I share Jonah Goldberg’s frustration that so many people in the electorate are stupid morons. It’s regrettable. For example:
Forty-six percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years, according to a survey released by Gallup on Friday.
If we were to poll readers of the National Review, the number would no doubt exceed fifty percent. Now, do people believe something demonstrably disproved by basic biology because they’re young? Do people outgrow such magical thinking, much like they give up on Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and the Bogeyman? Some do, but most people grow more religious with age, and more religiously conservative as well.
Creationism is definitely a bipartisan affair, but it’s particularly strong on the Republican side:
The numbers also showed a tendency to follow party lines, with nearly 60% of Republicans identifying as creationists, while 41% of Democrats hold the same beliefs.
Republicans also seem to be more black-and-white about their beliefs, with only 5% responding that humans evolved with some help from God. That number is much lower than the 19% of both independents and Democrats.
Using Goldberg’s logic, we shouldn’t allow any of these people to vote since they are too stupid or indoctrinated to understand a middle school science class. Also, following Goldberg’s logic, we should literally beat these people with our fists or other implements until they stop being so dumb.
It’s annoying and not a little dangerous that we have so many morons in this country, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t vote. The Republican instinct is to limit the franchise. They talk about it all the time. They say that only people who make enough money to pay income tax should be able to vote. Or they say, like Goldberg, that we should raise the voting age. Or they support purges of the voter rolls aimed disproportionately at people of color and the aged. Or they support state-issued photo identification laws that do the same.
They have more motivation to suppress the vote than they have to win the argument. If only they could get fewer blacks and Latinos and young people to vote, they’d win. Democrats never think like this. We never talk about suppressing the religious right’s vote, for example. But we could. We could say that if you think that mankind was beamed down to this planet 4000 years ago then you’re too much of a twit for your opinion to matter. But the truth is that people can be staggeringly dumb about some things and fabulously smart about others. In a democracy, we must have the consent of the governed, not just the consent of the people with half a brain in their head. All of our opinions matter. Even Jonah Goldberg’s.