Churchill Was Right!

Churchill Was Right!

"Nobody ever said that democracy was the best form of government. Indeed, it might be the worst form of government, with the exception of all the others that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill

How do liberals get away with this stuff? Nine years ago, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein caused an earthquake with their book, “The Bell Curve.” The Bell Curve is a very dense and dry treatise on intelligence, its manifestations, its social consequences, and its heritability. What made waves with this book was its discussion of racial inequalities in cognitive abilities. The authors reported that blacks possessed significantly lower IQ’s that whites or Asians. Elite opinion was competing with itself to weave the most extravagant condemnation of the authors.
So how does the American Civil Liberties Union and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals get away with describing blacks as less capable?
In case you haven’t heard, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals postponed the California gubernatorial recall election scheduled for October 7. The problem, as the court saw it, was that six California counties still used the despised punch cards. Democrats blame punch card ballots for tricking Gore voters in the 2000 election. Since then, liberals have made it cliché that punch cards disenfranchise voters by failing to accurately record the voters’ intentions. This is silly. Punch cards accurately record the intentions of anyone capable of reading and following simple instructions.
Nevertheless, after the 2002 elections in California, the courts ordered the state to replace its punch card machines with something Their Honors deem more reliable.
There are several findings that are of particular interest in the court’s ruling. Most fascinating is the finding that “minorities” are less capable than whites in the operation of punch card machines. “[T}he analysis indicated that when pre-scored punchcard systems were used, minority voters had significantly higher residual (error) vote rates than non-minorities.”
So, it is the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court’s finding that minorities are less capable that whites. And, it was the notoriousl liberal ACLU that argued that case in the first place.
It’s worth noting that the research cited by the ACLU was commissioned by a company that sells touch screen voting systems. The Ninth Circuit approves of these machines even though genuinely independent research shows that that touch screens have a higher error rate that punch card machines - 2.5% versus 3.0%.
But how do these liberals get away with saying that blacks are less capable than whites, as the ACLU’s arguments and the Court’s findings clearly do? Obviously, it has to do with political expediency. Liberals, including Jesse Jackson and the mainstream press, want the recall to fail. Installing and keeping Democrats in office is a higher priority that defending the dignity of minorities.
If the differences in minority voting error rates are real, and I have my doubts, there are other explanations. The most likely would be the motivation of black voters. Unless they are homeless or insane, white voters who are too apathetic to vote are left alone. Not so with black voters. Because blacks are the most reliable Democratic voters, the Democratic Party has made a special effort in recent years to forcibly register these voters and get them to the polls. The method used is called, “knock and drag.” Party apparatchiks knock on doors in black neighborhoods and if the person inside has not yet voted, he or she is nearly kidnapped and taken to a polling place.
It make sense that someone who would rather not be there in the first place is less likely to cast his vote with the care that a self-motivated voter would use. A voter who is in a hurry won’t read directions. He probably won’t pay a great deal of attention to his card. He only wants to finish so he can be left alone.
The Court’s eagerness to hand the left a victory, and the left’s eagerness to win left other debris in its wake. The court misquoted former California Secretary of State, Bill Jones, who once characterized punch card systems as, “obsolete.” The court claimed that he said, “unacceptable.”
The court also claimed that, in 1984, problems with a punch card system forced San Joaquin County to throw out the votes of an entire precinct. That never happened.
In it’s eagerness to prevent the imaginary disenfranchisement of blacks, the courts disenfranchised an entire state.
An imperfect democracy beats the hell out of judicial imperialism.