Restricting the Right to Vote

 

 

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Suppose that Republicans in the Texas State Assembly decide that too many disabled persons are voting for Democrats in state and federal elections.  Their response is to pass a law that makes it harder for disabled persons in wheelchairs to vote by removing the ramps that make it easier for them to enter the polling places.  These lawmakers insist that they are not preventing handicapped persons from voting.  They say that this impediment to disabled voting is done only to guarantee  “election integrity.”  After all, they say, disabled persons in wheelchairs can still vote if they can find an alternative way to get into the polls (perhaps by bringing friends with them who could carry them up the stairs).  If it is harder to get to the polls, then this shows how serious they are about voting! 

Of course, this is a hypothetical.  ADA requirements will not allow Republicans to tamper with ramps for the handicapped.  But there are no relevant differences between my imaginary example and what Republicans in Texas and other states are now doing to restrict voting.  

Begin by asking "Why are these Republican lawmakers restricting voting days and hours, prohibiting absentee ballots to be sent to all registered voters, and limiting drive-up voting, if they have no evidence of fraudulent voting in the 2020 election?"   The answer is that they want to reduce the number of Black, Brown, minority and poor people from voting.  Instead of convincing these people that they should cast their votes for Republicans, then (as in my analogy) they have chosen the tactic of making it harder for them to vote at all! 

President Biden has called the Republican efforts to restrict the vote as “undemocratic.”  He is right. The very heart of a democracy lies in the right of all citizens to vote.  But the right to vote is nothing but a series of empty words if we allow Republican lawmakers to put up extraneous barriers to prevent the exercise of this  precious right.  If they succeed, then our democracy will  surely erode and our country will have taken another step toward autocracy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Liz Cheney's Dismissal as Republican House Whip

 

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House Republicans recently voted to dismiss Rep. Liz Cheney from her post as whip of House Republicans.  Their reason for doing this is that they believe she is not  loyal to the former president.  She refuses to ignore moral principles and affirm his false narrative that he won the last election “by a landslide.” She also accuses him of inciting the insurrection that took place at the U.S Capitol building on January 6, 2021.  She wants conservative principles not loyalty to any particular person (especially not to a morally corrupt person) to be the driving force of the Republican Party. 

 [See Cheney's own defense in the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/liz-cheney-told-the-truth-republicans-must-decide-whether-they-value-trump-over-it/2021/05/05/7449c0cc-adc9-11eb-b476-c3b287e52a01_story.html ]

 By coincidence, as I was listening to this news, I have  been writing about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762).  It will be the eighth and final book in my study guide series on the classic philosophers.  

 I came across two passages, relevant to the plight of Rep. Cheney that caught my attention. 

First, Rousseau writes that the state will decline when “ the citizens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both liberty and will. Fear and flattery then change votes into acclamation; deliberation ceases, and only worship or malediction is left” (Bk.4,ch.1). Loyalty will also change votes. In Cheney’s case, both fear and loyalty are they enemies of reason. The representatives who want to oust Cheney are in a kind of psychological servitude to Donald Trump that overrides deliberation. They fear Trump’s anger and the loss of his support unless they display fealty by voting for Cheney’s dismissal. This singular issue is what has turned the vote of the House from strong support for Rep. Cheney before the November election to weak or no support for her after the election and the tragic insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Second, Rousseau would point out that the mistake made by the House Republicans who want Cheney out is that they have “changed the question and answered something different from what they should be asking.” In Rousseau’s words: “Instead of saying, by their vote, "It is to the advantage of the State (country)," they say, "It is to the advantage of this or that person or that or that faction that this or that view should prevail." And this is exactly the point that Rep. Cheney is trying to make. The House Republicans who want her out are not saying “It is to the advantage of the people of the United States of America to vote Cheney out of office.” Instead they are saying “It is to the advantage of Donald Trump, his supporters and the Republican Party to vote Cheney out of office.” If they had asked the former question, they would have immediately understood that it is not to the advantage of the country to support a man who is still telling “The Big Lie” that he won the election and who incited his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to block the final vote for his opponent.

Laurence Houlgate

Coming soon:on Amazon:   UNDERSTANDING JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU