Voter ID is Clearly Discriminatory

Karl Marx

Laws that require careful verification of a voter's identity discriminate not so much against blacks, Hispanics or other ethnic groups and the poor as against an entire political class -- cheaters.  Known also as Democrats. [1]  Polls indicate that as many as 80% of the American public (including many of those said to be injured) favor stringent voter ID laws.  The Marxist-Progressive Left, however, behind lamentations and crocodile tears, stands in utter contempt of the righteous public will.  Citing a litany of imagined (and therefore real) abuses of helpless 'victims', they howl with feigned outrage.  If strawmen, in company with the dead, could vote, Marxists would never lose another election.


The MPL is rightly (from their point of view) outraged by the abiding lack of 'fairness' in American society.  One is reminded of the "honor among thieves" trope: It is not fair to sell crack on my turf; It is not fair to put so many police on the street.  And, for Democrats, it is not fair to curtail voter fraud -- or most kinds of fraud, for that matter.  It's how they win.  It's part of their culture, and they are "disadvantaged" with out it.  They should be outraged.

This seems like a good time to broaden the argument.  The America of the Founders and the Western Tradition from which it sprung is entirely antithetical to the Marxist Left. [2]  Why should that be so?  The answer is simple enough and straightforward.  The Constitution was written to establish (in law) the rule of law as a means of protecting (from the aggression of fellow Americans and foreign powers) the life, liberty and property of American citizens.  The Founders knew that the only way to preserve the rule of law was to ensure the widest possible distribution of political power -- or, to put it another way, to prevent the centralization of that power.  Marxism and its variants can exist and function only by centralizing political power. [3]

Chiefly important in the context of this essay is the concept of civil society.  Virtuous civil society has been long in the making, evolving as it did from classical times -- periodically battered and reconstituted, corrupted or improved, it is, at its best, the result of individual self-denial, self-discipline, group cohesiveness and the voluntary adherence to moral principles.  As it emerged into the 20th Century, Western civil society is an enormous achievement; it is unique in the world. [4]  Strong, it has been the great driving force in the achievements of America and Western Europe.  But it is inherently fragile.

Presumed by the Founders was the existence and continuance of a robust civil society; one based upon mutual interest and mutual trust in the good faith of others; one that rested upon commonly held social norms.  It may be said, I think, that the rule of law is in many ways the political analog of social norms.  The maintenance of a strong civil society can only be done by conscious intention and constant vigilance.  Once it is taken for granted -- once intentionality is lost -- it will not endure.  It is inherently fragile. [5] 

So now I return to the theme of fraudulent voting.  In my view, the damage done by cheating is far greater than skewed, non-representative election results.  It undermines and corrupts the foundations of a cohesive civil society, without which there can be no just government.  If a political faction acts in defiance of established civil norms, then mutual trust is destroyed.  Other violations predominantly associated with the Marxist Left include quick resort to violence and intimidation, [6] personal attacks, willful damage to personal and public property, habitual lying and stunning hypocrisy. 

The MPL routinely rages against "hate speech" and the want of civil debate in America.  Yet, who is it that, just as routinely, engages in these behaviors?  These are people who project their own demons on the rest of society.  Their fear and hatred of guns is instructive.  It's my hypothesis that their antipathy towards the minimally regulated possession of firearms is rooted in the fear of their own hostility.  They know that it is they who cannot be trusted with guns.  I think the same phenomenon is at work in their blind devotion to political correctness.  It is a mechanism to protect themselves from acknowledging their own hatreds, bigotry and illiberalism. The Marxist Left is not afraid of conservatives, who are by definition, predictable and traditional.  What they fear is people like themselves.  Justifiably. But they also fear people who see them for what they are.  Honest voters.

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1.  Today "Democrats" is a misnomer.  There once existed a political class by that name, but they have all but ceased to exist.  They have been systematically purged by Marxist-Progressive Left (MPL) who have found it politically expedient to conceal their true identity in the shadow of the donkey icon.  With dogged patience and cunning they have, over the span of more than a hundred years, by now accumulated substantial and ubiquitous power. Much of it institutional. Enough power, in their own view, that they believe they have reached a tipping-point.  Since the turn of the 20th Century they have scurried to find cover under benign labels, such as Progressive, liberal or New Left, sullying each in a constant rotation.
.  But things are changing; a number of politicians -- Van Jones, et. al. -- no longer bridle under the revelation that they are known to be politically invested in communist and socialist movements.  Though he doesn't say so explicitly, the President himself seems tacitly to acknowledge it.
2.  Perhaps I owe readers an explanation of my choice of words.  Time was I referred to the enemies of civil society as the Left or as Liberals, and I avoided socialist and Marxist labels.  But my thinking has evolved.  They are Marxists, statists, if one is suddenly overtaken by generosity.  Unsurprisingly, they argue with my characterization.  Performing amazing feats of intellectual onanism, they point to distinctions between communists, socialists, fascists, and social democrats.  But their arguments only carry at the margins.  The history of the last century gives us a clear picture of groups that lust after centralized power and control and their philosophical justifications, dishonest self-representations and coercive and cruel methodologies.  They walk like ducks.  They may differ in minor ways, but they are spokes emanating from the same hub.  They are Marxists, and they are enemies of liberty, life and property; enemies of the individual; enemies of distributed political power.  They are our enemies, and we must treat them accordingly, which is often difficult and painful.  Most collectivists who serve Marxist purposes I now include under the same rubric as those they follow, however unknowingly.  They are often our friends, neighbors and co-workers, and their motives may be pure.  They are, in Milton Friedman's language "frontmen" for a relatively small cadre of men who intend to control our lives and steal our liberty and wealth.  Kill us if necessary.  Whoever they may be we have to resist them at a minimum and fight them where required.  Too long we have accorded our enemies the unsupported presumption of reciprocal good faith. And we have done so at our cost.  This is serious business.

3.  It is an interesting historical irony that great numbers of enthusiastic advocates of Marxism, as it evolves in early stages, expect in the end to be members of the governing elite.  "Useful idiots", if they survive, populate gulags around the world with dissidents to keep them company.
4.  Civil society itself is not unique to the West, but its form is.  The most prosperous democratic societies have largely adopted the Western model.
5.  It is worth repeating, so I did.  I cannot help thinking of Venezuela and its current problems.  Civil society there, though not as robust as in the US, was strong and stable for a time.  But within the space of a little more than generation it has been undone.  Undone, as is always the case, by Marxists.  Is there a message here...?
6.  Here, I refer readers to an earlier essay which argues that the locus of political and economic violence is and and has always (at the very least from the French Revolution) resided in the collectivist left.  Anecdotal observation alongside empirical evidence abounds to support that position.  Few readers, I suspect, will have failed to observe the palpable anger of the Left in what now passes for "civil" debate.  When facts are offered in aid of ideas not sufficiently statist, they will typically respond with loud voices, intimidating gestures, ad hominem attacks and dogma-driven dismissive contempt for fact.  In Marxist relativism "truth", as we have known it for centuries, has neither meaning nor relevance.