CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-Allowing people to vote for candidates and for California propositions may violate our inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. When voting trashes inalienable rights, doesn’t voting become illegitimate?
According to the Declaration of Independence, a government’s legitimacy is not based on voting. The Declaration reads:
“[Each person is] endowed…with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” [bold added] Declaration of Independence, ¶ 2
The Declaration places the government’s right to exist on its securing each person’s inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. A government that fails to secure inalienable rights becomes illegitimate.
How is Consent of the Governed Ascertained?
Is voting concealed in the next phrase, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed?” That requires asking, “What is consent?” Generally, it means one agrees to something. By participating in the voting process, one agrees that a candidate may assume the office to which he or she has been elected. It also means that whatever proposition obtains the required percentage of votes becomes the law unless it is unconstitutional. In a Republic based on a constitution, there is agreement that laws that violate the constitution are voidable.
Can There Be Consent Based on False Information?
The legal maxim is: fraud vitiates consent. If a seller promises to sell you his 2015 Mercedes for $50K, and after you pay him, you discover it is 1995 Mercedes, the seller’s fraud vitiates your consent to pay $50K. When the facts you use to give consent are materially false, there is no consent. On the other hand, if someone is there telling you, “Stop, he’s lying; it’s a 1995 Mercedes,” does the seller have to return your money?
The Amount of Fraudulent Information in Elections is Overwhelming
The No on Prop 10 folks win this year’s award for fraudulent advertising against a proposition. But that brings us to another serious problem. What if the voters want false information?
Voters Favor Hyper-Emotional Lies Over Sober Facts
Most voters have no use for facts or for logic. They prefer emotional memes. Non-sequiturs abound. If some tax money is diverted, Prop 6 says we should repeal the gas tax even without evidence that those tax dollars are being diverted. The voters’ love for emotionalism over facts accounts for some loony results at the ballot box.
The Origins of the Problem
There are two culprits for our dilemma: (1) The Media and (2) We the People.
Since the Orange Buffoon has been screaming about the Media being the enemy of the people, we might be reluctant to mention the role the news media has played over our nation’s history in disseminating fake news. The problem the founding fathers faced was government control of the press. They saw government censorship as a threat to the republic and hence the first amendment forbids the government’s “abridging the freedom of the press.” Perhaps the founding fathers believed that the public wanted accurate information from the press and that if the press spewed forth falsehoods, those newspapers would be financial failures. Oh, how wrong they were.
“It Makes My Brain Ache”
Human beings seem to have a curious feature: thinking makes their brains ache while giving vent to irrational feelings makes people feel alive. The media is chocked full of nonsense because We the People demand emotionalism and shun facts, which require thinking. Because life is complex, facts demand that we pay attention and analyze. Which has more area, a circle with a radius of five miles or a square whose sides add up to five miles? Since the side of a square is the same as the radius of a circle, they have an equal area.
WRONG! The area of a circle with a five-mile radius is 3.14 times greater than the area of a square with four sides equaling five miles. The side of a square is not the same as the radius of a circle.
If subways can serve Manhattan, then subways can serve Los Angeles. WRONG! Manhattan is 2.5 miles by 11 miles and has a river on either side with a total area of about 28 sq. miles. The distance from Franklin Avenue to Third Street is 2.5 miles. Neither is bounded by a river. Yet, Angelenos voted over $100 billion to construct a massive fixed rail system basically on the irrational belief that if it works for Manhattan, it will solve our traffic problems. People prefer to tax themselves an extra $100 billion over doodling out on the back of napkin to see that a subway system cannot serve a circular urban area of 5,000 sq. miles.
Has the ferkata Los Angeles Times explained to Angelenos the absurd folly of a fixed rail system as a solution to Los Angeles’s traffic woes? Of course not. Not only does the LA Times only serve the whims of LA’s elite whose present fortunes are based on excessive construction in Los Angeles’ core areas, but We the People prefer simplistic myths to facts and analysis. Grumpy Trumpy would come close to the truth if he said, “We the People are the enemy of We the People.” If We the People wanted facts rather than myths, the newspapers that print facts and analysis could be financially viable.
That’s Why We Need Pogo for President
Pogo is the only one who tells it like it is: it is neither the right-wing Nazis nor the Jews (under Trump’s code words Globalists, The Media, or Hollywood) who are the problem. “We the People are the enemy.”
Thus, we come full circle. Since We the People are the enemy, why should We the People be allowed to vote?
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
