No, I didn't just admit that I LIKE the idea of disenfranchising the poor" despite the fact that this is the fantasy argument you are dying to have with someone. The "yes" in my prior comment was acknowledging the fact that poll taxes have been used in the past to disenfranchise. My comment asks, so what of it? I agree that such taxes have been used in that way. That doesn't mean that a practically nominal ten dollar fee for an ID card NOW constitutes disenfranchisment, as you seem to by hysterically implying. In any event the question does not imply that I endorse disenfranchisement or even a poll tax. I merely asked the question why you suddenly have apparently become a distruster of government taxing power? Why are you so interested in erecting a straw man to demonize here? What is it that you are afraid of identifying at the root of this discussion?
Let's boil this thing down for everyone, shall we? YOU raised the fear of disenfranchisement, especially of the poor. I was the one who offered you a "pragmatical" escape hatch; "the poor" could be allowed to use their welfare ID's, given free to them when they get on welfare, at the polls and thereby escape the fee...yet you are still invested in the disenfranchisement angle. From the hysterical note over a modest ID card fee I infer that the fear that you and others have nebulously expressed here, without identifying its source, is real and serious, and that it seems to encompass a belief that people given government authority are not to be trusted in the area of the sacrament of voting. You obviously fear that the dreaded slippery slope is a mortal danger in this one tiny area of authority. The point I have been driving at is why the damned exception? Elsewhere, you and these same people are caught out arguing for all sorts of unaccoutable power to tax and regulate? Why? Religious delusion is the inference I am forced to draw. Why is some arbitrary authority implicity to be trusted while other arbitrary authority is not? After all, to cite the Good Ol' Collectivist Book of Proverbs, isn't it "our" government? Surely, a cheap ID card fee wouldn't be turned into a tool of disenfranchisement in these days. After all, this is the way "our" government "works" isn't it? "We" just wouldn't stand for it, right? After all, "we are the government", aren't we, and we have perfect control over what the government does, don't we?
My goodness, but the people objecting to a modest ID card fee are begining to sound like crack-pot slippery slope libertarians and anarchists, aren't they. Interesting, isn't it. I think so. I truly wonder do why this phenomenon arises. I can honestly make no sense of the contradictions people tolerate in their own thinking.
Re: The political sphere is a funhouse.
Let's boil this thing down for everyone, shall we? YOU raised the fear of disenfranchisement, especially of the poor. I was the one who offered you a "pragmatical" escape hatch; "the poor" could be allowed to use their welfare ID's, given free to them when they get on welfare, at the polls and thereby escape the fee...yet you are still invested in the disenfranchisement angle. From the hysterical note over a modest ID card fee I infer that the fear that you and others have nebulously expressed here, without identifying its source, is real and serious, and that it seems to encompass a belief that people given government authority are not to be trusted in the area of the sacrament of voting. You obviously fear that the dreaded slippery slope is a mortal danger in this one tiny area of authority. The point I have been driving at is why the damned exception? Elsewhere, you and these same people are caught out arguing for all sorts of unaccoutable power to tax and regulate? Why? Religious delusion is the inference I am forced to draw. Why is some arbitrary authority implicity to be trusted while other arbitrary authority is not? After all, to cite the Good Ol' Collectivist Book of Proverbs, isn't it "our" government? Surely, a cheap ID card fee wouldn't be turned into a tool of disenfranchisement in these days. After all, this is the way "our" government "works" isn't it? "We" just wouldn't stand for it, right? After all, "we are the government", aren't we, and we have perfect control over what the government does, don't we?
My goodness, but the people objecting to a modest ID card fee are begining to sound like crack-pot slippery slope libertarians and anarchists, aren't they. Interesting, isn't it. I think so. I truly wonder do why this phenomenon arises. I can honestly make no sense of the contradictions people tolerate in their own thinking.