Re Point of View: North Carolina no longer a democracy | News & Observer

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Sam <samwaltz.groups () gmail com>
> Date: December 26, 2016 at 3:51:25 AM EST
> To: Dave Farber IP <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Point of View: North Carolina no longer a democracy | News & Observer
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Thanks for the message. I'd like to raise a point, though, that people
> rarely consider when discussing democracies. People have been claiming
> to support democracies for *centuries* while still oblivious to how
> many people they were excluding from the vote. In the 1700s, people
> claimed to have democratic values while feeling that it was understood
> that non-whites and women should not have the vote. Today, we still
> have disenfranchised classes, including minors and foreigners, It is
> seen as equally "obvious" to some people today that those people
> should not have access to the vote. Personally, I am happy to see some
> jurisdictions worldwide extending suffrage, in some areas to people as
> low as age 14 (IIRC), and to non-citizens. I've been an expat for over
> a decade; whether there was a traffic light on the corner was much
> more relevant to me personally, than to someone at the other end of
> the province or to a non-resident voter. Still, I have been taxed
> without local representation. While I don't approve of what is
> happening in North Carolina, I think we need a broader perspective
> before we address the question.
>
> It seems that every election season, these articles about democratic
> deficits abound, and are quickly forgotten a few months later. If
> anything, we should probably have a constitutional committee to
> discuss these and other questions. The US has one of the oldest
> written constitutions in the world (The Republic of San Marino has the
> oldest). US presidential administrations and others have been ignoring
> the US Constitution more and more over the past 150 years and NONE of
> the recent presidential candidates have been interested in adhering to
> Constitutional limitations. Most people are not aware of the
> enumerated powers set by Article I Section VIII, or that the Federal
> Government does not have the Constitutional power to regulate
> immigration (only naturalization, or who becomes a citizen. Big
> difference. The feds only started regulating immigration with the
> Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), or that only Congress, not the
> President, has the power to declare war - and the last time it did so
> was in 1942. It may be time to see if we can develop a written
> Constitution to which we can force politicians to adhere. You'd think
> that in an adversarial two-party system, both parties would constantly
> be counting down until the other party took over, and try to limit
> government powers; instead, they both keep trying to take more and
> more powers for the federal government.
>
> Sam Waltz
>
> Chat: skype/google/yahoo: samwaltz
>
> To email me personally, drop "groups" from my email address. I check
> that account more frequently. Messages to this account often get lost
> in the avalanche.
>
>
> > On Sun, Dec 25, 2016 at 12:06 AM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html



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