[me]: Actually, FWIW, women could vote in New Jersey from 1776 until 1807, when the right was revoked.
[you]: So apparently that right to vote was not an inalienable right, eh?
Is this the only response you can make to my post?
Well, then I guess I was pretty successful in making my point.
I was just giving an interesting historical fact. Allowing women to vote wasn't beyond imagining in the late 18th century, as some people maintain. The states were allowed to set their own rules on voting--who could vote, what the requirements for being a voter were, what the actual mechanics of voting were. The delegates to the CC couldn't come to any agreement on what those should be, so they did the usual thing, they dodged the issue and left it to someone else to decide.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying "I guess I was pretty successful in making my point". No, the right to vote was not an "inalienable right," except perhaps for white men who held a certain amount of property. The fact that that was the case in late 18th century America hardly means that it should be acceptable in the early 21st century world. On the other hand, Tony Zinni told an interesting story on Meet the Press last Sunday (if you missed the interview, you should look it up on the Web). He said he saw a woman Basra at one of the elections come into the voting area and ask the election judge who she should vote. The judge said he couldn't tell her, but started to read off the names of the 160 something competing parties (apparently she couldn't read). When the judge came to the 7th party, The Islamic Party of [something--I forget the exact name), she said, that's the one I want, and she voted for them. Zinni said she typified many voters--they voted but didn't know who they were voting for.
Let me repeat another story, this one from 1913. Wilson declared his intention not to recognize the government of Mexico that had come into power during a coup after the assassination of Francisco Madero. When Walter Page, the American ambassador in London, explained Wilson's position to the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, they had this conversation:
Grey: Suppose you have to intervene, what then?
Page: Meke 'em vote and live by their decisions.
Grey: But suppose they will not so live?
Page: We'll go in and make 'em vote again.
G: And keep this up 200 years?
P: Yes, The United States will be here for two hundred years and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they learn to vote and to rule themselves.
"Thus was born the paradox that was to be a characteristic feature of American foreign policy for a century: the paradox of dictating democracy, of enforcing freedom, of extorting emancipation." [quoted from Niall Fergason's Colossus: The Price of America's Empire, pp. 53-54; a pretty interesting book, though it definitely does NOT express my own foreign policy position. You, however, will probably find it congenial to your own, as it in the end recommends an American Liberal Empire.] |
