Today in Supreme Court History: August 18, 1920

8/18/1920: The Nineteenth Amendment is ratified.

Comments

[Enrique]

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

[Dan Schiavetta]

Q. How did women get the vote? (This is not a trick question.)

[Commenter_XY]

captcrisis, I'll bite. How did they? 🙂

[Queen Amalthea]

I'd like to say they pushed for it, but the real answer is probably that enough interest groups thought it would benefit them.

[DaivdBehar]

They became rich, from inherited wealth, and from factory work in WWI. They could buy politicians. The same explains homosexual rights, which are harmful to homosexuals.

[DaivdBehar]

Judicial review could have helped this country 40 years earlier. The Equal Protection Clause applies to "citizens" and to "persons." The Supreme Court did its mind reading thing, saying, it was meant for black males.

[DaivdBehar]

Enjoy the Plenary Speech at the 1848 Convention. Anti-transvestite diatribe. Inferior Italian males have more rights than WASP females. Enabling addiction. Yelling as persuasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMIy9tVEdKQ

[Queen Amalthea]

"homosexual rights, which are harmful to homosexuals."

You should give up your harmful rights (the rights of authoritarian nuts).

[DaivdBehar]

Homosexual rights are not the desire of the homosexual community, but of the lawyer profession. The lawyer made it a crime with prison time to trace HIV contacts. The lawyer made quarantine of HIV illegal. Millions of homosexuals died, slow painful deaths, involving slow suffocation.

The lawyer legalized marriage for them. Now, productive homosexuals can have their assets plundered in protracted divorces.

These gruesome effects of the lawyer profession are beyond the imagination of the most rabid, homophobic genocidal maniac.

[Queen Amalthea]

Is this authoritarian nut married, or an incel?

Renounce your rights if the latter, or you should be rounded up, tried and summarily executed, amirite?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Nobody got the right answer.

Here it is.

Q. How did women get the vote?

A. Men decided to give it to them.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Some men, perhaps -- better men -- decided it would be a good idea to enable women to vote. Plenty of men had that progress shoved down their throats, and did not "decide" anything. Nothing worthwhile, at least.

[Dan Schiavetta]

At some point at least 51% of men decided that women should have the vote. Wyoming, in 1869, still a territory then, was the first.

Also note that a lot of women were opposed to getting the vote, but of course their voices didn't count.

[DaivdBehar]

The Gilded Age Robber Barons died, leaving their daughters fortunes. These females became oligarchs, and wanted the vote. Women had to fill positions in wartime factories. They did well financially. Politicians respond to money.

[apedad]

This also applies...

Q. How did men get the vote?

A. Men decided to give it to them.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Not quite the same, and not always true.

The Founding Fathers gave themselves the vote.

Insofar as democracy evolved (as opposed to, like here, through revolution), it was some men (monarchs) deciding to give the vote to other men. And sometimes it was a female monarch giving the vote to men (as with Queen Victoria and the Reform Act of 1867).

My point is that at first it was only men who could vote, and at a certain point they decided that the "men" in "all men are created equal" included women.

[azbadger]

It came from men, who willingly (but begrudgingly), gave up their monopoly on voting power. It came from the top down.

[Queen Amalthea]

The 19th Amendment should have been unnecessary (same for the 15th), the EPC seems on its face to cover both (women and blacks are citizens, after all). An idea of 'equal protection of the laws' that doesn't include, say, jury duty or voting seems ludicrous.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Note that hardly anybody objects to the 19th Amendment now (except for some conservative Catholics, see https://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/against-womens-suffrage).

But the Equal Rights Amendment -- which had the same language except not restricted to the right to vote -- bred fierce opposition and never passed.

[DaivdBehar]

Equal Rights Amendment was a gift to male sex predators. One would not even have to identify as female. He would have every right to shower with the high school cheerleaders. His woodie would be protected by its being an involuntary reaction, covered by the ADAAA.

[Queen Amalthea]

Crazy man posting.

[Queen Amalthea]

I think the fact that the ERA had the same language bred opposition given the faulty EPC jurisprudence that preceded it.

[Krychek_2]

I well remember the debate over the ERA. What's funny is that the main argument against it was that it would eventually lead to gay marriage.

[Brett Bellmore]

And men in women's bathrooms, don't forget that.

Basically, the ERA's opponents were proven right about it. Every concern they had that was dismissed as mad was perfectly correct.

They just didn't realize that the judiciary wouldn't let their defeat of the ERA matter.

[Krychek_2]

I don't think the ERA was necessary for either gay marriage or trans rights; I think that's already covered by the Fourteenth Amendment. So I think those decisions were correct, and the defeat of the ERA was properly irrelevant to the outcome. In fact, I would go so far as to say the Fourteenth Amendment already gives us everything the ERA would have given us, so it shouldn't be necessary.

But that wasn't true in the 1970s and 80s. At that time, legal sexism, both latent and blatant, ruled the day. There was an equal protection case from Idaho in which the Supreme Court created a new level of scrutiny because it didn't want to give women the benefit of strict scrutiny; if memory serves, it involved the preferences given to siblings in probate court (males were preferred). A federal judge threatened to hold a female attorney in contempt for not using her husband's last name. And on which subject, the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles was allowed by the courts to refuse to issue a wife a driver's license in her own name rather than her husband's name.

Times have changed and I doubt any of those results would come down today. But don't confuse that with how things were at the time the ERA was being debated.

[Brett Bellmore]

The ERA was necessary until the judiciary became shameless enough to read defeated amendments into existing amendments.

Once the judiciary became comfortable with this sort of sophistry, amendments became redundant, which is why people stopped trying to amend the Constitution: Suborning judges was easier than persuading voters.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I mean, the framers of the 14th Amendment could have avoided this "problem" by saying what they meant and not using "people."

[Brett Bellmore]

Or they could have just used language everybody understood until the ERA was defeated, and its proponents were looking around for a backdoor way to impose it anyway.

Oh, wait, they did use language everybody understood.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Apparently not because the courts incorrectly understood it for roughly 70 years on the most obvious point: segregation.

And it also is a real legitimacy problem to try to explain to half the country that “people” meant “men” because that’s what the men who said it meant even though they didn’t use the word “men” in the text they chose.

Your originalism takes the meaning out of the constitution for the vast majority of people and places it in the hands of priests who use sources and methods no one else has access too. You’re the real amender, not people who read the words on the page and logically think it applies to them.

[Krychek_2]

Or we could just accept that the 14th Amendment means what it says and equal protection applies to everybody, whether based on race, sex, sexual orientation, or any other classification that's irrelevant to living in civil society.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I’m always curious as to how people who think things like that manage to function in human society. I mean I suppose the editor-in-chief of a reactionary Catholic publication is in a bubble, but it is simply bizarre to me that you can just go around and think half the people you interact with are too dumb and emotional to fully participate in society.

[DaivdBehar]

The interest of the Church is to increase the population, and thus, its economic base. All female rights lower fecundity. Follow the money is the best Theory of Anomalous Human Behavior.

[Queen Amalthea]

Privilege is a helluva drug.

I mean, introspection is *hard.* Who wants to question an inherited idea of privilege for yourself? There's nothing in it for you other than truth and integrity, which seem to be pretty cheap these days.

[Krychek_2]

My grandfather, who was so conservative he nearly fell off the political spectrum, vehemently opposed women being able to vote because he thought they would tend to vote liberal. He was perfectly blatant about it: I want conservatives to win, and their chances are better if women can't vote.

Kinda like why conservatives like the electoral college and two senators per state.

[Bob from Ohio]

Your grandfather was right though.

"two senators per state"

Democrats had 60 seats in 2009, GOP has not had 60 seats in a hundred years, and only once I think. The senate majority leader from 2001-2003 was a Democrat from South Dakota.

There is no structural advantage to either party in the Senate.

[Krychek_2]

Our politics has polarized pretty considerably since then. You really think John Glenn or Howard Metzenbaum could win Ohio today? I don't. Nor do I think Byrd or Rockefeller would have a snowball's chance in hell of winning West Virginia, though if Byrd came back from the dead, today he'd probably be a Republican.

And yes, my grandfather was right on the practicalities of it. That leaves us with this: Your side wins elections by keeping Democratic votes from counting, as opposed to having a platform that a majority of the population actually likes. One of the side effects of anti-democratic institutions is that your side doesn't need to care about public opinion, and that's no way to run a country.

[Krychek_2]

And yes, I know, Sherrod Brown does currently represent Ohio, but he's no Howard Metzenbaum. However, rather than get bogged down over that, I shall change my example: Do you think Frank Church could carry Idaho, or Max Baucus could carry Montana, or Kent Conrad could carry North Dakota, or Bob Kerrey could carry Nebraska?

[Bob from Ohio]

"Max Baucus could carry Montana"

There is a current Democrat in the Senate from Montana so yes. Re-elected 3 years ago.

Things change, the current advantage is still not structual.

Georgia was a solid GOP state until 2020 and Virginia was GOP leaning until very recently. Brown got re-elected in 2018.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The big population blue states (California, New York) are solid blue, while the big population red states (Texas, Florida) are veering to purple. At some point the Republican Party will be reliant on a collection of small population states yet will still have the upper hand in the Senate. So yes, the advantage is structural.

The Senate was initially constructed so as to ensure white supremacy, and it still serves that function.

[Bob from Ohio]

Florida is getting more GOP in fact and Texas is status quo, any slippage is Trump related and will fade as he does.

"The Senate was initially constructed so as to ensure white supremacy, and it still serves that function."

Total nonsense. You just unnaturally see everything thru a racial lens.

[David Nieporent]

The Senate was initially constructed so as to ensure white supremacy,

This is nonsensical and ahistorical. The Senate's construction protected small states, which was not in any way synonymous with slave states.

[Krychek_2]

I don't think it's a fair statement that the Senate was constructed to ensure white supremacy. I do think it's a fair statement that the Senate was constructed to ensure conservative supremacy. And I think captcrisis' analysis of where things are going is largely correct.

[Krychek_2]

And Bob, FYI, I live in Florida, and the number of people who have died in the current Covid wave -- mostly red voters on the Panhandle -- is already larger than Gov. DeSantis' margin of victory in the last election.

[Brett Bellmore]

" I do think it’s a fair statement that the Senate was constructed to ensure conservative supremacy."

The Senate was created because the United states were a federation of sovereign states.

The House represented the people, the Senate represented the state governments. Remember, before the 17th amendment, Senators were, constitutionally, to be chosen however the state legislature wanted. Much like electors today, while there had grown up a tradition of popularly electing them, it wasn't constitutionally mandated.

Equal representation of states in the Senate was because some of the original states were small, and some were large, and the small states would not consent to join the federation if both chambers were represented on the basis of population, meaning NY would control the federal government. That's also why equal representation in the Senate is constitutionally protected from amendment.

It really didn't have anything to do with slavery, and not to do with "conservatism" except in the sense that the Senate, a continuing body with longer terms, was expected to be more resistant to fads.

[Brett Bellmore]

"the number of people who have died in the current Covid wave — mostly red voters on the Panhandle — is already larger than Gov. DeSantis’ margin of victory in the last election."

Using race as a proxy for party, Johns Hopkins latest numbers:
"Statewide Racial Breakdown of Cases and Deaths
Black or African American
16% of population
14% of cases
16% of deaths
Hispanic or Latino
25% of population
40% of cases
25% of deaths"

Suggest that deaths are not discriminating, so I don't think he's got much to worry about on that score.

[Krychek_2]

Brett, "sovereign states" is simply a proxy for conservatism always being the dominant philosophy, since any change to anything essentially requires near unanimous consent.

With respect to your second point, Latino voters in Florida mostly voted Republican in 2020 -- they gave Trump his margin of victory -- because the GOP ran ads in the Cuban communities linking Biden to Castro.

[Bob from Ohio]

"because the GOP ran ads in the Cuban communities linking Biden to Castro."

Oh, ads.

You really don't have any respect for the agency of Cuban voters if you think a few ads make a real difference.

[Krychek_2]

Bob, one single ad pretty much won the presidency for LBJ in 1964. If ads didn’t matter the parties wouldn’t spend millions on them.

[Bob from Ohio]

"mostly red voters on the Panhandle"

That's a lie

Here's a list of deaths by county. Are Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward in the Panhandle?

https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/florida

[DaivdBehar]

KryKry. The Democrat party can only win by cheating, backing up the truck with the 1000's of freshly printed ballots needed to win at 3 AM.

[Queen Amalthea]

Nutty McNut.

Fervent Trump supporter, no coincidence I'm sure.

[Krychek_2]

Daivd, do you also believe UFO aliens impregnated Chelsea Clinton?

For the benefit of everyone else, this is why American politics has become so polarized. We've always had conspiracy nuts like Daivd, but it's only fairly recently that they've been taken seriously. When the John Birch Society assured us that Eisenhower was a Communist dupe (and my parents were Birchers), nobody paid any attention because everyone knew that was a nutcase claim. Today, that very same claim would probably get traction.

We have large swaths of the population that believe that Obama was a Kenyan-born Marxist Muslim (yes, I know the last two are mutually exclusive but don't let that get in the way), that Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster and was part of a pedophile ring, and that the Covid vaccine contains microchips that the government will use to track people with. A good chunk of the population has simply been lost to reason and good sense.

[DaivdBehar]

Cannot debate you because you are a denier. Deniers do not argue in good faith. Their political agenda is their purpose, not discourse. KryKry is a cheater, and a denier.

Republicans will backing up their trucks at 4 AM, next time, if they learn.

[DaivdBehar]

I do not have any of the beliefs you ascribe to me. You are frustrated, and resorting to insulting me. Personal attack is all the left has after the facts abandoned it 100 years ago.

I have the vote counts of Pennsylvania. Trump was winning until 3 AM. Trucks delivered 1000's of unfolded ballots with only Biden checked off.

[DaivdBehar]

These ballots have not been intermingled. When the videos were shown, Democrat partisan judges dismissed the cases. Biden, the servant of Iranian and of Chinese Commie interests, is not my President.

[Brett Bellmore]

"For the benefit of everyone else, this is why American politics has become so polarized."

The reason our politics have become so polarized, is that Democrats abandoned trying to appeal to people outside urban population centers, where they are so dominant that they have little exposure to non-Democrats. So Democrats no longer moderate their views to have a wider appeal. Instead they try to win the whole country by getting 90% of the vote in cities, and despise people who don't conform to their own views.

[Krychek_2]

Brett, one could equally as well say that our politics became polarized because Republicans abandoned the cities. Maybe your side should try having platforms that appeal to the cities rather than just writing them off. But of course, under our current system they don't have to.

[Brett Bellmore]

Except that the situation is not remotely symmetric.

How the Rural-Urban Divide Became America’s Political Fault Line

See that first graph? Most Republicans live in areas where the Republican party is only moderately dominant. Most democrats live in areas where the Republican party is practically nonexistent.

[Brett Bellmore]

Or see this:

<a href="http://davetroy.com/posts/the-real-republican-adversary-population-densityThe Real Republican Adversary? Population Density

Below 800 people per square mile, Republicans tend to get maybe 55% of the vote. Above that cutoff, the sky is the limit, Democrats go upwards of 90% of the vote.

The Democratic party is based in areas where the Democratic party totally dominates politics, cities where Republicans have not ruled since the 50's or 60's, and are not even a political factor, the entire contest is in the Democratic primary.

The Republican party is based in areas where the Democratic party still has a significant amount of support, and while winning the Republican primary will usually get you victory in the general, it's not guaranteed if you go off the deep end.

Not a symmetric situation at all.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't think Republicans abandoned the cities, so much as that we got purged from them, in much the way we were purged from college faculties, and are currently being purged from social media.

Wherever the left gets enough power, they conduct purges, and take total control. You don't tolerate competition if you have the opportunity to get rid of it.

[Sarcastr0]

What you appear to be saying, Brett, is that Dems outnumber the GOP, either coming close to parity of completely outnumbering them nationwide.
And if it weren't for gerrymandering, the GOP would be a quite different and more populous coalition by now.

And the unsupported reason why is some sort of purges.

And you blame the Democrats for all the partisanship, even as you are a pretty partisan dude on the right, and more importantly after the GOP just elected Donald Trump, who openly governed only for his base in a way Biden nor Obama not Bush never did.

[Krychek_2]

What Sarcastro said. The bottom line remains that rather than have a platform that people actually like, the GOP simply stays in power through anti-democratic institutions. In other words, actual accountability to the voters is essentially dead.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Brett is basically taking a conservative self-selection problem and then blaming it on left-wing purges.

Your movement praises the rural values of the heartland as Real America and condemns the decadence and diversity of the cities…so it’s not surprising a lot of conservatives don’t live in them.

In academia you condemn various forms of study as bad, wrong, etc…so that’s why you’re not there.

Also you’re not being purged from the multi-billion dollar social media companies, people just don’t like having bigoted assholes around, and the market is responding. The fact that you and Laura Ingraham identify dudes like Paul Nehlen as “conservatives” or on the “right” is more of a you problem than a “Twitter is purging conservatives” problem.

[Don Nico]

K_2,
"Your side wins elections by keeping Democratic votes from counting" is not very different that one saying that
"Democrats wine elections by buying votes from 49% of the electorate"

[Krychek_2]

Don, no, those are not comparable statements. Even if I otherwise agreed with that characterization:

In the first place, Republicans buy elections by giving the wealthy tax cuts, so the idea that only one side buys votes is just wrong. In the second place, "buying votes from 49% of the electorate" is an inflammatory way of saying that Democrats give the voters what they want, which is an active government that meets their basic needs. In the third place, not counting votes is an attack on democratic institutions themselves.

[Don Nico]

K_2,
1. The wealthy are not enough to make a different, even using the AOC/Warren definition of wealthy.
2. What else is the rent moratorium than buying votes. Even Trump understood that. Almost the entire D platform is about wholesale wealth transfer.
3. Your giving voters what they want is just an inflammatory way of saying, "let the other guy pay for me."
4. Counting votes that aren't there is an attack on democracy. I was schooled in Richard J. Daley's Chicago

[Don Nico]

"Counting votes that aren’t there"
for example "vote harvesting"

[Sarcastr0]

That's not what vote harvesting is, though, Don.

And the rent moratorium may be bad policy, but there are plenty of reasons why someone might think it is a good idea, beyond buying votes. Indeed, the places it buys votes are already largely Dem jurisdictions.

[Don Nico]

S_0,
Having anyone but a USPS worker or polling official touching ballots is harvesting. Going around neighborhoods to collect ballots send to all voters (as CA is doing for the Newsom recall election) is harvesting.
You can count on harvesting occurring in the special election to keep Newsom in office. The NYT even printed a scare OP today about the threat of the recall election.

[Sarcastr0]

You may not like vote harvesting, but 1) it's legal, and 2) it's not 'counting votes that aren't there.'

You can count on harvesting occurring in the special election to keep Newsom in office.
Which is legal in CA, and those are real votes, not votes that aren't there.

You can think it's a bad policy, but don't pretend it's voter fraud; that's just being melodramatic.

[Don Nico]

It should be illegal as it is clearly an opportunity to manipulate ballots AND manufacture votes that actually are not there.
It is a manipulative charade of democracy that is especially easy to pull off as the population density increases and where every household has ballots to harvest.

[Don Nico]

I just saw the "melodramatic" comment.
Vote harvesting is Election Tampering at best and Fraud at worst, and calling it so is not melodramatic. Harvest is far worse than people pestering you while you are in line to vote and that is illegal.
Sorry, a person rings the bell and says, did you get a ballot? the person in her apartment says "yes."
"Did you fill it in?" "No."
Do you like how much help you get from our government? Let me help you with that ballot and I'll submit it for you.

Do you honestly believe that does not or could not happen?
Sorry but I don't and that is election tampering.

[Sarcastr0]

Vote harvesting is Election Tampering at best and Fraud at worst, and calling it so is not melodramatic.

Letting someone else drop off an absentee ballot is none of those things. Most states allow that, at least for family members.

You can at best argue it allows coercion. But not fraud - you still need to match the ballot to the address and signiture.
And at the coercion level, it's also not going to be an industrial level operation - the numbers make this not a great rout to go if you want to vote fraudulently.

Is it best practice? IMO weighing the increased convenience (good) with the risk of coercion (bad), it needs some limits, like only family members.

But you're pretty far out there in declaring it tantamount to fraud. No, not every time someone else submits a filled out absentee ballot for someone else is it fraud.

[Don Nico]

As was more specific in identifying it and an obvious means of election tampering. And election tampering is a form fraud

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" Having anyone but a USPS worker or polling official touching ballots is harvesting. "

That seems a strange assertion. Is a person carrying a spouse's, or parent's, ballot to the mailbox engaged in harvesting?

Keep flailing, clingers. Unless you change course -- develop positions that are popular in modern America; ditch the bigotry and downscale superstition -- you are electorally doomed, and you deserve it.

[Don Nico]

S_0,
You may think my comment is way out there but I see that you just don't want to admit the potential for tampering with the vote.
You are so emotionally tied to the word fraud because of the Trumpistas, that you don't want to admit to the opportunity for dishonesty in elections.
You can same that maybe there should be limits, but there are no those limits. And let's face it they present system lets one harvest votes where past voting is know both in terms of preferences and in terms of voter participation. It is one thing for you to drop off your wife's ballot and quite another for a "young Bernie Bro" or young Trumpista to do it.
I grew up with the dishonesty of big-city machine politics. I do not believe that any political party has gooten more virtue in the past 50 years.

[Sarcastr0]

I explain the limits I would put on it:

Is it best practice? IMO weighing the increased convenience (good) with the risk of coercion (bad), it needs some limits, like only family members.

Separately from what the best policy is, there a cost-benefit. Just like in-person fraud, this is not going to be a way for widespread voter fraud or tampering or whatever you call it to occur - it's too diffuse a practice.
You pass restrictions, or ban it, you can have a pretty decent across-the-board suppressive effect that will effect elections.

[Queen Amalthea]

Please, please convince your fellow GOPers to push this correct idea that women shouldn't vote.

Stand up for your principles!

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, people thought that most women weren't really up for the smarty parts of statecraft for a very long time just about worldwide.

Though there was always the occasional Dragon Empress, they had to explain away...

[LawTalkingGuy]

True. But I guess it was overall expected that’s how it worked. Thinking that now is ludicrous. Like if I thought women shouldn’t vote I feel like I’d have a way harder time interacting with all my co-workers for instance (not to mention I’d have to find a new doctor, a new dentist, new (worse) friends, etc.)

[Sarcastr0]

Oh yeah, in modern times that is a bewildering level of compartmentalization.

Krychek_2's point about how some people's morality is sufficiently based on their faction that voting rights can be instrumental to them.

Not at all how I work, but we see lots of evidence of that around here. Notably, I think this is a partisan asymmetry; for all the nonsense I see on the left, no one is seriously considering monkeying with the franchise, even in places it'd help them.

[Queen Amalthea]

"Oh yeah, in modern times that is a bewildering level of compartmentalization. "

Many conservatives still think this, see Bob.

[Sarcastr0]

Bob isn't a great example, because he rejects the idea of morality as a constraint entirely.

[Bob from Ohio]

"idea of morality as a constraint entirely."

In politics certainly. No one can rationally argue anything else.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Politics is simply the means society as a whole uses to decide how we treat each other. Abandoning morality in that is the same as not having any morality whatsoever.

Also, you don't actually believe it isn't a constraint. For instance, I assume you don't believe you would be morally justified in kidnapping a Democratic Senator's kids and threatening to torture, rape, and murder them unless they resign or actually carrying out the threat to gain a Republican majority.

[Sarcastr0]

Humans are not rational actors. We have some dark, irrational impulses, and we have better angels of our nature. Ignoring the latter may be rational, but it's also antisocial, especially in a republic.

[Brett Bellmore]

And we're remarkably good at convincing ourselves that those dark impulses are the better angels of our natures speaking, too, Sarcastro.

[Bob from Ohio]

"For instance, I assume you don’t believe you would be morally justified in kidnapping a Democratic Senator’s kids and threatening to torture, rape, and murder them unless they resign or actually carrying out the threat to gain a Republican majority."

You got me, that type of extreme violence is out of bounds.

But violence has been used in US politics {assinations, Sumner's caning, intimidation of black voters, riots of all sorts by many types] so even violence is not considered completely out of bounds.

For the millionth time, you and Gaslighto and your ilk are confusing descriptive with normative comments about morality in politics.

Even you cannot say that lying and cheating does not happen every day in politics with no penalty.

[Sarcastr0]

True.

The lesson is not, however, to never try.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I don’t say it doesn’t happen. I say it does happen and is bad. You say it happens and it’s good if you win. That’s why you’re immoral and I’m not.

[Bob from Ohio]

"immoral"

Learn English. The correct term you want to use is "amoral".

All the backpatting you do must really hurt your muscles.

[LawTalkingGuy]

No. You’re immoral. I said it correctly. And I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to figure out that I’m more moral than you. Requires very little back-patting. I mean only one of us has ever said “need a tissue” to a recitation of horrible facts about tragedies that occurred to real humans or called someone “weak and pathetic” for detailing the emotional weight of the criminal justice system.

[Bob from Ohio]

"most women weren’t really up for the smarty parts of statecraft for a very long time just about worldwide"

Woman in France couldn't vote until after WW2. Nor Japanese women.

The attitudes of JFK, RFK and LBJ would give Queen Cretin a stroke. That was less than 60 years ago and they were liberals.

[Sarcastr0]

Bob has discovered that as time change, things progress!

[LawTalkingGuy]

A lesson he and others have learned far too well, tbh. Learned it to the point that he believes parts of past have no affect on current society.

[LawTalkingGuy]

EFFECT

[Dan Schiavetta]

It's been a while since I read that vomit-inducing essay, but IIRC his argument was not that women were stupider or too emotional, it's just that men and women had different "spheres". IOW, women's place is in the home, not in the political world. He extensively quoted Chesterton, who not coincidentally was a shallow, pompous misogynist.

The Catholic Church backed away from opposing women voting, for self-evidently practical reasons (with women's suffrage becoming law, it would be disastrous if 100% of Protestants voted, but only 50% of Catholics). But it still holds to this vague idea of "complementarity", which today acts as one of many inventive rationales for restricting the priesthood to men.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Spheres” is even worse! Women are in every profession. Like does he avoid dental practices that have women dentists?

[apedad]

I bet Muslims do.

Mike Pence too.

[Brett Bellmore]

The general rule seems to be that women can create or keep any monopoly they feel like, but men can't.

For instance, men have been largely purged from K-12 teaching and child care positions, where the numbers were formerly much more equal. But this isn't a big deal, any more than the fact that men are no longer getting into college in the same numbers women are is a matter of concern. Women under-performing men is a big deal, men under-performing women is a matter of suck it up, you wusses.

Well, that's life in a patriarchy which is on its way to becoming a matriarchy. No wonder more and more men want to pretend they're women, for access to the privileges.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Bro, wut.

[Don Nico]

There is only one reason for the Catholic church to restrict the priesthood to men.

[David Nieporent]

it is simply bizarre to me that you can just go around and think half the people you interact with are too dumb and emotional to fully participate in society.

After the last four years, I'm pretty convinced of it. Though I suppose that technically that was only 47%.

[bernard11]

Wow. That's a seriously demented article.

[ReaderY]

You think 1 day old babies should get jury duty?

[Sarcastr0]

Infancy is not a protected class. Gender is.

Also, I think there may be one or two compelling reasons allowing a classification excluding newborns from sitting on juries, Boss Baby movies aside.

[DaivdBehar]

Babies are persons, but not citizens, mentioned in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

[Queen Amalthea]

No, age is different than gender or race.

[Queen Amalthea]

For example, the Militia Acts only applied to men. Do you think women, therefore, need a separate amendment to keep and bear arms?

[Queen Amalthea]

Consider that for the vast majority of the nation's history women had no right to a voice in it. Taxation without representation was what led white men to a literal revolution in this country but it was the reality for more than half of the population for most of our history. The next time someone berates some feminist woman for not being sufficiently patriotic remember that fact. White men are on the verge of wanting to revolt for being asked to wear a mask briefly during a pandemic, women went for most of our history with no vote, jury duty, occupational rights, etc. This, of course, doesn't much bother many libertarians because many libertarians are white dudes and their ideology is more about protecting their privilege than defending 'liberty.'

[ReaderY]

The 14th Amendment was uniformly ruled not to cover who governs until the 1960s. Nor does it as a matter of text. Section 2 explicitly gives a state which wishes to take it the option of excluding whatever class of male inhabitants of the state they wish from the franchise and accepting a reduced congressional delegation.There is no disability whatsoever for excluding female inhabitants. An entire section devoted to voting with explicit rules would be completely redundant if the 14th Amendment actually had the meaning you suggest. That’s why the 15th Amendment was necessary. And the later ones too. If you want to talk about what the 14th Amendment says on its face, read it. It’s pretty plan and clear.

[Queen Amalthea]

On it's face refers to the literal language, do you want to argue that women (or blacks) were not citizens or that equal protection of the laws doesn't include things like voting or jury duty? I imagine the latter, but, other than Sec. 2, does that make sense to you? If someone said to some newly discovered group 'you have a right to equal protection of the laws, but hey, that doesn't cover voting or jury duty' would you say 'of course!'?

[Bob from Ohio]

"women went for most of our history with no vote, jury duty, occupational rights, etc. "

There is literally no woman alive who was denied the right to vote in the US because of her sex. It has no impact on the views of anyone, libertarian or feminist.

Jury duty isn't a benefit btw.

[Sarcastr0]

It's not like voting has ever resulted in generational effects.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Conservative views of the past are weird. It is extremely important that we adhere to the values and visions of the founding generation and continue to honor past people despite modern sensibilities. At the same time, past discrimination has little to no effect on current social arrangements. Past liberalizations, however, are the cause of all our social ills.

[Jimmy the Dane]

It isn't that conservative views of the past are "weird" it is that they are intentionally distorted by the left. We are supposed to believe everything was horrible, everyone (except white men) were oppressed, and we should be grateful we live in our enlightened liberal times. This is called "establishing frame" or "enforcing narrative" in marketing terms.

And, it conveniently leaves out some horrors of the past such as communism or outright distorts though so they look "positive" or potentially positive. "We never gave socialism a REAL chance..." is a great example the liberal says after ignoring the few hundred million killed in the name of the ideology.

[LawTalkingGuy]

No your views are weird because they aren't in accordance with the facts. You're so upset about white men being viewed as oppressors today that you have to bury the facts (one might call this a form of white guilt). Suppression is easier than grappling with the facts, knowing those facts might make someone "love" America less. For instance, the Lt Governor of Texas proudly cancelled a talk by authors of a book talking about the slavery politics of the Texas Revolution because it challenges the heroic myth of the Alamo. But that doesn't change everything that we know about White Texans' motivations back then. I mean they wrote them down in their letters and the Texas Constitution actually forbade manumission without legislative approval.

Simply listing facts about what happened is a problem for you because they inevitably paint certain powerful white people in a bad light because the things they did were in fact bad and we do live in more enlightened times!

[Jimmy the Dane]

Ah yes loving you some more of the "framing" aren't you? It is funny you call out someone for such rhetoric and then they just go right back to the into it without skipping a beat. Classic.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I honestly don't know what you're talking about. All I am saying is that there are facts conservatives need to suppress to make sure no one comes to a critical conclusion about America's past. Something you aren't even contesting.

[Queen Amalthea]

So you'd be ok protecting men from jury duty? Let's do it.

Do you think Bob is married? It's hard to imagine a creature that would be. We're talking Gollum level.

[Jimmy the Dane]

That is unnecessarily low even for you Queenie....

If someone were to make a similar toned comment about you, the accusations of "sexism" would fly, endlessly, around here.

[Queen Amalthea]

I'd never say my partner should be excluded from jury duty because of their nature. But thanks for 'playing.'

[Jimmy the Dane]

Do pillow pal stuffed animals now qualify for jury duty?!?!

[Queen Amalthea]

Your partner, if you have one, is a pillow pal stuffed animal?

[Bob from Ohio]

Thanks Jimmy but no need for you to roll with a pig like Queen Cretin.

Funny in a thread about woman's rights he/she/it feels a need to maker a sexist insult about a woman he knows nothing about.

[Bob from Ohio]

Over a commonplace view that jury duty is a chore to be avoided no less.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I do not consider jury duty to be a chore to be avoid.

One more bit of evidence that I am a better person that is Bob from Ohio.

Keep yapping, Bob. When your mouth is open, it is easy for better Americans to continue shoving that sweet progress down your bigoted, right-wing throat.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Do you think Bob is married? It’s hard to imagine a creature that would be. We’re talking Gollum level."

Internet tough guy/gal. So brave.

She'd kick your a** you cretin.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Just because someone generally sucks doesn’t meant they aren’t capable of forming meaningful and loving human relationships, nor that they don’t deserve them.

[Bob from Ohio]

Oh shove it. You can't even defend an insult to a woman who you do not know without further insults, Mr. Moral Scold

[LawTalkingGuy]

I find it somewhat surprising you are expecting me to ever be charitable to you on an emotional subject, Mr. "Need a Tissue" and Mr. "You are weak and pathetic (after I detailed the emotional weight of looking at autopsy photos of child murder victims)"

[Bob from Ohio]

Not expecting anything from you in fact.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Good. If you ever want someone to be charitable to you on a subject that has emotional resonance for you, I suggest that you don’t behave callously in other emotional circumstances.

[Bob from Ohio]

I don't care what you suggest.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I know. That’s in part why you’re never going to improve your character or reputation, which is kind of sad.

[Jimmy the Dane]

The Taliban probably have a lot to say about our 19th Amendment....good thing Twitter lets them post....

[DaivdBehar]

That is the Comment of the Day.

[Queen Amalthea]

The *real* tragedy of the Taliban taking power is it reminds us of the travesty of our billionaire Dear Leader having his voice removed.

[Jimmy the Dane]

According to CNN, the Taliban are just saying the quiet part that pretty much everyone on the right wing has been thinking for years now, so they are just the de facto mouthpiece for Trump.

[Cal Cetín]

Lord bless the Supreme Court for giving women the vote!

Wait, they didn't. What's this going in Supreme Court history?

[Queen Amalthea]

Amendments are made often to correct SCOTUS decisions. And SCOTUS has to then follow Amendments.

[Cal Cetín]

"SCOTUS has to then follow Amendments."

Well, in theory. Consider the 15th Amendment, though.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Remember when the debate used to be framed as "the Constitution does not seem to give Congress the power to do this, so we need to amend it" and now it is "Congress can do whatever it wants, we will just call it interstate commerce, and if the courts want to be the bad guy let them at it."

[Cal Cetín]

I glanced at some of the debate above.

Some supporters of universal women's suffrage*thought women would vote to prohibit alcohol. Alcohol interests were worried about women voting for the same reason.

The Prohibition Amendment then passed anyway. Perhaps this made the 19th Amendment an easier sell.

As to practical political implications, today we're dealing with a large amount of single people, including single women, who seem to vote differently from the married. I'm not putting this forward as a problem needing solution, I'm just noting what seems to be the case.

*In some states women could vote before the 19th Amendment.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Around the turn of the 20th century alcohol was perhaps the biggest political issue of the day. Many viewed it as a scourge on society and before modern medicine it was one of the few self-help, fix it all, type substances widely available. Most men were subjected to literal back breaking kind of work and had to have some sort of release. Those old limbs don't hurt so much after a few shots of whiskey. Women were largely not in the workforce so had absolutely no visibility into the brutal working conditions most men faced. They just had to deal with drunkards at home. Had they known what Steel Worker Jim did 6 days a week to bring home the bacon, I don't think it would have been such a popular issue.

[DaivdBehar]

Even in female areas, like fashion, hair, décor, cooking, knitting, for Pete's Sakes, most of the achievers, leaders, innovators, leaders are male.

This is complies with the Law of Social Equity. Females bring this huge asset, reproduction, the sole purpose of life. Males have to go to extremes to match that value. Most female leaders and high achievers were indeed tomboys.

[apedad]

Cause / effect. . .

Are the men achievers, leaders, innovators, leaders (sic) because men are better or because women have been shut out?

[DaivdBehar]

Answer is not clear. To do well, you have do something a lot. We will see what happens as women do more STEM.

[Aktenberg78]

Which is why we have the welfare state that we do. Women should never have been given the vote.

[Brett Bellmore]

Women have two X chromosomes, men have one X and one Y. The result is that men have higher variability on any trait which depends on genes found in those chromosomes, because they don't have duplicates.

Consequently, there are more male geniuses, AND more male morons, than is the case among women. The male bell curve is flatter than the female bell curve, and not on just intelligence. On just about any genetically influenced trait.

The male morons and cripples pass unnoticed, the geniuses and athletes get attention. Women do relatively badly in any competitive endeavor at the very highest level, where only outliers have a chance, because women have fewer outliers. And never pause to give a thought to the men who got the short end of the straw.

[Sarcastr0]

Like women being able to vote.

Do you not think that's progress?

[Sarcastr0]

You think the Taliban are the ancestral values of the Afghans?

I'm sure there are dumbass liberals saying that, but your attempt at a satirical hot take does not hang together very well.

[Sarcastr0]

That's an as of yet unsupported hypothesis you're offering for truth.

Don't do that.

[Brett Bellmore]

Bah, no hypothesis you dislike is "supported". You'll just ignore the evidence, no matter how much piles up.

Variability Hypothesis, modern studies.

[Don Nico]

They became the ancestral values once they were contaminated by Saudi wahabism during their first time in power when KSA was one of only a few countries that recognized them.
By now, after 30 years they do represent Afghan values or at least values that people will accept out of fear.

In their defense, they won't have to impose a covid mask mandate on women.

[Bob from Ohio]

"You think the Taliban are the ancestral values of the Afghans?"

Good god yes.

Read about the 1842 British retreat from Kabul to see how Afghans routinely behave. False promises, savage butchery.

Or do you mean that they only rape women while traditional Afghans rape boys too?

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think that's right. Afghans are not especially pro-Taliban. The Mujahidin didn't come from Afghanistan.

Not all oppressively regimes are unsupported by their people, but I'm quite sure that's not the case here.

[Don Nico]

"The Mujahidin didn’t come from Afghanistan."
Some did and others came from Waziristan supported by the ISI. It doesn't matter that many or even most Afghanis would not choose Taliban values; they would not risk their safety to oppose the Taliban.
While I have sympathy for the women of Afghanistan, I have a far greater worry about the future of Pakistan being controlled by completely radicalized Taliban/ Waziri/ISI elements which will have 140 nuclear weapons at hand.

[Sarcastr0]

Whole thing sucks.

But the ancestral values of the Afghans is not the Taliban. Not that we can (or should) do anything about it.

[Sarcastr0]

Sorry, Brett, that's not how science works. It's still controversial.

Some of those studies posit they've proven causality. Some do not. Some disagree with the others.

Deciding on your own that you know the real science, and just writing it as though it is the fact is bad.

If you wanted to cite a study, you could. But you didn't.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Brett has decided he knows lots of things that professionals in various fields don’t think are correct.

[Sarcastr0]

Oh yeah, the US in the 1840s is super known for keeping it's promises and no butchery at all!

Not all cultures you don't like are the same.

Hey, do you call the Ancient Greeks and Romans boy rapists? I suspect not.

[Bob from Ohio]

"do you call the Ancient Greeks and Romans boy rapists?"

We are talking today, not 1500-2500 years ago. Bachabazi is well documented in present day Afghanistan.

[Don Nico]

BTW, although male homosexual practices were certainly not rare in ancient Rome (even among the ruling class), they were forbidden by the mos maiorum and were publicly denounced.

[Sarcastr0]

Sorry, mad, 1) IQ is a crap metric, and definitely not purely genetic. and 2) correlation does not prove causation.

[Sarcastr0]

Don't see why you're making the distinction. You're making an objective moral judgement.

Well, actually, I do. It's because you're being performatively offensive today.

[Sarcastr0]

A good test is whether it's old enough to be ancestral. The Taliban is living memory.

But you know that, you're just trying to be pedantic for whatever reason.

[Sarcastr0]

Look what Bob was replying to.
Or look at the OP.

Bob talking about attitudes in the past being less modern absolutely includes women voting.

Women voting as an example of progress - do you think it is one?

[Don Nico]

" ancestral values of the Afghans is not the Taliban"

We can argue about the history of the area we now call Afghanistan, but in the end, it does not matter. The Taliban will impose their version of Sharia law and their ideas of societal values as they understand it.

But as I wrote, I worry far more about the Afgani Taliban and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan with the complicity of the ISI destanbilizing and otherwise weak Pakistani government and acquiring 140 nuclear weapons. The US is in no position to stop that. Do you think that China will act decisively to prevent that?

[Bob from Ohio]

"performatively offensive today"

I am not the one being offensive today.

Most of the libs here are on their muscle today. Must be regret over Kabul Joe and the on-going fiasco.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think that's an assured effect in Pakistan, and I think there are ways to address that without direct military intervention.

I'm not sure dealing with the Taliban will be as cool and easy as China things, but it is a concern.

But that's also off-topic. The issue I took was with m_k's original post, and you seem to agree that ancestral values, the Taliban is not.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, they had a dedicated verb for oral rape so I suspect law and practice were not very aligned.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, not performatively offensive at all.

[Don Nico]

Of curse they did. Republican Rome was a highly litigious society. That such acts had names is not at all surprisng

[Sarcastr0]

We can never be sure about history, but it shows up in their poetry enough that it was not some secret taboo practice.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Trolling the libs -- yet another point the Taliban has in common with America's superstitious, misogynistic, rural, stale-thinking, gay-bashing, gun-fondling assholes.

Well, that and getting beaten in the marketplace of ideas by their liberal-libertarian betters.