Esteban's comments are false. The American Founders did not institute a literacy test for voting. That was a British idea during the post-Civil War re-constructionist period of American history and was penned by the British Colonialist Viscount James Bryce (British Ambassador to the US prior to onset of WWI), who thought the US Constitut…
Esteban's comments are false. The American Founders did not institute a literacy test for voting. That was a British idea during the post-Civil War re-constructionist period of American history and was penned by the British Colonialist Viscount James Bryce (British Ambassador to the US prior to onset of WWI), who thought the US Constitution was too rigid, and lauded the superiority of the unwritten British Constitution, which was "capable at any moment of being bent, or turned, expanded or contracted" to meet the needs of the British Empire. Bryce is the architect of Australia's 'white only" policy and America's Jim Crow Laws. In his treatise “Thoughts on the Negro Problem” which appeared in The North American Review (1891), that the issue of suffrage could be resolved by one of the four solutions: (1) the revocation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which granted citizenship to persons born or naturalised in the U.S. and prohibited states from denying suffrage on the basis of race or colour; (2) miscegenation (breed out their blackness and savagery); (3) deportation to Africa with stringent laws prohibiting their return; or, (4) (the most promising)–the adoption of a U.S. Constitutional Amendment which placed an educational qualification on suffrage thereby eliminating in one blow the franchise rights of the illiterate poor, black and white equally.
Our American founders who declared Independence from the wickedly cruel English Crown understood that limited government and an educated populace with access to popular information was the key in preventing tyrannical abuses of power.
Here is what Jefferson and Madison thought (a stark contrast to the British Colonialists):
"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both." James Madison – 4th U.S. President and author of the U.S. Bill of Rights
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson – 3rd U.S. President and principal author of The Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that there were only three forms of sovereignty: a Monarchy of one; an Aristocracy of few; or a Democracy of all. The American Republic by virtue of The Declaration of Independence, that "ALL...are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights" and the opening preamble of the Constitution, "WE the PEOPLE..." was never meant to be a sovereignty of a FEW, and most certainly not of ONE but of ALL, where ALL have right to enter the assembly. He also said a democracy of the entire assembly could not fail unless the multitude that are to be governed fail. America, while struggling against an administrative state, is still very much alive and well and one of the few bright lights (by its multitude) trying to lead itself, and hopefully the world, out of this mess in which we find ourselves in. What is going on in America and throughout the world is nothing less than an age-old classical power play to return to the old feudal order of kings, aristocrats, and paupers. Signed: An American Citizen Abroad
That's all very well, and I agree absolutely. BUT the whole thing falls apart, not just in America, when "The People" vote tradionally (our family has always voted . . . ). UK has the same problem where the divide is "the colour of your collar", or race, as we do here in South Africa.
Esteban's comments are false. The American Founders did not institute a literacy test for voting. That was a British idea during the post-Civil War re-constructionist period of American history and was penned by the British Colonialist Viscount James Bryce (British Ambassador to the US prior to onset of WWI), who thought the US Constitution was too rigid, and lauded the superiority of the unwritten British Constitution, which was "capable at any moment of being bent, or turned, expanded or contracted" to meet the needs of the British Empire. Bryce is the architect of Australia's 'white only" policy and America's Jim Crow Laws. In his treatise “Thoughts on the Negro Problem” which appeared in The North American Review (1891), that the issue of suffrage could be resolved by one of the four solutions: (1) the revocation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which granted citizenship to persons born or naturalised in the U.S. and prohibited states from denying suffrage on the basis of race or colour; (2) miscegenation (breed out their blackness and savagery); (3) deportation to Africa with stringent laws prohibiting their return; or, (4) (the most promising)–the adoption of a U.S. Constitutional Amendment which placed an educational qualification on suffrage thereby eliminating in one blow the franchise rights of the illiterate poor, black and white equally.
Our American founders who declared Independence from the wickedly cruel English Crown understood that limited government and an educated populace with access to popular information was the key in preventing tyrannical abuses of power.
Here is what Jefferson and Madison thought (a stark contrast to the British Colonialists):
"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both." James Madison – 4th U.S. President and author of the U.S. Bill of Rights
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson – 3rd U.S. President and principal author of The Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that there were only three forms of sovereignty: a Monarchy of one; an Aristocracy of few; or a Democracy of all. The American Republic by virtue of The Declaration of Independence, that "ALL...are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights" and the opening preamble of the Constitution, "WE the PEOPLE..." was never meant to be a sovereignty of a FEW, and most certainly not of ONE but of ALL, where ALL have right to enter the assembly. He also said a democracy of the entire assembly could not fail unless the multitude that are to be governed fail. America, while struggling against an administrative state, is still very much alive and well and one of the few bright lights (by its multitude) trying to lead itself, and hopefully the world, out of this mess in which we find ourselves in. What is going on in America and throughout the world is nothing less than an age-old classical power play to return to the old feudal order of kings, aristocrats, and paupers. Signed: An American Citizen Abroad
That's all very well, and I agree absolutely. BUT the whole thing falls apart, not just in America, when "The People" vote tradionally (our family has always voted . . . ). UK has the same problem where the divide is "the colour of your collar", or race, as we do here in South Africa.
Ignorance will never produce a true Democracy.