OPED
BY TED RALL
Triumph of the Stultocracy Voters should pass a political literacy test “[John] Kerry doesn’t know what the working-class people do; he hasn’t done any physical labor all his life,” Sharon Alfman, a 51-year-old cook in New Lexington, Ohio, told a New York Times reporter. It’s true. Kerry is a rich boy. But then she added: “Bush’s values are middle-class family values.” President George W. Bush earned $727,000 last year. Estimates of his net worth range between $9 and $26 million. That’s not middle-class. Like fellow Skull and Bones member John Kerry, he never will be a man of the people. But it matters that Sharon Altman thinks he is. Unless you too are a voter living in a swing state like Ohio, her vote counts more than yours. Demonstrating that stupefying igno-
gle-handedly created this mess, spurn him for a leader even dumber than they are. America has become a stultocracy: government by morons, for morons. A 2002 poll found that 64 percent of Americans—people whose votes help determine how much you pay in taxes—could not name a single Supreme Court justice. In 2003, 58 percent—people whose votes could elect someone who starts a nuclear war—couldn’t identify a single department of the president’s cabinet. Voters aged 18 to 24, whose recent schooling ought to inspire confidence in their knowledge of basic facts, are especially ignorant. National Geographic says 85 percent of young American adults can’t find Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a map. The fact that these yahoos are allowed to vote
VOTING SHOULD BE A PRIVILEGE EARNED BY AN INTELLECTUALLY ENGAGED CITIZEN, NOT A RIGHT GIVEN TO ANY ADULT WITH A PULSE. rance can be bipartisan, another Ohioan interviewed for the same article said she is against the war in Iraq because, like 42 percent of her fellow Americans, she thinks Iraq was behind 9/11: “We shouldn’t be over there building them back up because they didn’t build our towers back up.” She is wrong on so many levels that it makes my brain hurt. Both women are entitled to their unawareness. We can’t pass a law to force them to read the paper. But neither of these people ought to force their fellow citizens to suffer the consequences of their being so uninformed. Voting should be a privilege earned by an intellectually engaged citizen, not a right given to any adult with a pulse. All men are created equal, declared the Founders. But as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, universal suffrage counts upon the existence of a responsible, well-educated citizenry in order to result in political equality. If you give the vote to morons, you get the “tyranny of the masses”—a lumpen proletariat prone to manipulation by demagogues and fools—such as that which created chaos and bloodshed in post-revolutionary France. We’re all equal at birth, but what we do later determines whether or not our opinions are worthwhile. At this writing, the world’s greatest nation flails under the rule of buffoons and madmen, bogged down in two optional wars we’re actually losing. The world’s richest economy is shedding jobs, running up debts and building nothing for the future. Voters, offered an election year alternative to the subliterate idiot who sin-
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Also check out our other cool location —24 hour air-conditioned units! in Kihei at Kihei Kalama Village is an abomination. Their ill-considered ballots cancel or dilute those cast by those who do the heavy lifting that makes them good citizens: Keeping abreast of current events, researching issues, studying candidates’ positions. In the Old South, literacy tests were used to disenfranchise blacks. Alternatively, a basic political literacy test should be used to ensure that anyone who picks ESPN over CNN stays home on Election Day. Prospective voters should be required to answer at least three questions correctly. To give people a fair shot, the test should be published in newspapers a week before an election. It should include questions like “Who is the vice president?” and “Name one federal cabinet-level department.” Of course, such a political literacy test would drastically reduce voter turnout. On the other hand, those who pass could take comfort in knowing that they’re not competing against the 60 percent of Americans who think we’ve found Iraq’s imaginary WMDs, or the 22 percent who “believe” that Saddam Hussein used such weapons against U.S. troops during the 2003 invasion. MTW
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7 Sun R 6:25 Thur Sun S 6:13P
H 12:19A +0.7 H 11:52A +1.9 L 4:01A +0.6 L 7:32P +0.3
8 Sun R 6:25 Fri Sun S 6:12P
H 12:54A +0.9 H 12:39P +1.9 L 5:25A +0.5 L 7:52P +0.3
9 Sun R 6:25 Sat Sun S 6:11P
H 1:24A +1.0 L 6:26A +0.5
H 1:17P +2.0 L 8:11P +0.2
10 Sun R 6:26 Sun Sun S 6:11P
H 1:55A +1.2 L 7:17A +0.4
H 1:50P +2.0 L 8:30P +0.2
11 Sun R 6:26 Mon Sun S 6:10P
H 2:27A +1.5 L 8:04A +0.4
H 2:21P +1.9 L 8:49P +0.1
12 Sun R 6:26 Tue Sun S 6:09P
H 3:00A +1.7 L 8:51A +0.3
H 2:51P +1.8 L 9:10P +0.0
13 Sun R 6:27 Wed Sun S 6:08P
H 3:35A +1.9 L 9:41A +0.4
H 3:23P +1.7 L 9:33P +0.0
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