Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Universal Suffrage

I wrote, on 4 March, 

The war is over the soul of America.  The question concerns whether we should (i) preserve what remains of America as she was founded to be, and (ii) restore those good elements of the system bequeathed to us by the Founders, while (iii) preserving the legitimate progress that has been made (e.g. universal suffrage), OR whether we should replace the political system of the Founders with an incompatible system which can be described as culturally Marxist.

As I was writing clause (iii) I realized that some to my Right, people I consider friends, whose intellect and judgment I respect, and with whom I agree on many fundamentals, would take issue with my endorsement of universal suffrage. They are against it. Two points in response.

The first is that the 19th Amendment, ratified 18 August 1920, will never be overturned.  The Amendment states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." And so the question whether female citizens should have the right to vote, while of historical and theoretical interest, has no practical importance whatsoever. 

The second point is that, even if it could be overturned, it ought not be. Now I concede to my friends on the Right that women as as a group are not as politically astute as men as a group.  Their political judgment is inferior to that of men. This is a fact, and a fact is a fact whether you like it or not. We conservatives stand on the terra firma of a reality antecedent to human wishes and dreams. 

What I have just asserted is enough to bring down the wrath of  many feminists upon my head. They will hurl the 'sexist' epithet at me. And I will reply: It can't be sexist if it is true, and it is true.  This is a special case of a general principle: It cannot be X-ist if it is true.  Candidate substituends for the variable include 'age,' 'race,' 'species,' 'able,' and others. Particularly knuckleheaded is the accusation of 'ableism.' 

I have said enough to establish my conservative bona fides.

Why shouldn't the 19th Amendment be overturned?

Yesterday, on C-SPAN, I watched Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) rake Christopher Wray, FBI Director, over the coals. She did a superb job, a job as good as any man could do. So I put the question to my friends on the Right: Do you think that Stefanik should not have the right to vote and participate in the political life of the country?

To nail down my point, here is a list, off the top of my head, in no particular order, of just a few females  who are lot better politically than a lot of men I could mention:

Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, K. T. McFarland, Tulsi Gabbard, Riley Gaines, Candace Owens, Mollie Hemingway, Tammy Bruce, Faulkner Harris, Diane West, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Heather MacDonald.

Will the friends to my Right dismiss these women as wholly unrepresentative outliers? Do they have arguments? What might they be?

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Bill Vallicella

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17 responses to “Universal Suffrage”

  1. James Soriano Avatar
    James Soriano

    I’ll defer to legal experts, but the “overturning” of the 19th Amendment would not hinder universal suffrage, even as its adoption did not remove any impediments.
    Prior to the 19th Amendment, the status of women in elections was a state’s issue, and by the time of its adoption several states had already extended the right to vote to women.
    Thus, the 19th Amendment is not really an “amendment” in the sense that it changes something: there is no text in the Constitution redlined and replaced by the 19th’s language. Like the Bill of Rights, the 19th is more of an addendum than an amendment.

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Joe,
    I had to delete your comment because you failed to off the HTML italics code that you turned on. It affects the sidebar display and everything everything that comes after the comment. You did this once before, and on that occasion, I figured out how to eliminate the code without eliminating the comment. But it either didn’t work this morning or I forgot how to do it.
    And the same goes for the rest of you. DO NOT USE ANY HTML CODE IN YOUR COMMENTS! I just did, but I know how to turn it off, and I am careful to turn it off.

    Reply
  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    James,
    Good comment. But surely the adoption of the 19th did remove impediments in those states wherein women were not allowed to vote. Or are you telling us that in every state prior to the ratification of the 19th women were allowed to vote? If so, what’s the point of the 19th?
    The distinction between an addendum and an amendment is a very good one! As you may have noticed, I like distinctions.
    But my real concern is not a constitutional or an historical one. Compare 2A. We have the right to self-defense and the means thereto whether or not any piece of paper articulates and codifies the right. The right to self-defense is not conferred by the Constitution or any amendment/addendum thereto, but at best protected by said Constitution. It follows directly from the right to life which is not constitutionally conferred.
    The same goes for the right of female adult citizens (who are not felons, etc.) to vote. They have that right — I am arguing — whether any piece of paper codifies it.
    Thus the issue is philosophical, not historical or constitutional. Do women have the right to vote in rerum natura? If they have the right, then their having it is antecedent to anything of a conventional nature such as a constitution. It is like the right to life. Surely women have the right to life just as much as men do. If we have the right to life, we have it whether or not any body of humans or any constitution says we do.
    What I am opposing is the view that women (subject to the qualifications above specified) do not have the right to vote. They have it no less than they have the right to life and the right to self-defense and the means thereto.

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  4. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    I know it was a list of current women in politics and not intended to be complete, but how could you have left out Margaret Thatcher? The Iron Lady made the nearly irrefutable case for women in politics by her decades + leadership, but also as early as 1980 when she gave her famous “The lady’s not for turning” speech to the Conservative Party Conference:
    “But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming, slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it is not, we shall not be—diverted from our course.
    “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the ‘U’ turn, I have only one thing to say. ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’ ”
    Read the whole thing here: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104431
    As to the 19th Amendment, I think Edmund Burke’s approach to conservatism is relevant. Burkean conservatism, despite the common complaint, is not about preserving or restoring the past status quo, but more about giving due weight to the wisdom in the principles and values embodied in actual historical traditions, customs, and institutions. As such, conservatives do not nostalgically look to restore a mythical “golden age” behind us but are to sift through the past and separate the wheat from the chaff as to what course we should take today. In a sense, conservatives, more than leftists, are willing and open to be educated by the past as to those principles and values that endured the test of time and should be instituted or re-instituted today.
    You make the case that the 19th Amendment, in retrospect and with due regard to the political problems we have with the female orientation and sensibilities, was historical wheat and worthy to be continued.

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  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Tom,
    You are forgetting the context: the war over the soul of America, and the 19th Amendment. Margaret Thatcher, as you know, is not an American.
    And how could you, Tom, fail to mention Hannah Arendt? She is far more significant than Thatcher and became a U.S. citizen in 1950.

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  6. James Soriano Avatar
    James Soriano

    BV,
    If you redline the word “impediments” in my first sentence and replace with “national impediment” the change would remove ambiguity. (Which I saw after I hit send.)
    We’d have to go to the state constitutions of 1920 to examine which expressly disallowed women’s suffrage. My understanding is that additional states were moving in the direction of suffrage, but discontinued because a federal initiative was in train and would soon be put to the states for ratification.
    But the federal Constitution impeded no state from granting women the vote.
    “What’s the point of the 19th,” you ask. I’d venture: to nationalize a civil rights issue; to respond to the momentum of the women’s suffrage movement.

    Reply
  7. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    OK Brother Bill, here is my comment without italic HTML code:
    . . . . .
    I add to your list of ladies, Elizabeth Tudor: Here is what she said to her troops, in person, at the approach of the Armada:
    My loving people.
    We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.
    I know I have the body but of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
    . . . . .
    Note how Elizabeth claims masculine qualities here. I would like to see the feminist response to THAT.

    Reply
  8. Ian M. Avatar
    Ian M.

    Hi BV,
    Your speaking of the right to vote as a natural right analogous to the right to life suggests that you think some form of democratic or republican government is the only just form of government. Is this correct?
    ***
    While women in America today tend to vote more liberal than men, this doesn’t seem to be something that is generalizable across time and space. For example, in Britain it used to be sometimes said that the U.K. would have had permanent Labour Party rule since 1945 if women hadn’t been given the vote. In Weimar Germany, women voted more right-wing than men:
    http://www.johndclare.net/Weimar6_Geary.htm
    I believe women also tended to be more right-wing than men in interwar France. There is an anecdote about the time someone asked the French socialist prime minister Leon Blum why he did not favor enfranchising women. His reply: “Because they’d vote us out of office.”
    Going back further in time, women were more likely to support the ancien régime against the Jacobins than men were.
    That said, I don’t regard the question as fundamentally an empirical one (at least not at that level). Women’s suffrage undermines patriarchal authority and incentivizes voting out of pure self-interest rather than with the family’s interest in mind (let alone the common good). It exacerbates division between the sexes rather than unifying them. Thus, women’s suffrage leads to increasing liberalism and radical individualism *even if* women were to vote more conservatively than men.

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  9. BV Avatar
    BV

    Ian,
    A pure democracy would be a disaster, but I suppose I am committed to saying that people regardless of sex have a right to some say in how they are governed. The best form of gov’t is a constitutionally-based limited government with democratic input from citizens who are basically virtuous and share a culture. I don’t understand how women – – the women of today –could be justly excluded from political life just on the basis of their sex.
    These two questions should be kept separate: Ought women have the right to vote? Do women tend to vote more liberal or more conservative? I say yes to the first, and take no position on the second. What you say about the second questions may well be correct.

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  10. BV Avatar
    BV

    From the linked article:
    >>However, the early 1930s did see a narrowing of the gap between male and female voting patterns, especially in Protestant areas. Indeed, in some of these by July 1932 the NSDAP was winning a higher percentage of the female to male vote. In that month some 6.5 million women voted Nazi, many of them probably with few or no previous political ties. Where they came from the working class, they were likely to be non-unionised textile operatives or domestic workers.<< It helps to bear in mind that the NSDAP, as its name indicates, is a socialist party. No surprise then that German females 1933-1945 would vote Nazi. Women from their biology have a more social, familial, tribal, and nurturing nature.

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  11. BV Avatar
    BV

    Ian writes: >>Women’s suffrage undermines patriarchal authority and incentivizes voting out of pure self-interest rather than with the family’s interest in mind (let alone the common good). It exacerbates division between the sexes rather than unifying them. Thus, women’s suffrage leads to increasing liberalism and radical individualism *even if* women were to vote more conservatively than men.<< But it is women, not men, who tend to hold families together. The 'liberation' of women consequent upon giving them the vote need not lead to radical individualism. It is a slippery slope fallacy to think that there is some logical inevitability here. Men are more individualistic than women. Healthy young heterosexual males want to 'conquer' as many women as possible. This is rooted in their biology: scatter seed as widely as possible. Women, however, by their biology have a healthier more holistic attitude toward sex: they typically want it only in the context of a loving, long-term relationship. Do women rape men, or the other way round? Which came first Playboy mag or Playgirl? Which sex consumes more porn? So far no one has given me an argument that would justify excluding women from political life.

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  12. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Bill, response to your 3/19 7:04 am comment: Hannah Arendt was a great one, and I agree that she is another excellent data point in favor of your argument. I didn’t mention Arendt for the same reason I granted that you didn’t include Thatcher (or Arendt or anyone else): it is not necessary for your argument that the list be comprehensive.
    But as for the relative significance between Arendt and Thatcher. I am no Anglophile, but Thatcher is rightly credited with being one of only three people who were pivotal in bringing 70 years of communism in the Soviet Union to an end – Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II. As the 20th century goes, it’s pretty hard to top that for significance, even if you qualify it in the context of American politics.

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  13. Hector Avatar
    Hector

    Bill,
    Is Arendt really *far more significant* than Thatcher? That is unquestionably true in the history of ideas as Thatcher wasn’t an original thinker but rather the populiser and implementer of the ideas of others. But Thatcher is a major world historical figure – not just as a key player in ending the Cold War as Tom says (she even directly influenced US nuclear policy – almost unthinkable!), but also as being the first democratic leader (Pinochet being the only leader prior) to launch the ‘neoliberal’ reforms that were imitated by so many countries and altered many of the basic assumptions and practices of governance across much of the developed world (and these were imitated quite directly – for example, if I recall correctly the French government consulted the British on the best ways to implement privatisation policies). And her influence continues to be strong – she is cited as a major influence by Javier Milei, Geert Wilders, Rishi Sunak and other important figures of contemporary politics. She still dominates discussions of British politics decades later. So I’d argue Thatcher is the more significant figure overall, and especially relevant in a discussion of women in politics. And I’d argue that Thatcher is one of the best models we can learn from as we seek to restore our nations to greatness at the present time – the huge social divisions, the political polarisation, the sense of institutional failure, the rise of an aggressive and socially disruptive hard left, the economic issue of inflation, the new Cold War with China and so on – all find echoes in the Britain that she governed.

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  14. BV Avatar
    BV

    Hi Hector,
    Thatcher was a major player in her day. No doubt about it. But she was a pol not a philo.
    Who is more significant, Aristotle or Alexander the Great? The latter’s empire has vanished with nary a trace. But Aristotle’s empire of thought endures to this day and still influences people.
    But getting back to the question I raised: I assume you agree with me that women have as much right as men to participate in political life. Can you think of even one good argument against this view?

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  15. Hector Avatar
    Hector

    Bill,
    ‘Nary a trace’ is greatly overstating the case. Though Alexander’s empire no longer exists, many things caused or created by his conquests remain. Two examples: he Hellenised the Middle East which led to Christianity and the thought-world of the NT; he founded Alexandria, the largest city on the Mediterranean to this day.
    Arendt is not of the stature of Aristotle. Who is more significant, Patricia Churchland or Ronald Reagan? (Just to be clear: I know Arendt is far more significant than Churchland!).
    On the main question – I agree entirely. I can’t think of a single good argument that wouldn’t simply be an argument against democracy in toto or lead to comparable problems concerning the eligibility to vote of any demographic group you could name.

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  16. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Bill & Hector:
    >>Thatcher was a major player in her day. No doubt about it. But she was a pol not a philo.
    Who is more significant, Aristotle or Alexander the Great? The latter’s empire has vanished with nary a trace. But Aristotle’s empire of thought endures to this day and still influences people.<< Bill, I know you want to get back to the question posed by your post, but I can't help but respond on this particular side-track about Margaret Thatcher. I think you miss the significance of the lady as formidably presented by Hector. She was not simply a politician, she was a statesman in the eminent sense of that term. Tell me, was James Madison just a politician? How about Thomas Jefferson or their mentor, George Mason? And consider this: the Declaration of Independence was in form a legal brief directed to the international community in defense of the right of the colonists to be "free and independent States; [and] absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown." Was the Declaration, then, just a political document, relevant only to the legal case of one British colony in the latter part of the 18th century? Of course not. In all of these cases, concrete political ends were sought, but those men and that document did so in the context of affirming and restoring what they believed to be timeless truths. And it was the fact that they went beyond writing a monograph of those truths to instantiating them in a political act of revolt against King George that those truths "endure" and "still influence people" today. Without the political act of revolt, the Declaration would be a mere historical artifact of no particular importance, a footnote, perhaps, to some historians account of the successful reign of King George over the North American continent. Margaret Thatcher was just such a statesman. Just like any politician, she sought higher office for herself and her party, but she did so to restore and re-establish timeless truths and values exemplified in British history that had been enervated by the poisonous political virus of socialism. As such, she was a philosopher, but one who "published" her philosophy in the concreteness of rhetoric, public policy, and laws. And, as Hector pointed out, her efforts were "timeless" in the sense that they were not only instructive of how to pull Britain back from the socialist death spiral but of any country facing the same need to restore some form of the classical liberal system. Read her whole "The lady is not for turning" speech at the link I posted above. It is a brilliant example of conservative rhetoric and argumentation about the politics she faces, but rhetoric and argument that is informed and grounded in the timeless Western values of freedom and liberty and the consequent proper role of government. It is political rhetoric, yes, but rhetoric that serves to exemplify deep philosophical commitments. And of course, Hector makes a good point about Alexander. Where would Aristotle be in the pantheon of greatness today had Alexander not spread the Greek culture across his empire? As it was, Aristotle almost disappeared anyway.

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  17. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Bill & Hector:
    Bill, sorry about the rabbit-chasing on Thatcher. Back to your post, I agree with Hector that there are no viable arguments against women’s suffrage. The strongest argument is based on the female tendency to favor emotional appeals, but as you say in a slightly different context, that does not necessarily lead to voting against conservative policies. Human emotions are like unto many things in the world, contingent and variable depending on time, place, circumstances, upbringing, and genetics. Thus, as has been pointed out, women can be the most conservative demographic in an electorate or the most left-wing; it just depends.
    But without universal suffrage and political participation, the exemplary women you mention would not have had the opportunity to rise up and engage in the public discussion. And that would be a loss to our system of governance that far outweighs the troublesome problem of the large numbers of women who tilt our elections leftward.
    Especially given the fact that there is nothing about most conservative policies that prohibits an emotional appeal – e.g., the current school-choice issue is gaining momentum with women across the country precisely because it is being (truthfully) framed in emotion-laden terms about children and parental rights. Like unto a virtuous person, emotions cannot be eliminated from a polis, but they can be harnessed to support the common (i.e., conservative) good with the right rhetorical art.
    Now do low-information and low-interest voters.

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