Quote:
Originally Posted by sjh
If you need the gov't to play the role of your parents and take care of you. Fine. Your stating you cannot fulfill your responsibilities as an adult. Voting and possibly other rights of adulthood are suspended.
I'm completely serious. I hear the constant braying of those demanding their rights. It's a two-edged sword; rights & responsibilities. Fulfill your responsibilities and assume rights.
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Indeed. For quite some time after the country was founded, it was a requirement that you had to own property (ie, land, house, farm, business, etc) before you were allowed to vote. In essence, it meant you had to establish yourself in some sort of trade or occupation, and become a productive self-supporting tax-paying member of society before you had a say in how the country was governed and public funds were spent - IOW, you had to have your own "skin" in the game before you were allowed to play.
Nowadays, with EVERYONE eligible to vote, and thanks to essentially drive-by voter registration many who shouldn't be eligible in the first place (I often wonder how many illegals have voted in the past few elections thanks to election fraud by BOTH parties) - and the majority of the population now paying no federal taxes, but yet still able to vote for politicians that promise them a continuing flow of public funds and entitlements into their pockets -
I'd say it's little wonder then that we've reached this point - and proof of the quote that once the public learns it can vote itself funds from the public treasury, then a democracy is doomed.
I opined several months ago in another thread that the federal government would be set on it's ear, if the requirement to own property and/or pay federal taxes as a prerequisite for voting were reinstated. Instead of pandering to this or that special interest or ethnic group, there would be one main group that all politicians would have to answer to come election time - those that paid taxes and were eligible to vote.
I imagine the legality would be challenged under the "free speech" principle, but a similar requirement for any individual, corporation, or organization prior to being allowed to make campaign contributions to a party or candidate might shake things up significantly as well.
In actuality, there would be about a snowball's chance of either happening - those in the present status quo stand to lose too much.