printCOLUMN: “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya” is now on Townhall.com. An excerpt:
BERNIE SANDERS, the senator from Vermont, said he thinks “everyone should have the right to vote—even the Boston Marathon bomber … even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”
Bernie is right about a “slippery slope.” But the befuddled Bernie is worried about the wrong slope.
Denying the vote to some and conferring it on others is not a “slippery slope.” It’s exercising good judgment.
Insisting that the vote in America belongs to everyone, irrespective: now that’s a slippery slope, down which the slide is well underway.
As it stands, there are almost no moral or ethical obligations attached to citizenship in our near-unfettered Democracy.
Multiculturalism means that you confer political privileges on many an individual whose illiberal practices run counter to, even undermine, the American political tradition.
Radical leaders across the U.S. quite seriously consider Illegal immigrants as candidates for the vote—and for every other financial benefit that comes from the work of American citizens.
The rights of all able-bodied idle individuals to an income derived from labor not their own: That, too, is a debate that has arisen in democracy, where the demos rules like a despot.
But then moral degeneracy is inherent in raw democracy. The best political thinkers, including America’s constitution-makers, warned a long time ago that mass, egalitarian society would thus degenerate.
What Bernie Sanders prescribes for the country—unconditional voting—is but an extension of “mass franchise,” which was feared by the greatest thinkers on Democracy. Prime Minister George Canning of Britain, for instance. …
… READ “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya” on Townhall.com.