From: Elizabeth Childs (echilds@linex.com)
Date: Sat Sep 11 1999 - 13:32:54 MDT
From: Michael S. Lorrey <retroman@turbont.net>
> Oh, that was at least a coupla months ago. Been going over old mail?
> What I basically said was that the three greatest accomplishments of
> women's suffrage was the Gun Control Act of 1968 (actually its a
> translation of the Nazi Weapons Law), Prohibition, and Bill Clinton...
> in that order of importance.
<snip>
>
> I've said it once and I'll say it again. A large number of women do not
> regard freedom to be nearly as important as security. They will, by and
> large, prefer to trade freedom for greater security and protection. This
> is their nature as maternal beings that prefer consensus and compromise
> to ideals and principles. This is why the whole, "don't be cruel, it's
> for the Children" routine the democrats always pull is so effective, as
> it tugs at the maternal memes that women have. The great erosion in
> privacy and individual liberty in this century began after we granted
> women the right to vote. To Kathryn and other women on the list who
> probably take offense at this, I challenge you to prove me wrong.
Michael,
The views that you disagree with may be held by a majority of women (and
probably a majority of men, as well). But why prohibit all women from
voting, while allowing all the men to vote? You disagree with a substantial
fraction of the men, while at least some of the women are your political
allies.
While there are voting differences between men and women, they are fairly
small, aren't they? Except on a few issues, like abortion, I think men and
women usually poll within 20% of each other, although my source is my vague
recollection of my high school poli sci book. So if you knock out the
women's vote, you will only see a 20% improvement, assuming that the women
always go against you.
Obviously, the best solution is for only people with the appropriate views
to be allowed to vote, whatever their demographics may be. Anything else is
a poor approximation.
I'll let the anarcho-capitalists ennumerate their systems for eliminating
voting altogether.
Since it's grossly unlikely that you'll ever be able to stop women from
voting, I suggest that a more effective approach would be to make some
effort to understand how to communicate libertarian values within a values
framework that is more appealing to women who have traditionally feminine
values.
I usually come at it from a utilitarian approach, and explain how government
is raising the price of health care, making it harder to buy a house,
screwing up education, keeping the poor from getting jobs, etc. There's no
doubt that the US federal and local governments do in fact make the lot of
its poorest citizens far worse with things like taxi licenses, cosmetology
licensing, violence from the drug war, etc. I have gotten pro-welfare type
statists to start caring about tariff laws and small business licensing
regulatory tangles because I was able to make the connection between an
incredibly dull law and real human suffering.
> I've said it once and I'll say it again. A large number of women do not
> regard freedom to be nearly as important as security. They will, by and
> large, prefer to trade freedom for greater security and protection.
A large number of men value security over freedom, as well. The important
point is the marginal difference between men and women on this issue. If
you're going to post something so inflammatory, you should at least come up
with a few numbers to let us know how big the difference is. Again, a
statement like "Women are, on average, are 15% less likely than men to hold
a libertarian view on a given political issue" is a far cry from "Women do
not regard freedom to be nearly as important as security." The former is a
number and possibly a fact, while the latter is a generalization based on
your personal and subjective sense of how people are. If you derived this
generalization from scientific research or polls, we can't evaluate the
generalization without seeing the original evidence you derived it from.
This
> is their nature as maternal beings that prefer consensus and compromise
> to ideals and principles.
There may be some tendency for this to be true, but I was recently amused to
see the results of a study that showed that little girls were just as likely
to hit other kids to get what they want as little boys. (I hope I'm
remembering that right, I think it was in Reason a few months ago.) Some
"consensus and compromise".
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