Re: Help design the ideal Presidential candidate

Alfred Montestruc <montestruc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I agree 100% that the whole business of slavery was and is wrong,
> but the fact of the matter is that the methods used in the US South
> to control slaves was more psychology, and control of education and
> information from early childhood, and less direct force or threat
> of it.

True.  Most slaves believed they owed to their masters whatever their
masters said, just as most people today believe they owe to the state
whatever the state says.

After the 1831 Turner rebellion, it was made illegal here in Virginia
to teach slaves to read or write.  (Books were allegedly the cause of
Turner getting "uppity" ideas.)  There were similar laws in most other
slave states.

> My take on that is that the opinion of most slaves on such matters
> as secession was what they thought the master wanted it to be given
> the environment they were raised in.

Right.  In fact the justification, after the Civil War, for keeping
blacks from voting, was that they didn't know what they were doing,
and were all under the influence of various white people, so allowing
them to vote would just be giving some white people more votes than
other white people.

Nevertheless, a government which does not allow all of its adult
citizens to vote is not in any sense democratic, and doesn't even have
the pretense of legitimacy.  It's especially hypocritical of states to
count people they do not allow to vote for purposes of representation.
At least they uses to only be allowed to count people they forbid from
voting as 3/5 of a person.  I don't think they should be allowed to
count us at all.  If a state wants to disenfranchise some percentage
of its population, it should lose that exact same percentage of its
influence in Congress.  Fair is fair.

> However, for the reasons I list, and also the fact that the secret
> ballot type election was almost unheard of and unused in English
> speaking nations till it was adopted by striking miners in Australia
> 1854 and gradually spread over the English speaking world.  It had
> not gotten to any part of the USA by 1860.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot

In "The Constitution of No Authority" in 1870, Lysander Spooner makes
a good argument *against* secret ballots.  He argued that people
should take full responsibility for their actions, and not hide behind
anonymity like a thief in the night.  (The full text of his essay is
available online.)

> My point is that these votes were structurally the same as the
> procedures by which those states entered the Union, if entry into
> the Union was proper by those procedures, then exit was just as
> proper.  If the procedures are improper, then the union was improper.

I agree.  During the Civil War, *both* sides were in the wrong.
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
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