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
&
> 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".