Voting is a Privilege, Not a Right

I imagine you remember learning about America's voting rights movements as a child, when simultaneously the ideal of universal suffrage and the evil of your ancestors was taught to you. I distinctly remember my peers and I asking each other what they must have been thinking, not allowing women or non-landowners to vote. We mocked our forefathers as though our moral reasoning was superior to theirs, and it was only one of many such rituals the sons and daughters of America were subjected to in grade school. Now, I don't mean to defend any particular age of suffrage in the United States; I don't find any of them particularly desirable, including the present one. In order to change it, however, we have to overcome this orthodoxy we were taught from a very young age.

Our Fathers Were Not Fools

Any issue we were taught about primarily as children demands to be questioned heavily, although its naturally uncomfortable for us. "Deconstructing" Christians understand this, although in the wrong direction. They realize that their "faith" is simply the sum of what they've been told in Sunday School, and it isn't really theirs at all. This is a necessary step in the development of true faith, to have it for oneself instead of borrowing it from teachers or parents. All beliefs must endure this development to become authentic, but many of us have failed to do this with all we were taught about our own nation's history.

We must be willing to reconsider what we were taught as children, or we are incapable of becoming adults. Can we not ask why our forefathers acted as they did? Will we accept broad moral platitudes condemning them as evil people as a sufficient answer? We did as children. We're children still if we remain satisfied with self-righteousness as an explanation for the behavior of all mankind before us.

Few Are Fit To Rule

Any civilization you have ever heard of has understood that ruling is not a right afforded to anyone, but only to those of a particular sort. Members of a royal family, victors of a battle, something to distinguish who deserved to wield power and who did not. This must be true, even a team meeting of 12 people must have someone in charge to avoid complete disorder.

Representative government partially solves this problem with the concept of elected offices, yet the principle remains that not anyone is fit to occupy them. During election season especially we ought to agree on this, between only two candidates I cannot imagine anyone who believes both are fit to rule. The processes have changed, and improved, but the principles remain.

Voting is Ruling

To arrive at the point I began with: If not everyone is fit to rule, why would everyone be fit to vote for rulers? The single degree of separation between the voter and the ruler does little to separate the two, in fact the ideal candidate is simply the sum of his supporters. How can we say that few are fit to govern, but absolutely everyone is fit to shape government?