The opening speaker, Tom Tancredo, at that fancy “tea party” that was covered the other day by all the news outlets didn’t win any friends by saying we need to reinstate “literacy tests to vote.”
I would have said “basic civics tests, similar to the ones people have to take to become citizens.”
“Literacy tests” are what they called the extremely difficult, un-passable without a law degree, tests they gave blacks in the south up to the 60s to keep them from voting.
That guy’s wording allowed Rachel Maddow to call all tea partiers racist.
MWD
Yep, ol’ Tom stuck both feet in his mouth that time.
I agree, you should have to pass a basic citizenship test to be allowed to vote, but he just put a nail in this one.
Ok. I know I am going to get some heat for this but try to understand my point. I don’t think Tancredo made a mistake by using the term “literacy tests”. It was a term used in the 60′s to prevent blacks from voting. Well, isn’t that why this “tea-party” group exists in the first place? Their insane obsession of Obama not being American-born has no merit at all. Any intelligent person knows this. Therefore, it comes across as them being so appalled there is a black man in the white house that they have to find someway to discredit his path to being president.
Seriously, would Obama have really been allowed into the presidential race in the first place if he wasn’t American-born? If Obama was not born American-born, wouldn’t Schwarzenegger scream his ass off. The “tea party” needs to realize it is sounding as insane as the Westboro Baptist Church. Most rational people are shaking their heads in disbelief at how embarrassingly insane these people sound.
Don’t take my opinion of the tea-party as an endorsement of Obama. I am disappointed of his first year in office. But, I will at least give him the respect that a President deserves. That’s something many people have forgotten to do.
I’m pretty sure Obama was born in Hawaii. And I consider myself a “tea partier” in a way. Most people in this loosely defined “movement” are not “birthers.” MSNBC just plays that up to make us look bad.
MWD
If it gets ratings, they don’t care who they trash. The more they blow it out of proportion, the bigger the story. I don’t think he meant “literacy tests” in the sense of those given to blacks in the ’60′s, I think he just meant a simple test to prove that a person knows how to read. Poor choice of words perhaps, but a person would have to be LOOKING for something to get their nose out of joint over in order to take it the way that they did.
I’m a fan of civics tests myself. If a person doesn’t have the slightest clue how this country works or is SUPPOSED to work, then IMHO, they have no business helping to run/ruin it.
Justin
I was a tea party advocate when Bush was spending hand over fist. My gripe with the tea partiers now is not that they are thought to be racist, it’s that they are partisan hacks who don’t seem to give a fuck when a Republican is spending us into unfathomable debt.
As for Tancredo, the guy is damaged goods. Anything he says is going to get run under a microscope for hidden meanings, whether it’s justified or not.
What I would like to see is an end to what Andrew Wilkow calls “the zero-liability voter”. Basically, if you’re consuming more in tax dollars than you pay, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote to keep the gravy train rolling. Generations of people vote Democrat because it means a check for them every 1st of the month, provided by those of us who work 1/3 to 1/2 of the year just to pay taxes before we get to keep what we earn. That’s the real travesty. Civics tests and literacy tests? I don’t care if someone knows who Thomas Jefferson was or if they can’t read past a 3rd grade level as long as they’re not a drain on our tax dollars.
Matt,
I like it.
But how do you eliminate “the zero-liability voter”.?
You know, there is a saying “Democracies are a great form of government, but the fail in between 200 and 300 years, when enough people who don’t want to work vote in the people who will let them.”
MWD
You know that we initiated literacy tests, civics tests, whatever, to vote, ACORN would start study groups, so the “the zero-liability voter” could still vote.
And help those to dumb or lazy to study to CHEAT.
MWD
I have to point out the irony here. You want a law requiring that citizens take a literacy test to vote. It’s saying “we don’t think you are smart enough to vote so we won’t let you”. Is that being a “nanny”?
I suppose so. But I think it’s a “God’s law” nannying. ….Self-defense if you will.
A lot of people AREN’T smart enough to vote. Moreover, a lot of people aren’t INVESTED at all.
Really, I think we should go back to only landowners can vote. They wouldn’t vote for things that economically destroy the country.
MWD
So, therefore the rich get to vote and the poor don’t? Doesn’t sound very democratic. Sounds like a caste system. Also, being rich doesn’t mean being smart just as poor doesn’t mean stupid.