By Selwyn Duke

I received an email from a young man who is addressing a very interesting topic.  Here is his email:

Hello,

I’m in my final year at school and I’m writing an essay on:
Would democracy be better if some groups in society were denied the right to
vote? And I have hit a wall. My mum strongly disagrees with me but this is what
I believe in. I agree with what you said in your article "Why Most Voters
Shouldn’t Vote" but outside your articles I can’t find much to back up my
argument. I was wondering if you could send me some more of your thoughts on
the subject or anything you think would improve my argument.

I don’t wish to plagiarize. I’m just looking for something
that will make my essay A+ material and I believe you can help.

Thank you,

H

Dear H,

It’s great to hear from students, so I’m glad you wrote.

First, I don’t know if you read the piece, “Iraq: The Folly
of Deifying Democracy,” but here is a link: http://selwynduke.typepad.com/selwyndukecom/2007/10/between-iraq-an.html. It doesn’t directly relate to what you ask
about, but it does tangentially.

Then, there are a few points that come to mind (maybe you’ve
thought of one of them already). Man has
a habit of putting forth arguments that sound or feel good but that don’t
really hold water when scrutinized. For
instance, we love to say that “everyone should be treated equally,” but we
can’t really believe that. If we did, we
wouldn’t have separate tours, leagues and teams for female athletes and
military conscription for only boys/men. Thus, what we really should say, to be accurate, is that we believe
everyone should be treated equally within the confines of his role. (It may sound stifling, but everyone has a role.).

This relates to the issue at hand because we do not, in
fact, afford everyone the right to vote. If you ‘re younger than 18, for example, you may not vote in the
U.S. For that matter, there’s a whole
host of other things you can’t do until you reach a certain age, such as
entering into contracts, buying alcohol and cigarettes, etc.

The point is that we don’t believe in treating “everyone”
equally, and we do all draw lines; it’s just a question of where they’ll be
drawn. This brings us to an interesting
point. As I’m sure you know, “one man,
one vote” is a phenomenon of modern times; it’s not at all in accordance with
the norms of the history of “democracy.” Yet, again, these civilizations weren’t different because they drew
lines, but only because of where they drew them. Here comes the interesting part (I thought of
this while pondering your question).

Those more restrictive voting models are part of a now
discarded Western tradition. But what is
tradition? The great philosopher G.K.
Chesterton called tradition “. . . democracy extended through time” and the “.
. . democracy of the dead.” His point
was that tradition only comes to be because the majority of the people
throughout the ages preferred things that way; metaphorically speaking, they
“voted” for the tradition.

Thus, what do we say when we thoughtlessly dispense with
tradition without even considering that it may hold wisdom that has now escaped
us? In essence, we are saying that we’ll
deny our forebears their votes. In other
words, in the name of perpetuating what is perhaps a distorted democracy of the
living, we are saying that we’ll completely and totally disenfranchise the
dead. After all, we won’t even give the
norms of the past their day in court; our minds are closed. We won’t even consider, in a sober and fair way, whether or not they hold any
validity. It’s an obvious prejudice,
where we simply assume that they lived a long time ago so they must have been
wrong about everything.

This isn’t to say that every tradition should be
retained. And I also understand that
people will point out that it is only the living who have to suffer the
governments we elect, so of course only their votes should matter.

But that misses the point.

The issue is that we need to discern Truth, and that can’t
be done very well if you ignore the “scientific experiments and findings” of
the past. We should have respect for
what was left to us philosophically just as we respect what was left
physically. We don’t fail to notice a
palace’s or antique car’s beauty simply because it’s old and then say, “Let’s
just tear it down/junk it; something new will always be preferable.” We should try to look at matters objectively,
and come to understand the unstable structures that should be condemned and
great architectural masterpieces that can’t easily be recreated once lost.

And one more thing about respect: Ancestors in general, like
the ancestors we call parents, bequeath us certain things because they believe
it’s in our best interest. Now, if our
parents died, would we play fast and loose with their legacy and treat it like
refuse simply because they’re gone?

As far as specificity goes, one given is that people on the
government dole should not be allowed to vote. Perhaps you’ve heard the figure of speech, “Robbing Peter to pay
Paul.” Well, in this equation, those
receiving government benefits are Paul, and, if they have the right to vote,
they’ll rob Peter every time.

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