for Reason

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right. 

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

Parental Notification and the Rights of Children

By now everybody knows about the “culture war” being fought over gender issues relating to minor children in America’s government schools. This battle pits so-called LBGTQ activists against parents.* The activists claim they are defending the “rights” of children to their privacy by banning school officials from notifying parents if their child is claiming a gender change. They claim that parental notification would amount to “outing” the child.**

The people pushing back against the activists are standing on parental rights. 

But I think the issue of rights is confused, on both sides.

Children have rights, like everyone else. But, unlike everyone else, children are not capable of exercising their rights. They have neither the knowledge, rational maturity, judgment, or life experience to make informed choices. That is why parents have ultimate authority to make choices for them. As the child matures, the parent may (and should) allow more choice. But the parent retains ultimate authority. Child rearing is about a gradual process of preparing the child for adulthood, when they gain the full exercise authority over their rights.

In effect, the child’s rights are held “in trust” by the parents. This trust requires parents to have the fullest and most complete knowledge of their children, so they can make fully informed choices for their children, in the child’s best interest.*** LBGTQ activists, who want to bar school officials from notifying the parents of a child on gender issues, claim they are defending children’s rights. But by keeping relevant knowledge from the people responsible for the child’s rights, the parents, they are in actuality violating the child’s rights.

Of course, the activists don’t actually care about the child’s rights, or anyone’s rights. They don’t give a damn about the child. This is evident by their claim that informing the parents amounts to “outing,” even though the child is already outed by the very fact that the teacher, and presumably other students, and school officials, already know the child is claiming some manifestation of LBGTQ identity. Apparently, outing only occurs when the parents know, not when everyone else knows. This is a gross and disgusting disrespect of the parents. 

In fact, The LBGTQ activists’ only concern is with their own political and social agendas. There’s nothing wrong with issue activism. But these LGBTQ activists are ideological bullies who are using the gun power of the government school monopoly to impose their ideas on everyone.

As to the parents, they should realize that, strictly speaking, it is not their parental rights that entitle them to know about their children’s school activities. It is the rights of their own children that they are actually fighting for. The rights of parents to make critical decisions for their children are synonymous with children’s rights. 

This battle is currently raging in New Jersey, where local public school boards’ attempts to impose mandatory parental notification on school officials when they believe that “facts or circumstances that could impact a student’s health or well-being, including sexual orientation and gender identity” are the focal point. The state, siding with the ideological bullies, is attempting—and so far succeeding—to bar such local school board policies.

Personally, I think that neither the state or school board should force or ban teachers from notifying parents on these gender issues. Notification should be a matter between the parent and the teacher. If a parent pointedly asks the teacher to inform her if her child “decides” to change genders, the teacher has a moral obligation to inform the parent. If not specifically addressed, the teacher should use her judgment on whether the issue is important enough to involve the parents. If the teacher has information she thinks the parent should have, she should give it to her. (Likewise, if the teacher suspects child abuse, she should inform the authorities.)

Of course, the ultimate solution to this culture war over school policy is universal school choice, through the privatization of all education and the constitutional imposition of the complete separation of education and state. But that is a long term fight. The bottom line relevant here is that the child has rights, and it is the LBQTQ activists, and their far Left political allies, who are by far most guilty of violating the rights of the child.

* [LGBTQ stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer]

** [“Outing” in this context means the practice of revealing the sexual or gender identity of a person.”]

*** [Of course, parents can abuse that authority. Thart’s why we have child neglect and child abuse laws.]

Related Reading:

On the ‘Transgender’ Phenomenon

Are Parents Capable of Properly Educating Their Children in a Free Market?

QUORA: ‘The constitution is a living document that must change as society changes. Do you agree or disagree? Why?’

 QUORA: ‘The constitution is a living document that must change as society changes. Do you agree or disagree? Why?’

I posted this answer:

No and yes. The U.S. Constitution is substantive, not just procedural. Substantively, it is unchanging. Procedurally, it is subject to change.

The Constitution stands on a particular philosophical and moral foundation. The philosophy that undergirds America is grounded in human nature and man’s relationship to nature. The Founding generation understood that man is a rational being; and thus that reason is man’s means of survival and living; that reason is an attribute of the individual; that every individual therefore has the inalienable rights to think and act on the judgment of his own mind, in support of his own life, without interference from his fellow man, so long as he/she does not interfere in the same freedom of others.  Based on an understanding of man’s nature, America’s Founders believed all individuals are naturally free to self-govern their lives, and the Founding documents reflected this. These principles are grounded in the facts of nature. This grounding is summarized in the Declaration of Independence. This is the meaning of the words of the Declaration of Independence, which holds that all people are born equal in their freedom of self-governance and self-determination.

Through the Declaration, the Founding generation recognized the “certain unalienable Rights” of man, individual man, required by his nature to fulfill this freedom—“among” which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The right to work, trade, and contract in order to acquire, use, and keep property was considered implicit in these rights, which is why the Constitution explicitly protects private property rights and freedom of commerce while pointedly not authorizing the government to redistribute private wealth among private individuals in any form.**

Society may change, which is why the Founders grounded this country’s government on a foundation that can withstand the changing vagaries of society, or politics, or culture, or powerful factions. Until human nature changes, the substance of the Constitution, that of being grounded in individual rights, is not “living.” The purpose of government is to “secure these rights,” not violate them, and it cannot abandon this obligation based on shifting political, cultural, popular, or factional whims or passions. 

I think of the unalienable individual rights of the Declaration as the Founders’ attempt to create a “safe space” to protect individual freedom from societal changes. The U.S. Constitution was written to form a type of republican government designed specifically to protect that safe space. The Constitution is “living” in the sense that governmental procedures can change with changing circumstances, such as with advances in technology. The Constitution allows that “We the People” always be open to procedural or structural changes “in order to form a more perfect union.” The Constitution does, after all, include an amendment process.

In this way, the Founders intended to protect individuals from any form of encroaching tyranny. To protect the governed from societal changes, they established the safe space of unalienable individual rights. To protect the people’s safe space, they created the Constitution to limit the government to establishing those protections. Society may change, and it certainly has. America started as a poor, agrarian society. Today, it is an industrial and technological wonder. Certainly, laws must change to keep up with those advances. The Founders understood this need for progressive government, and the Constitution may be amended to adapt governmental procedures to those changes. But the government’s purpose and job, for which the constitution was created, will always be “to secure these rights.” Until and unless human nature changes, that purpose is eternal. So substantively—that is, in its fundamental philosophical underpinnings—the Constitution is not “living” because “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” remain constant over time. 

** [notwithstanding the fact that our current government redistributes wealth on a massive scale.]

Related Reading:

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?--Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

QUORA: ‘Why do law schools teach constitutional law but not the Declaration of Independence as an animating principle?’

The U.S.Constitution: Nick Goldberg’s Scheme to Transform Our Liberty Document into a Democratic Socialist Manifesto

QUORA: ‘Why is non-Marxist socialism (libertarian socialism, market socialism, communalism, Fabianism, Fourierism) and its applications (ex: modern Rojava or old Catalonia) ignored?

 QUORA : ‘Why is non-Marxist socialism (libertarian socialism, market socialism, communalism, Fabianism, Fourierism) and its applications (ex: modern Rojava or old Catalonia) ignored? Why does society insist that socialism must always be authoritarian/statist?’

I posted this answer:

Though socialism is inherently authoritarian—it is, by ideological definition, collectivist**—it needn’t be politically authoritarian or statist. The Communistic Societies of the United States; Harmony, Oneida, the Shakers, and Others by Charles Nordhoff and History of American Socialisms by John Humphrey Noyes’ document the many socialisms that have existed in the United States ***. Published in the 1870s, Nordhoff and Noyes give first-person accounts of the ideologies and functions of life in these 19th Century colonies. The socialisms they cover were not statist because all were established privately and voluntarily, and were respectful of the universal guarantee of inalienable individual rights. 20th Century examples of non-statist socialisms include American Kibbutzim, modeled on the Israeli Kibbutz, and the 1960s hippie communes. (Nordhoff and Noyes did not cover the feudal slave plantation communisms of the antebellum U.S. South, which were sanctioned and protected by law and thus were statist.)

Karl Marx weaponized socialism by uniting it with political power. Political socialism, whatever its variation, including “Democratic Socialism”, seeks to impose socialism on entire societies, nations, or the world through the legal machinery of government force. Marxism unites socialism with statism, and that brand of socialism has become the common understanding of socialism, to the unfortunate exclusion of non-statist socialisms.  

Clearly, socialism and individualism are morally incompatible. The right to pursue your own happiness clashes with socialism’s collective moral vision. Just as clearly, voluntary socialism needn’t be statist as long as it is practiced privately and voluntarily, which makes it legally compatible with a government that constitutionally protects individual rights, such as in America in its Founding principles. Of course, even voluntary socialism is authoritarian, even though participants voluntarily submit to collective—that is, centralized—control of their lives.

Political socialism’s horrors in practice, including national socialism, communism, fascism, Southern plantation slavery, and the whole host of hybrid offsprings, stem directly from Marx’s influence or channel the same communistic and anti-Capitalist ideas championed by Marx. In order to end socialism’s brutality while simultaneously protecting the right of individuals to live a socialist lifestyle, socialism must be separated from politics. When socialists turn to the government to impose their authoritarian creed on others by force, socialism becomes statist. Under Capitalism, with its complete separation of economics and state, statist socialism would be constitutionally forbidden.

There is an important parallel between socialism and religion. Religion has a long history of brutality and murder when united with political power. The Founding Fathers of America found a simple, ingenious, but powerful solution—the separation of religion and state; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” 

The history of statist socialism in practice is even more brutal, and equally as unjust, as that of religion. The solution should be to adopt the same principles that the Founders applied to religion. Religion and socialism have a common underpinning: They are both inherently authoritarian, with religion claiming the individual must submit to God’s dictates, and socialism claiming the individual must submit to the collective’s dictates. Consequently, just as religion cannot be trusted with political power, so neither can socialism be trusted with political power. The Founders’ solution on religion should be applied to socialism. For the same reasons and in the same way as the separation of church and state, we should have the separation of economics and state to bar socialists from ever again uniting with political power.

So long as socialism was voluntary, it was not statist. Socialism as it is understood and advocated today is statist because socialists have abandoned the peaceful, persuasive, rights-respecting means of socialism documented by Nordhoff and Noyes, instead turning to the guns of political power--in today’s case the power of democratic legislative force--to advance their goals. Socialism will cease being statist, as well as immoral, unjust, and contrary to the principles of a free society, when socialists decide to re-join civility by renouncing the use of government force, getting out of politics, and returning to respecting the rights of others through voluntary consent and mutual agreement, and leaving those not interested in the socialist lifestyle free to go about their own lives unmolested by government coercion. That’s when non-Marxist socialism will stop being ignored.

** [Collectivism is the doctrine of group supremacy. That is, the collective, however it is defined—the proletariat, the race, “the people,” society—is the fundamental unit of moral, political, and economic concern. The individual’s primary function and justification for existence is to serve the interests and good of the collective. In collectivism’s political practice, socialism, the good of the group is determined by some central planning authority—i.e., the state.]

***[See my full review of these books here.]

RELATED READING:

Sociology for the South: Or, The Failure of Free Society by George Fitzhugh

Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society

What is Socialism? by Robert Heilbroner

What is Capitalism? by Ayn Rand

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

A Socialist Confirms that the Basics of ‘True’ Socialism is Totalitarianism

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

236 years ago, on September 17, 1787, the Constitutional Convention ended and the Constitution of the United States of America was signed. This day is officially known as Constitution Day.

 

It was also an occasion for one columnist to declare that the US Constitution is "broken." The New Jersey Star-Ledger's Tom Moran wrote in 2012:

 

Kids in America are taught to venerate the Constitution, almost as if it were the word of God.

And that’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson feared. He believed it was flawed, that experience would teach each generation new lessons and that it should be redone every 19 years.

But Jefferson lost the argument. And so the Founders signed a Constitution  225 years ago tomorrow that is an impregnable fortress, firmly set against the forces of change that Jefferson welcomed and almost impossible to amend.

Does that make sense? Haven’t we learned valuable lessons over the past few centuries about how democracies thrive, and how they stagnate? In a day when our federal government is so dysfunctional, shouldn't we at least consider fundamental changes?

University of Texas Professor Sanford Levinson is advocating a series of such fundamental changes to the US Constitution, which Moran discusses in his column. Levinson's proposals include instituting a direct popular vote for president and measures to greatly weaken the checks and balances that limit the power of any one branch of government. In essence, Levinson's purpose, according to Moran, is to expand the power of majority rule and break Washington's political "gridlock," which has made our federal government "dysfunctional."

Moran approvingly cites Thomas Jefferson who, as Moran strongly implies, would welcome these constitutional changes, or any changes suited to any generation. That is strongly arguable, to put it mildly. But let's leave the Jefferson debate aside for now.

Before we discuss ways to expand the power of electoral majority rule so as to enable the government to get more "done", we need to have a conversation to reiterate what the Founders believed is government's purpose.

The American constitution's basic function is to limit the government's power to the protection of individual rights. This is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, the philosophical blueprint for the constitution. Any discussion about the constitution has to begin with the Declaration--which, incidentally, was written by Thomas Jefferson:

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

 

In its essentials, this 55 word statement of proper government says:

 

• All men are born equal in moral agency to self-govern their own lives without interference from other people, including in their capacity of government officials.

• Each individual has rights to secure his freedom to exercise personal moral agency.

• Rights belong inextricably to the individual by virtue of his nature as a human being.

• Rights are held equally and at all times by all people.

• Rights are guarantees to freedom of action; to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness guaranteed by the labor or wealth of others.

• Rights precede government.

• Government is created exclusively to “secure”—i.e., protect—rights, not to grant, limit, or rescind them by legislative decree.

• Government’s “just powers” are only those powers necessary authorized by the people through a popular vote.

• “Just powers” being those powers, and only those powers, required for the government to fulfill the purpose for which it was created to begin with—to legally secure and protect the people’s unalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and by implication private property rights, which the Founders recognized as essential to life, liberty and happiness.

Of course, this is not the "Word of God," to be accepted uncritically. Each of these points requires and had extensive philosophical backup. None of these "truths" are automatically "self-evident." They must be learned and validated scientifically; i.e., morally and philosophically, as determined by the observable facts of reality concerning man and his requirements for survival and flourishing. But these are the essentials.

The Founders did not intend to create a democracy, despite Moran's devious attempt to smuggle in that premise. They created a constitutionally limited republic protective of the liberty and rights of the individual, under which the constitution "carefully limits the power of the majority by drawing a legal boundary around it" (P. 113)—a boundary that stops the majority and elected officials' power where individual rights begin. The Founders understood that the government presupposes individual rights. So the constitutional discussion must begin with the questions: What are rights, and what is the proper function of government?

As the Declaration states, every individual is "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Since productive work is the only means of sustaining one's life and achieving happiness, it's obvious that the Founders understood--including in Jefferson's own words--that property rights are among those rights. The Declaration then states "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." Rights—which in fact are not endowments by either nature or God but moral principles derived from observations and facts about human nature—are sanctions to freedom of action in a social context, not a claim on the lives and property of others or a government guarantee of material well-being and happiness. Notice that the constitution does not authorize the government to redistribute private wealth. Forced redistribution of wealth or income would relegate some people to privilege and others to involuntary servitude, which would violate the principle of political equality.

Moran is wrong. America hasn't stagnated. It has "progressed" from what was a largely free country a century ago to a burgeoning regulatory welfare state—a dangerous regressionary trend unsupported by constitutional authority. Why? Because the fundamental principles upon which the constitution rests have been largely abandoned, opening the door to the piecemeal progression toward unlimited majoritarian rule, a manifestation of totalitarianism. Consequently, our best short-term protection against further encroachments on individual rights--and it's a weak protection--is political gridlock. I can't think of anything more dangerous to America's future than to begin tampering with the basics of the constitution in today's cultural environment. Before we consider unshackling majority rule, we must rediscover our Founding principles, roll back the regulatory welfare state, and provide ironclad guarantees that no one's rights be alienated by majority vote; i.e., respect the original intent of the constitution.

The Founders did not intend to replace absolute monarchy with absolute majority rule unconstrained by the principle of individual rights. As Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) asked during a debate over the propriety of the Revolutionary War in the movie "The Patriot", "Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."

The answer: We shouldn't. As Jefferson said, "the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." The Founders were not primarily concerned with giving the people the right to vote. They intended to liberate the people from predatory government, whether monarchistic, theocratic, socialist, or democratic.

There are those who would invert the original concept of Americanism—that the individual is sovereign and his life belongs to him—and replace it with the idea that the collective—i.e., the state—is sovereign over the individual. It is an attempted transition from republican constitutionalism to democracy; from individualism to collectivism. We cannot let the counter-revolutionary reactionaries succeed. The fight to defeat the reactionaries and restore and renew Americanism can start with this: As we celebrate Constitution Day, remember what I call the Constitution’s philosophic blueprint, or what has also been called the Conscience of the Constitution—the Declaration of Independence.

Related Reading:

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay 

America the Undemocratic

On a Revisionist's Proposal to Upend the Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

 

The Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Constitutional Ignorance Led to a Tyranny of the Majority—Gary M. Galles

July 4, 1776: 'Words that Will Never Be Erased'

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson