God’s Friday
Posted by richard on April 6th, 2012
group of readings on christianity and slavery
http://bigthink.com/ideas/the-mystical-dogma-of-human-equality?page=all
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/11/deo-vindice.html
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2008/09/the-confederacy-a-christian-theocracy.html
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/new-atheist-magical-thinking
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigs-advert?INTCMP=ILCNETIMG12382I
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the problem is the old sleeping under the bridge law.
imagine someone wanting to pass a law making it illegal to sleep under bridges on the santa cruz.
then someone argues that’s discriminating against poor people.
the first person argues that it’s not discriminatory, he just wants to stop anyone, rich or por, white black hispanic indian etc from sleeping ther,
it’s not discriminatory at all, he argues. i’m not singling out any group at all.
yes he is, poor people sleep under bridges, rich people have homes, when they aren’t near them they stay in hotels.
voter id laws are discriminatory. they discriminate against people who don’t have govt issued picture id’s.
driver’s licenses are not evenly distributed across social divisions.
poor, elderly, not-english speaking, east coast, big city dwellers have much lower rates of driver’s licenses than do
rich, young, english, western, suburban dwelling people.
about 11% of americans do not have suitable id to vote in those states passing the restrictive id laws
18% of people over 65
maybe 25% black, 8% white
interestingly we almost couldnt get married in maine in 1974 because of poll tax laws.
our pastor finessed the system, but legally neither of us was eligible to get a marriage license
it’s the same impetus again, disfranchisement of those people most likely to sleep under the bridges….
notes:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” (Le Lys Rouge)
the evidence points to virtually zero voter fraud at the level that voter id is aimed.
the political city machines that voted graveyards was in the past.
but not being lazy is not a reason to disfranchise people, is it?
so you want to make getting food stamps a requirement for poor people to vote? doesn’t that disfranchise libertarian or to proud for welfare folks?
what happens to the democratic “one man-one vote” ideal as it becomes untangled with such demands?
my mother in law and sister in law never drove. why would you force them into jumping through a special hoop so they could vote?
is getting everyone opinion counted a good high priority thing or not?
or should only certain “sorts” of people be trusted with the vote?
voting has at least 2 major reasons.
the first is what we now call crowd sourcing, the value in numbers of opinions, the same reasoning lies behind juries.
the other is that it “manufactures consent” and encourages people to respect govt as legitimate.
the reasoning behind the slogan “if you don’t vote you can’t complain”.
imagine reestablishing literacy tests.
now disenfranchise everyone who does not read at a 12th grade level.
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