USA: An Independance Day Poll

[Deacon]

For the following two items:

[quote="Arc Orion";p="650576"]In order for a person to vote, one had to be literate, white, male, and a landowner.[/quote]

by excluding women and non-whites, it implied that they weren't intelligent enough to vote

[Accer]

For the first:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activitie ... voting.htm
The 1820-1830 bit.
http://usembassy.state.gov/nigeria/wwwh ... no06e.html -- For election #1.
Hmm, guess they didn't have to be literate? It doesn't say. So were you mistaken? I'll need to see your source for that, I guess.

For the second:
http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm -- Women specifically... British too, but the arguements were nearly identical. Marij Van Helmond mentions intelligence specifically.

Do you really need a source to show that in the past, people argued against black suffrage because of a belief that blacks were mentally inferior?

I thought this was fairly common knowelge though. I'm pretty sure I covered it in the 7th grade.

[Arc Orion]

[quote="Deacon";p="650589"]For the following two items:

[quote="Arc Orion";p="650576"]In order for a person to vote, one had to be literate, white, male, and a landowner.[/quote][/quote]What the fuck? You can't put two and two together? I've already pointed out that women and
non-whites could not vote, and directed you to read a US history textbook. Honestly, pick any high school or higher level textbook. If you need an exact source, try here, here, here, or here. They may all be reached by a very simple Google search.

The only part of that which wasn't true (at least not at that time), was that literacy tests were required, something you also claimed. I've found sources which state that literacy tests have been around throughout most voting history, but none which claim it was widespread in early US history. Literacy tests first became widespread in response to the suffrage of nonwhites. Even then, it was never adopted on the national level.

by excluding women and non-whites, it implied that they weren't intelligent enough to vote

[quote="Deacon";p="650529"][quote="StruckingFuggle";p="650514"]And I'm confident the founders would be apalled at modern politics, too. Democracy only works with an educated and critical populace, and ... well. We don't have that.[/quote]
Unless I'm mistaken, that's why the founders allowed only literate land owners to vote.[/quote]What, so they denied the vote to non-landowners for that and they just denied the vote for women and non-whites because they were just sexist and racist? Women have been considered intellectually inferior to men throughout much of history. Darwin wrote that women, being childbearers, obviously had no need to be intelligent, and thus, wouldn't be so. Arguments against the women's suffrage movement included that women weren't smart enough to vote (You'll have to go down a few passages to find the block including this). Even among the intellectual elite, non-whites were considered inferior intellectually. Hell, even after slavery had ended and blacks had officially had the right to vote for eighty years, it was shown in the "Brown vs. Board of Education of Kansas" trial that black schoolchildren considered themselves inferior to their white counterparts. And you mean to argue that people who lived in a time when blacks were largely slaves would consider them equal in any manner, including intelligence? I'd like to see your sources on that manner.

[Deacon]

Who said anything about equality? I'm just pointing out that it's not on a basis of intelligence but on the assumption that those who best fit Fuggle's description of "educated and critical populace" at the time meant white males, mostly landowners. Now, the thing is, the history books are teaching kids the way things were through the eyes of today's society, and they're generalizing, editorializing, and judging quite a lot as they do so. I'm trying to find what the voting restrictions actually were in the original Constitution. Did it say "must have pale skin" somewhere in there? "Must own land" is perhaps tossed in as well? "Only fat cat whitey could vote" is an interpretation, not an actual citation. Even according to Accer's attempts to answer the questions, though both admirable and insufficient, until the 14th amendment voting was largely determined by state constitutions, not the US Constitution, and the states had varying requirements for it. The northern states of Connecticut and Massachusetts adopted the first actual literacy tests as a requirement for voting in the mid 1850's to keep the vote out of the hands of Irish immigrants (note: not blacks). And while the arguments in the early 20th century regarding whether to guarantee in the Constitution the right to vote to women as well as men are interesting and all, they really don't apply to the mid/late 18th century colonial train of thought, certainly not a train with any passenger named Darwin on the manifest.

The point is that Fuggle echoed the prevailing thought of the time that a healthy democracy requires an "educated and critical [voting] populace" -- which at the time meant the people most likely to fill the bill: the head of free households (i.e. white males at the time) most of whom had land and businesses to run and such, who had a vested interest in the wellbeing of themselves, their family, and the familes of those that depended on him, and with the education and critical mind to make informed decisions. Any rules regarding who could vote were for that purpose, not just for the thrill of hanging a "NO GIRLS ALLOWED" or "NO COLOREDS" sign on the door.

Actually, the real point is that Fuggle was attempting to invoke the name of the Founding Fathers, suggesting that he could stand up atop the capitol building and lower an accusing finger down the end of his nose at the goings-on in Washington, and they would agree with him with a great clamor and sage but vigorous nodding. I'd bet they would be disgusted, yeah, but for very different reasons than Fuggle would hope. When setting up a healthy democracy, the ideals of a) having an educated and critical voting populace and b) eliminating every requirement to vote other than managing not to die for 18 years, well, they're not necessarily in harmonious accord with each other. I mean, come on. You think maybe our presidential elections shouldn't be treated like American Idol?

[AzraeL]

Back on to Fuggle's point: I don't know whether it is our media, or our limited exposure to American culture, but to me America seems to be best represented by a mix of heartless corporations, corrupt goverment officials, idiots with guns, poor and homeless, crass consumer culture and puritan psychopathic parents. But then again, this probably has to do with Michael Moore's success in bringing over one sided liberalist vomit. I know what I've written isn't true, it's merely the worst of the worst America has to offer really. I'm pretty sure this thread is about what makes America great, not what makes it crap. I'm not a very patriotic person, but I can't help but love my country for all it's shortcommings. So Fuggle, if you want to rant and rave, do it somewhere else. No one is impressed with your rebellious slagging off of your home country.

[Accer]

[quote="Deacon";p="650613"]Who said anything about equality? I'm just pointing out that it's not on a basis of intelligence but on the assumption that those who best fit Fuggle's description of "educated and critical populace" at the time meant white males, mostly landowners. [/quote]

Except that there were educated blacks, and educated women, that were not allowed to vote. They were not allowed to vote because of their gender and race, not because of their education. Politicians in the early 19th century and earlier did make many statements about why they should not vote, and that included statements about intelligence. They certainly didn't need Darwin. Suffrage movements started waaaay earlier.

I think I suffiently provided a source for those two lines, and if you wanted something else you should have said so. I was merely helping to prove what jerseryminx stated, which you gave a ridiculous reply too, and is outside Fuggle's stuff.

Besides, even if the states set up the laws, the federal government allowed them to set the restrictions for quite a while.

[Deacon]

Whether it was completely accurate or not, the thought at the time was that the women who were educated and capable of contributing to the process were by far the exception. They had better things to do, and people voted as a family, as a household, and yes, at the time men were the head of the household. Today, of course, it's completely different. If you manage not to die for 18 years, you can vote, regardless if you've ever even heard the names on the ballet, much less actually read them.

[Makh]

[quote="AzraeL";p="650614"]Back on to Fuggle's point: I don't know whether it is our media, or our limited exposure to American culture, but to me America seems to be best represented by a mix of heartless corporations, corrupt goverment officials, idiots with guns, poor and homeless, crass consumer culture and puritan psychopathic parents. But then again, this probably has to do with Michael Moore's success in bringing over one sided liberalist vomit.[/quote]
Why would Michael Moore spit on his own country? What would he think if he made a little movie about post-Soviet Russia? He would fall in depression or die from a heart dysfonction.

[Metzgirl]

because he's a complaining hippy liberal who wants Bush to die.


on a better note, I think the ice cream cone was one of the best American contributions to the world.

[Nitz Walsh]

Ice cream cones are from Europe.

[thejerseyminx]

Hm.. waffle cones are from one of the World's Fairs. Or so I've been told.


Maybe I've been lied to!
*lower lip quivers*

[Blaze]

No you have not. That is QUITE correct.

[Makh]

After reflexion, I consider that the best thing USA share with the world is its innovative ideas. (technical, political, social, etc.)

I like the cheeseburger too.

[Jezebel]

Makh can say pretty much anything and I just find myself nodding and smiling. You're just too much. Imagine my avatar without the frowny face.

[Spongiform]

Yeah, Makh is like the coolest guy ever.