There follows a guest post by Dr. James Alexander, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey, responding to a recent suggestion of Dr. David Runciman, a Politics Professor at Cambridge, that the franchise be extended to six year-olds. In some respects, he argues, it’s not such a bad idea.
David Runciman is a Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge. I know him a bit, since he supervised me for the Political Philosophy paper when I was reading Part II of the Historical Tripos; and we have had some brief exchanges since then. I salute my old teacher – though he is not old: he is not much older than I am. Amusingly, he is also someone who was edited by Toby Young very early on, when he wrote a piece on Gascoigne the footballer for the Modern Review. Runciman is an extremely able writer about politics, with not only a handful of books but also a continuous stream of reviews for the London Review of Books and a podcast called Talking Politics to his name. Runciman in writing exhibits smoothness, acuity and skill; Runciman in speech exhibits, in addition, receptivity and geniality. He seems to enjoy politics, even when it may be the sort of politics he doesn’t like. I would assume that his views are fairly standard Late Cambridge stuff: liberal, tolerant, leftish, remainish, but I don’t know, and we don’t know, since Talking Politics holds onto the academic or BBC habit of preferring not to admit to an opinion when something more lofty or indirect is there to be had.
Recently Runciman has published an article in the Guardian advocating extending the franchise to everyone: and by everyone he means children: and by children he means everyone over the age of six.
This is interesting, and amusing. My own view is that Runciman may, consciously or unconsciously, be trying to reduce democracy to absurdity. Perhaps this will be Runciman’s greatest coup yet, his Modest Proposal. Instead of eating small children – recall Swift’s delicate attention to how to prepare them (fricassé and ragout) – we shall give them the vote. The formerly cooked shall now cook. In addition to Junior Masterchef we will have Junior Legislator. And why not? Since we live in an age in which men are women and women are men (if they say so), then why should children not be, in effect, adults? (Let us admit it: since adults are children, there is no reason why children should not be adults.)
I shall not argue against the arguments directly because I think that there is nothing wrong with such arguments when they are proposed in order to make us think: though they are to be handled cautiously when they come too close to politics. For the record, my eight year old son thought it was a very good idea. “When is the next election?” he immediately asked.
What I want to reflect on is Runciman’s reason for making this suggestion. It was, he said, that politics is stale. Now, this seems to me to be a preposterous claim. I’d say, on the contrary, that politics became almost spectacularly interesting in 2016, and that, in 2020, it became even more interesting, so much so that the events of 2016 now look like extremely wet tinder. Runciman talks about recent politics: and his complaint seems to be that politics is too predictable. He suggests that if you tell him how you voted in the Brexit referendum then he will probably be able to predict what you think about lockdowns and any number of other matters. This is, by and large, true – though it ignores the many old people who were pro Brexit but also pro Lockdown, and it ignores the serene and subtle Lord Sumption, almost the only living lord with any gumption, who was anti Brexit and also anti Lockdown: indicating that even a civilised Remainer of the Auberon Waugh type can step out of his trench and cross no-man’s-land to the other side when the entire historical inheritance of common law and history moving from precedent to precedent (and not from principle to principle) is at stake.
Nonetheless, I agree with Runciman. Something remarkable has happened. The nation – nay, the world – is divided. On the one hand, there are those who accept the Guardian and BBC narrative, who are sympathetic to Floyd but not Rittenhouse, who at the very least go along with and at the very most actively support the ‘unholy trinity’ of our nice totalitarianising ideologies of CLIMATE, COVID and WOKERY. On the other hand, there are those who cling on to sanity in the comments section of the Spectator website, take their opinions from YouTube rather than television or newspapers, and meditate continually on the central question of our age which is whether Toby Young or James Delingpole has eyes which are wider open.
Runciman thinks this is the death of politics. Hence his rather quixotic appeal to the children. His argument is that children are probably unpredictable. Even writing that makes me laugh. Bien sur! He claims that it is their unpredictability which is why he does not think that his suggestion conceals a conspiracy to get more votes for the Corbyn-Meghan-Greta left, or, perhaps more hopefully, the new post-Blairite coalition which would stretch from the Mandelson millionaires on the right to the Banksy T-shirt-wearing Anti-Colstonite rowdies on the left. He thinks that the unpredictability of children ensures that his argument is apolitical. We may doubt, especially since a large part of his argument seems to about how the nation is divided not by view but by age: as far as he is concerned, it is the old who are retrograde and unnatural, it is the young who are in favour of the narcissistic gnostic religions growing up on the left.
I think that the divide of recent years – the divide of Brexit and Trump compounded and exaggerated and forced-into-our-faces by Covid – is a sign that politics is more alive than it has been for a hundred or possibly two hundred years. Somewhere a historian wrote (it might have been Alfred Cobban) that Burke-and-Paine was the last time there was serious political debate in England. (Before that there was Rainsborough v. Ireton in the Putney Debates; and, before that, of course, Coke v. James I, and Becket v. Henry II.) We do not have any Burkes and Paines nowadays. But in the interstices of our literature there are positions which are as clear, as resolute and as well stated. Serious political debate is non-existent in Parliament, or even outside Parliament. Marr and Peston avoid it. But it is there nonetheless. Perhaps it is not a fit subject for polite society. But politics which is fit for polite society – especially a mass polite society – is superficial politics. The point about the current argument – even when it is not being had and, in fact, especially because it is not being had – is that it is eminently political because it goes down to fundamentals.
On the one hand, there are those who are defending almost any aspect of the older order. The reactionaries and the liberals are making common cause. Anyone who believes that tradition is the democracy of the dead is on one side of the argument. Anyone who wants to defend any aspect of Christianity, the Common Law, Monarchy or even the status quo of before 2020 is on one side the argument. This side I call, for want of a better word, the populist side: for it is now actively defended usually, but not always, but certainly in the last instance, nowadays, by those whose politics is called or disparaged as ‘populist’.
On the other hand, there are those who are on what I call, for want of a better term, the constitutionalist side. These are those who defend the new social media politics of Facebook, Amazon, Greta, Fauci, Merkel, Blair and the EU, plus the ranks of educated and professionalised and administrating people who play along with the strange new politics (if we dare let the cat out of the bag) of Placating Victims as a means to Perpetuate Current Inequalities and Perhaps Increase Them. By ‘victims’ I of course mean the victims identified by the ideology of the ‘unholy trinity’: the victims of Covid being the old, the sick and the healthy, the victims of Privilege being the marginalised, the minorities and the aggrieved, and the victims of Climate Change being – all of humanity!
This is politics in the most fundamental sense. For it is a question about what the nature of our state is. Is it something which carries it with a respect for its origins and traditions, or is it something which is constructed out of its zero historic ideals? This divide was evident to everyone after the French Revolution. The question made Edmund Burke hysterical. It motivated the writings of Michael Oakeshott. But the question is no longer simply a Westminster or University question. It is being asked up and down the land.
Now, if by ‘politics’ we do not mean discussion of the fundamentals of our arrangements, then this might seem very destructive. Indeed, it is destructive, as everyone says, to have fundamental disagreement, fundamental cleavage, at every point. The Greeks called this not politics but stasis, which was their wonderful word for not only faction, but also for the conflict between factions, and ultimately for civil war. So Runciman may have a point about this not being politically good, not good for calm order as such. But he cannot argue that stasis is stale. Stasis is anything but stale: it vivifies everything it touches.
If nothing else, we can say that Britain is alive politically.
What this means for the six year olds is unclear. Runciman seems to want them to be alive too, to join us in our stasis. But if this stasis is a bad thing, and if what Runciman really wants is an exciting politics of Cameron-versus-Miliband (or, as the Beatles put it, ‘Ah, ah, Mr Wilson, Ah, ah, Mr Heath!’), then it does not seem likely that we shall get this by consulting the children.
Jesus famously rebuked some of his adult disciples who were trying to steer children out of the room by declaring that the Kingdom of God belonged to such as these. Runciman appears to be trying to provoke his disciplines in the same way for the sake of the City of Earth. Even if we can see Jesus’s point, which was that children are in some way innocent and unoccluded and therefore holy in a primitive sense, it is harder to agree with Runciman’s claim that political innocence is likely to offer us some sort of secular deliverance. Unless the children remain coolly Beatlesque, won’t it just mean that schools become divided? Surely, by Runciman’s own argument, it would be better to remove the politics from schools, universities, and lock it firmly down inside Westminster?
There is another problem. If, as many suggest, we are in age of almost unparalleled infantility, then it seems hardly likely that an actual infantilisation of our politics would help us get rid of the cultural infantilism which is ruining it.
Instead of changing the age for voting to that of six, I could equally and oppositely suggest that the age be 60. Indeed, perhaps only 60 year-olds should be allowed to vote, like consuls, for one year. Everyone who knew a 60 year-old would then have to petition them, and allow the 60 year-olds to do what they do best, which is adjudicate. The problem with universal suffrage is that it makes us selfish, since everyone has a vote: a wiser politics would surely require us to think of others. This was, at any rate, one of the justifications of the hereditary system and noblesse oblige, a principle which Runciman surely understands.
There is one final argument against ‘Now We Are Six’ (or ‘Brave New School’). It is that our education system has already become a dangerously and monotonously centralised system of indoctrination. It seems to me that this phenomenon would only be exaggerated further if teachers were not only the guardians of future voters but guardians of present voters. For then the state would certainly have more of an interest in altering textbooks to get everyone to think what they ought to think. This seems a decisive counter-argument. Even if children were to remain unpredictable that would not change the fact that an entire Goebbelsian apparatus would be devoted to creating the codes of thought within which the young would be expected to operate.
One last thought. I would be prepared to consider changing my mind if Runciman were to be really bold and say that under the new dispensation only six year-olds would be allowed to vote. This is a cry that would deserve very serious consideration. Here at last we would have a constituency not yet morally ruined by schools, smartphones, computers, and adminicorporacademitechnocratic ways of thinking, strongly aware of the difference between justice and injustice, having vivid knowledge of both good and evil, possessed of a vital interest in defending the family, and bestowed with a primitive interest in the beauty, sanctity and divinity discernible within an established order.
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We have six year olds in charge, that’s for sure.
Why is Toby trying to convince people that we live, or did live, in a democracy when sensible people know we live in an imaginary world of historical fabrications, climate scams, medical hoaxes and illusions of democracy. The basic ruse is to convince voters that their political system has essentially two competing political parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum, each presenting opposing ideals and policies. One on the Left, the other on the Right. When, after so many years in power, the voters become disillusioned with the incumbent party, they are urged to throw them out and replace them with the other party. Because the few minor differences between the parties are magnified beyond all reason, voters actually believe they are in for real change when in fact no change takes place and the mass immigration, nation destroying, Net Zero, cultural Marxist, one world government, globalist bandwagon rolls on. Such is the power of the forces behind this charade, they are able to practice their deception right under the noses of the electorate, and no more than one in a thousand are aware of it.
Two Brands, one uniparty, zero real choice
Yep: the only Net Zero they will get or have already gotten anywhere near.
I agree with almost all you suggest, except the notion that Toby tries to convince that we live, or (recently) did live in a democracy.
I don’t see that he suggests that.
I think that Toby’s well written and thoughtful (and thought provoking) piece is exemplary.
Toby takes it as axiomatic that we live in a democracy, that there are essentially two opposing camps – the Left and the Right and that our vote actually matters when in fact none of this is true. People who think along these lines, still promote the view that Tory and Labour are separate entities, are part of the problem. It’s a totalitarian pantomime. There’s no real power in House of Commons. It’s where they play out the puppet show. “Oh no it isn’t! Oh yes it is!” Never has this been so evident – but Toby chooses to overlook this aspect of our current difficulties.
I think it was the potential diminishing of that control that may have created the current situation. The Internet and crypto currencies offers increased democratisation. This would ultimately have disrupted the lineage that currently holds power.
Perhaps you missed the introduction that reads “There follows a guest post by Dr. James Alexander, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey, responding to a recent suggestion of Dr. David Runciman, a Politics Professor at Cambridge, that the franchise be extended to six year-olds.”
In other words Toby didn’t write this post, he is simply continuing the work of The Daily Sceptic by offering readers a smorgasbord of sociology-political commentary and letting readers make up their own mind!
Perhaps you missed the introduction that reads “There follows a guest post by Dr. James Alexander, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey, responding to a recent suggestion of Dr. David Runciman, a Politics Professor at Cambridge, that the franchise be extended to six year-olds.”
In other words Toby didn’t write this post, he is simply continuing the work of The Daily Sceptic by offering readers a smorgasbord of sociology-political commentary and letting readers make up their own mind!
Perhaps you missed the introduction that reads “There follows a guest post by Dr. James Alexander, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey, responding to a recent suggestion of Dr. David Runciman, a Politics Professor at Cambridge, that the franchise be extended to six year-olds.”
In other words Toby didn’t write this post, he is simply continuing the work of The Daily Sceptic by offering readers a smorgasbord of sociology-political commentary and letting readers make up their own mind!
As a Great Grandparent, I think this is an insult to most six year olds!
Christmas lights in Florence – December 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8PAYM3sLt8
Buon Natale
We should continue to get out there and wake people up.
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If we put government in the hands of people who want free teddy bears and three meals of ice cream a day… honestly, would we be any worse off?
I thought we’d already done that?
Picking MPs with a bingo machine would be less damaging than letting these braindead sheep keep voting for sub-eighty IQ candidates (most prominently, but not exclusively from Labour), based on the colour of a rosette.
Maybe MP’s should be chosen more like a jury. Not exactly like. Ideally, there would be some bias to intelligence but not measured by qualifications I’m thinking raw ability to deal with complexity and extrapolate action.
Being lead by a group who in the majority are there because they badly want power and status over others is bound to have issues!
Well, we gave women the vote, and look how much better politics has become since then.
/sarc
Just saying…
I N D O C T R I N A T I O N.
Lets be fair conservatives have never advocated free anything, the real problem is being conservative is old fashioned (obsolete) mostly for the older generation like me who still remember being taught RE in school.
It’s just sour grapes now because it’s just a different type of ideology being sewn into childrens brains from old conservative christian values.
Liberals will hate this, but two things to blame in the demise of christian conservative values, womens lib & working mothers, whose to blame for womens lib, conservative men!
I say abolish formal mandatory education, teach only basic subjects like math, reading writing (not grama) be free, oh & give every one the right to carry a gun. Outlaw rulers, voluntary local militia groups to protect our communities from power seeking pyscopaths like prince willy & parliamentarians.
“Lets be fair conservatives have never advocated free anything“
When society is moving for ideological reasons from relative liberty towards relative unfreedom, the conservatives will resist that move. Which is why conservatives by and large in the past half century or so have been the defenders of freedom of free speech and leftists the opposite. That inclination works in parallel with the fact that the powerful usually like to control speech and the marginalised prefer free speech, so the increasing empowerment of leftists and marginalisation of conservatives has pushed in the same direction
In earlier periods, the situation was different.
That is a fabrication, The truth is classic liberals defended free speech, as the liberal party went extinct, many joined the conservative party in the early 1900s.
Even the Labour Party (liberals) advocated free speech etc up until the Blair era of career politicians.
Frankly conservatism never advocated anything but conformity & i’m afraid, prejudice & discrimination, whether that’s good or bad, identifies your true conservative values.
“That is a fabrication, The truth is classic liberals defended free speech, as the liberal party went extinct, many joined the conservative party in the early 1900s.”
Clearly there are more liberal and more authoritarian individuals in every category. When people who identify as “classical liberals” are resisting ideologically based changes in the direction of illiberalism, they are de facto conservatives.
They (some of them) joined the Conservative Party because that was the one they saw as best representing their underlying position, against the generally illiberal socialists, though that was about a lot more than just freedom of speech.
In the early-mid C20th, the main free speech issues were in any case around pornography and blasphemy, where conservatives were aligned against increasing freedom and leftists claimed to be die hard free speech advocates. Until they realised in the mid-late C20th that the jackboots were now on their side’s feet and invented political speech-crimes and later “hate speech”.
Conservative = conformity (period).
Gays, trans, feminism has always been in the background of society, liberalism of the 20th century pushed back at conservative conformity as technology eroded religious values, allowing it to surface.
Hate speech is nothing more than a strategy to dominate the competition. Its function is to destroy traditional family values to benefit the neoliberal globalist agenda, the leftists that push it are just pawns.
The real problem is that younger generations have been given to much freedom, facilitated by technological advances since the 60s.
Conservatism is a wounded creature dying in the corner.
The problem is that the choice has been limited. There has been a dire lack of pragmatic liberals. Who can you vote for if you believe equality of opportunity not outcome, strong social services as a safety net but not lifestyle choice, that the private sector creates the wealth, that individuals should take responsibility and that we should err on the side of tolerance when something is annoying, that there is nothing wrong with being rich, that children should receive benefits of their parents endeavours?
There was an interview with Aaron Russo who was friends with Nick Rockefeller where he claimed women’s lib was a construct to provide additional taxes and to reduce family bonds and influence. Allowing children to be more influenced by educators than family.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalelite05.htm
Could be fake, who knows anymore?
That’s an interesting one. Good example of how a table (or graph) can impart information at a glance.
That is incredible! I would never have imagined free speech would be so under valued. Is this the result of the long march of the institutions or simple ignorance. Clearly the younger the more snowflake.
As Jordon Peterson likes to point out, women tend to place more value on being agreeable.
Which men do you propose who will lead the country with bravery, courage and loyalty then? There is a dearth.
And when you make comments like this most women will automatically think you’ve been voted against and left on the shelf by women. Just saying…
It’s the start of the Suffrakids Movement.
Oooh dangerous talk, are you gay because if not you may soon be!
As this now starts to turn we need a word/name/term to use to identify and ridicule the collaborators. They’ve used a number of terms to describe us, anti-vaxxers, Covidiots etc.
I thought about shaving their heads and parading them through the streets a a la Francais, but that might upset the snowflakes. Therefore I’ll throw my hat in the ring with PAMPERS, it works like Karen/gammon in that Pampers are made for the biggest bed wetters known, they are usually full of sh1t and when they’re finished with they are buried. So we’d have Pampers Vine, Pampers Morgan etc, etc.
I’m certain that the sceptic contributors will have much better ideas than I. The war is nearly won, now the fight begins for the spoils.
No need to reinvent the wheel IMHO. “Sheeple” is succinct and apt.
Perhaps, but “Pampers” does carry a degree of comedy about it. Also easily used in the singular and the plural:
The Pampers – all of them.
Singular:
Pampers Vine.
Nice. I like it.
I’m still in with the parading through the streets bit. People say Hang The Bastards but that’s way too quick.
I want our covid criminals chained at the neck and marched through the streets of every Australian town and city. In clown suits. After a few years of that there’ll be time enough to work on our noose knots.
It will be an absolute breeze to put in place, as all six year olds, filled to the brim with genetically-modifying “vaccines”, will also have their digital identities on their obligatory smartphones, and thus voter ID (depending on their meeting the necessary Social Credit criteria).
The Nudge Unit and MSM will then be able to manipulate which section of the single dictatorship government is chosen from the amorphous political mass, as it will be similar to sports, with but one side divided into first and second teams, who take it in turns to oppress the people.
In other news, it is suggested that the Pfizer poison is so effective that a fourth dose will be required early in 2022. Mithridatism for the Common People, but in a deadly mode.
“What I want to reflect on is Runciman’s reason for making this suggestion. It was, he said, that politics is stale. ”
What he means, probably (if he is like so many others), is that he can’t bear to face up to what his own politics have become, the mess that all the nonsensical “ideals” and “reforms” and panics of the past couple of generations have made, and he cannot bring himself to support what he knows on some level is necessary, and thus seeks to turn away from it all.
“This is politics in the most fundamental sense. For it is a question about what the nature of our state is. Is it something which carries it with a respect for its origins and traditions, or is it something which is constructed out of its zero historic ideals? This divide was evident to everyone after the French Revolution.“
And this is the true basis of left v right, that predates the particular manifestations of the C19th and C20th – state versus private, unions v big business, and which supercedes divisive class-based and race-based details.
Before there was Labour and Conservative, there was left v right, and it remains today when both Labour and Conservative have become parties of the left – of radical changes to society in the name of elite theories about how we can build a better society and a better world by listening to experts and by crushing resistance to their theories.
Still pursuing the religious colour-blind political dualism at every opportunity, I see.
“Still pursuing the religious colour-blind political dualism at every opportunity, I see. “
It makes no sense on its face (“religious” – eh?, “colour-blind” – eh?, “political dualism” – too vague to pin down) but experience suggests there would be little point in asking for an explanation, because you invariably just resort to playground personal abuse instead of reasoned and reasonable discussion.
You know what pisses me off about your posts Rick, is I too often agree with both delivery & content
For a marxist to point the finger and claim a poster is showing a religious view of their politics is a stark demonstration of Freudian projection!
For me it’s wealth creator v rent-seeker.
For most nowadays big mixes of both, rent-seeking is economic pollution and killing the economy.
Isaiah 3-
… and the sadness, sodomy and debauchery doesn’t even end there.
Yeah, I’d say Isaiah was spot-on in his predictions of the future.
I don’t agree with your vision of the future. There will be no libraries.
The “future” I’m referring to is here now.
Since many of the population are already infantilised by their political overlords then this is probably a logical conclusion.
Russell Group and its top ranked Universities reputation is getting ever more dubious.
As for the right to vote, I am now firmly in favour of sortition instead.
From a pool of candidates who have passed a basic political and financial knowledge test.
If democracies can’t bring themselves to do that, the testing requirement for all voters and candidates is still an absolute must.
“No representation without taxation!”
That’s what I say.
Hmm, that takes you back towards the old situation of a property qualification for voting, but replacing it with a (much broader) income requirement. Unless you take the view that with modern state fleecing structures (VAT etc), everyone pays taxes just by existing.
When Schedule A and tithes ( a tax on land) were the main tax instead of income tax the overlap was similar.
A taxocracy would be an interesting idea.
Keep your tax receipt as each pound they extort from you is one vote.
Unfortunately it does seem that it would end in rent-seeking.
If you go by mental age, the voting age us way below six already.
Some years back a lifestyle guru (or something to that effect, not quite sure what this man does, but he’s fairly well-known in NL), went to court to have his age legally lowered. He was in his late 60s at the time and said that according to his doctors he was biologically in his 40s/50s and he wanted to officially change his birth date to reflect that. He felt he was discriminated against in all walks of life when it came to his age, I believe particularly in terms of pulling women on dating apps.
The court made short shrift of this, probably with some considerable prodding by the government. I think it was realised very rapidly that by allowing this, a great number of people under 65 would be more than happy to change their age to that of an OAP and start claiming their old age pension some 20 or 30 years earlier than intended.
When it suits courts and governments can indeed deal with absurd claims appropriately. Unfortunately, having 6-year olds vote would most certainly suit them.
Although it just shows that if they abandoned an arbitrary age and made saving up the requirement (i.e fund your own pension) then these sorts of messes would be avoided.
Yes, that thought always crosses my mind when people go on and on about retirement age. It’s not that I don’t understand why people want to retire early and travel the world or whatever takes their fancy, they just don’t seem to realise what that would cost.
Indeed, make pension funds individual, let people deposit as much as they want, then let them choose when to retire, but make it quite clear that the money in the account is their lot – retire at 40, you might run out of money by 50 depending on how much you save and spend. Retire at 40 after saving a lot, be prudent with your spending, you may live a comfortable retirement for 50 years.
You’ve just given me an idea.
In the UK at present a debauched male can identify as a female goat if he so wishes. And everyone will be legally required to believe he is a female goat and to refer to him as such. If anyone doesn’t share his fantasy of him being a female goat, they’ll be committing a hate crime, with high risk of losing their job, fines or even a prison sentence.
It’s now so legally embedded in the British legal system and culture that as a female goat this man could force a genuine goat farmer to allow him to live in his barn with his real goats and feed him goat food.
So, the legal precedent is there for people like me to identify as 150-year-olds and draw old-age pensions, free homes and do the round of the talk-shows expounding on the genetics of longevity.
Perhaps if people did start making claims like this, the current BS would be turned on its head and sanity would return?
Some people thought at the time that that was what this guy was doing, showing how absurd the world has become.
Unfortunately, I think he was actually serious. He said he wanted to be honest with people, so didn’t want to lie about his age. Why would someone believe their eyes when they look at him, when they can look at his passport and know their eyes deceived them?
Apparently he hasn’t realised that flashing a wad of cash and credit cards will make him any age he wants to be with some people
If we are going to make slightly tongue in cheek proposals intended to provoke thought, I would suggest that the most basic requirement for political participation should be respect for and proper prioritisation of freedom of speech. Meaning in particular the freedom for those opinions you most despise, hate and fear to be freely expressed and argued for. If you don’t respect that for others, why should it be respected for you?
It’s clear that respect for freedom of speech is weakest among the young, among women, and among those on the left.
So instead of giving the vote to children, we should have a minimum age for voting of 50, take the vote away from women, and find some way to exclude leftist fanatics and identity lobbyists from voting.
I think that is a very poorly worded question, which does not reflect the grades of what is and what is not acceptable speech , nor what sanctions would or would not be appropriate. I could answer it either way, and still be the same person.
If offensive speech means incitement to murder or violence I am against it, and the laws have enshrined this for ages.
If offensive speech means implying something woke, not taking the knee, or offending someone with paper thin skin then I am on the free speech side.
So depending on which of these comes first to the mind you get a different answer. Hence there must have been many ‘don’t knows’ but none appear in the graphs.
Yes the laws on conspiracy already adequately cover speech
“If offensive speech means incitement to murder or violence I am against it, and the laws have enshrined this for ages.
If offensive speech means implying something woke, not taking the knee, or offending someone with paper thin skin then I am on the free speech side.”
I don’t think there’s ever any intention to include actual, direct incitement to violence in these issues. As you say, such matters are generally uncontroversially illegal. Perhaps some of the “don’t knows” weren’t sure of this, but the vast majority would imo have been clear that it meant your second category – “something woke, not taking the knee, or offending someone with paper thin skin “. That’s where the actual debate is.
“Don’t knows” are presumably the numbers not included on either side – 19% of the “All Britons” category.
The full results are here:
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/3li08lkxae/YouGov%20-%20Cancel%20culture.pdf
That would be easily achieved if people with personality disorders were banned from voting. A personality disorder is actually a mental illness and the criteria for its diagnosis will be found in DSM-5.
A vast majority of leftist fanatics and identity lobbyists more than fulfil the criteria for having personality disorders.
An excellent idea, which would have the side benefit of a lot of people discovering that they no longer suffered from ‘mental health issues’.
And the point of voting is? You get a liberal technocrat regardless.
This short one actually quite nails what ails politics and what both authors unsuccessfully tried to address. https://unherd.com/thepost/the-case-against-liz-truss/
I lived and worked in an area of Europe for a short period at one time, it was a very low IQ community – there were big tax incentives for foreign companies to set up shop there.
A local politician in this community spent at least a decade openly abusing his position by using local authority workers and machinery to enhance and renovate his own estate and property.
Eventually the authorities in this country charged this corrupt politician and tried him in court. I was there long enough at the time to be surprised at this, they never ever interfered with a corrupt politician because the country’s political sphere was a bed of corruption and incompetence.
It turned out that the authorities in this backward little country only charged this politician due to pressure from Brussels – the country had gone bankrupt and Brussels was bailing them out, and wanted them to try to show they were tackling their well-known and widespread corruption.
But, amazingly, when this widely known and very corrupt politician was taken to court, his constituents reacted by organising street protests in an attempt to get the charges dropped.
I kid you not.
The psychology of this is that to the low IQ constituents, corruption was part and parcel of everyday life. Generally, in this area if they could steal something, they stole it. It’s acceptable here for shops, pubs and business staff to overcharge and short-change customers, this is an everyday occurrence, and gets quite annoying after a short time. Their Neanderthal attitude is that if the customers don’t check their change or prices, then it’s legitimate to defraud them.
I know from my experience in this place that foreign companies that operate there have a big problem in keeping foreign staff – foreign employees quickly leave because the area is a hell-hole to live in.
But the problem with the above low IQ constituents in this backward area is that quite a lot of the sprogs emigrate. They go to nearby normal democracies and bring their idiotic voting patterns with them – they are then apt to have large families and pass via their genes their idiotic voting traits on to the offspring.
Thus, in their new homeland, these people not only tolerate corrupt politicians, but go out of their way to vote them into power. Because to them corruption and getting something over on someone else is honourable and part and parcel of their lives.
If the immigrants are low IQ, their new homeland eventually also becomes low IQ.
Was this ‘backward little country’ Scotland?
To all those who post here.. a Christmas message to remember..
Sometimes you get the feeling that less is more, ie articles, journalism et al.
Drugs and paedophilia ‘would have to be’ decriminalised next.
Can’t have a voter deprived of the ‘good life’, can we?
Interesting to see Auberon Waugh’s pro-EU (or rather EEC as it was in his day) views referred to. Auberon’s political views were so far to the right, with the exception of his opposition to capital punishment, that students today would be given ‘trigger warnings’ and provided with counselling after being exposed to them. What would they make of this ‘I have never been persuaded that there is anything so very terrible about racialism’?
He never gave a full explanation for his support of the EEC, but I have never had the slightest doubt that it was the inherent lack of democracy within the organisation, and in particular its ability to frustrate what he saw as the entrenched left wing advantage built into democratic systems which appealed to him. He died before he had the opportunity to realise that the EU itself had been captured by the left.
“in particular its ability to frustrate what he saw as the entrenched left wing advantage built into democratic systems”
I think at the same time as Waugh was backing the EEC, the Labour movement was viewing it with suspicion and hostility as a “bosses’ conspiracy”.
“‘I have never been persuaded that there is anything so very terrible about racialism’?”
That was before the general indoctrination took firm hold. It’s rare to find anyone who can speak unemotionally about race in public these days, let alone regard it as just another ordinary topic of political debate.
What time will the polling stations be open till, as currently they are open past most 6 year olds bed time?
Scotland already lowered the voting age to 16 for some elections. Unfortunately the UK believes that those aged 16-18 can be easily manipulated by people in positions of trust so that the age for sexual consent is then 18. A bit odd that 16-17 years old can be easily manipulated by those in authority and yet be able to exercise free will in voting.
Yet hasn’t the response of nearly every government to Covid shown that all these political systems have failed? Where are the checks and balances on authoritarianism? If governments claim to be keeping us all healthy and have failed, why should anyone believe they can make the economy strong? Or provide a proper education? Or defend us?
I have wondered what would be the effect of choosing our “leaders” by lot. Their advisors might be similarly chosen. Would we end up any worse than we are now? But perhaps better to leave running a country to the grown ups, when the brain has fully matured, over 30 perhaps.
Why not 6-year-old voters? That way we could have bullseyes, sherbet and liquorice sticks on free prescription, instead of all that horrible-tasting stuff we get at present.
Or cats?!
An old HBR article argued that randomly selected boards would have managed US blue chip companies better than the actual boards, considering their performance up to that point.
If that’s so cats in politics would make a killing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yc4iDh9vzM
The fact that I voted Labour at the last election and Remain in the referendum (both of which have been proven to be spectacularly wrong decisions on my part imo), that I’m nominally middle class and an ex teacher tells you nothing about how I feel about the scam of all scams currently being perpetrated. Only one thing does and I’ve spoken to many of the people not buying into this to be certain that it’s the only characteristic necessary to make you an eligible member of this unvaccinated / lockdown sceptic group and that is lack of trust. I have been sceptical of motives and insincere rhetoric all my life and can spot an ulterior motive a mile off. So no generalisations about age / class / race / gender / EU affiliation work. And interestingly for the current state of ‘hesitancy’, there is nothing that can change that deep-rooted refusal to roll up sleeves so the %age of the non-compliant will not shrink and is showing evidence of growing as each day passes. This is our only hope.
“So no generalisations about age / class / race / gender / EU affiliation work”
Why would a generalisation have to hold true for every single individual in order to “work”?
A generalisation is useful in practice because it is generally true – it’s a heuristic that allows quick assessments to be made when more information is not available. As such any assessment about a person that is made on the basis of a generalisation is a rebuttable presumption.
If I only know about you that you are a Labour voter, and if I have to make a guess about your views on eg free speech, then I can say that you are more likely to be an enemy of free speech than a supporter and be correct more than half of the time if I guess that as being your position. Though it’s not a particularly strong generalisation (60%, if the figures above are correct). If I know anything else about you I can probably make that guess better. Obviously a lot of Labour supporters (26%) are actually defenders of free speech.
In most cases, it’s possible to get more information – the fact that you now regard having voted Labour as a mistake, for instance, and refine the assessment. But that doesn’t mean one should ignore the info that is available – just treat it with due caution.
It also works in the other direction. Once we know a majority of Labour voters are enemies of free speech, we can know that if we give Labour voters power over society, they will likely harm freedom of speech.
What I want to reflect on is Runciman’s reason for making this suggestion. It was, he said, that politics is stale.
How odd. The vast majority of Runciman’s article is about the generational divide and the way electoral power has swung from the young to the old. He only mentions staleness once right near the end of the article in a single sentence:
But it could invigorate our democracy, improve it, vary it, leave it a little less ossified, a little less predictable, a little less stale.
But above all Runciman is asking “why not?”. And surely the answer is lack of competence. The objection is that many adults are not competent – dementia, insanity etc. – and yet we allow them to vote. But I would turn this on its head. Why should incompetent adults be allowed to vote? I think the answer is obvious. Minimum age is a very clear and transparently fair (it applies equally to everyone) way of ruling out a lot of incompetent people (the vast majority of whom can look forward to becoming competent). It is extremely hard to find a similar criterion for those who are incompetent for other reasons. So we have to accept some incompetent adult voters for pragmatic reasons.
No we should raise it to about 30 so people have grown up and earned a living before they get a say in how taxes are squandered
An outrageous suggestion – why discriminate against 3,4 and 5-year-olds?
Should we lower the voting age to six?
Yeah, why not? Why not five? I guess that extra year between five and six is pivotal (yes, I am taking the piss) when it comes to obtaining a sound grasp of the world/politics. Still, I don’t even have any CSE’s to my name, so that must explain my complete lack of comprehension in this matter.
I assume they will accordingly bestow the rights to buy alcohol, cigarettes, petrol, solvent, saucy magazines,to place a bet, get married, obtain a driving licence, have sex (with whomever they please, of course). Oh, and not forgetting, to buy fireworks. They can already decide at that age (in some more liberated parts of society) to decide if they are actually male or female (or anything else, really) – and accordingly decide to have themselves fixed via surgery and drugs.
Yeah, why the fuck not? In for a penny ….
Now, even though I have written the above, those words are utterly, utterly useless as a vehicle for me to somehow relate the extent of raw feeling that is generated within me, when confronted with madness such as this. I know I repeat this but, really, I don’t want to actually write anything in response – what I feel like doing, is screaming, crying (yes, crying), and smashing things up. I know that would still not cut the mustard, but that is how my being wants to react. Might sound a bit melodramatic, perhaps? Perhaps being autistic (Asperger’s) has a bearing? I don’t know, but to me, I would be surprised if ‘normal’ people did not become similarly affected by these sorts of things. Some people might just be completely unbothered when encountering such nonsense, but I have no defence, I just go wild inside – absolutely primitive.
My 34 year-old daughter was strongly challenged at a checkout today, due to having a bottle of cider in her shopping. Now, I guess most would just be completely un-fazed by that. Me, I get primitive. Why challenge 25? !*!*$%****!!!!. Why? There is an age limit, and that limit is 18. If you are uncertain if someone looks => 18, then fine, satisfy yourself. What has 25 got to do with anything? I would have thought that trying to evaluate if someone is => 25, might be a little more tricky than => 18? Similarly, asking someone if they need assistance in packing a single pack of butter – rather than just evaluating for themselves (there’s a thought) if someone might, actually, possibly, benefit from assistance? All this shit does, is erode people’s ability/willingness to make simple decisions for themselves.
People might say it not worth getting hot-under-the-collar about, that it is just a small, unimportant thing, and there are far bigger things to worry about. But, I say it is exactly the small things that matter; they are the fundamental ‘ingredients’ of our ‘cake’. We should want our cake to be the best that we can achieve. If our ingredients are random, or not good, then our cake will be unpleasant. If people are just going around routinely doing many ‘small’ things, oblivious/uncaring that no trace of semi-logical reason exists for carrying out routine actions, then I think that equates to a big thing. We are not automatons!
I am not having a whine, because I enjoy it. No, I ‘moan’, because I care. I care that we don’t seem to care about what we settle/aim for as a species – it really does sadden/perplex me.
Sorry for the rant. If you have made it this far, then my congratulations/apologies.
Btw, Merry Christmas everyone.
Joking apart, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have a problem with the above suggestion because I think it’s helping those who want to lower the voting age to 16. Unfortunately it seems that our democratic system is already failing with the voting age at 18, so it’s tempting to say what difference does it make, but I think it will make a difference, things can always get even worse than they already are.
“Here at last we would have a constituency not yet morally ruined by schools, smartphones, ”
Six year olds not ruined by schools and smartphones? Are you serious?
I see some problems:-
Aside from that what could possibly go wrong?
You know, instead of having a PM who makes Peppa the Pig references we could then have Peppa herself voted PM. Sounds like an upgrade.
I saw this suggestion several years ago.
My response then was as it is now:
I wouldn’t lower the voting age. I’d raise it, to at least 25, cons that it seems to take at least that long for people to mature, and I’m not even sure about that.
Sorry but this really tedious and not what I expect from the Daily Sceptic!!!
Reminds me of the story about the group of primary school children in Luton a few years back who were asked to name their first priority if they governed the country – and the most popular answer was to ban divorce. Sometimes children really do have more sense than adults – and sometimes children are treated really appallingly by adults.
It might be a start if the votes of adults really did carry equal weight (rather than for example the current coup d’etat by big pharma – blighters!)
Well, if you’re allowed to take vaccines, enter adult sexual relationships, and chop of your reproductive organs at the age of six without parental consent, I don’t see why not.