Jonah Goldberg's Pre-Voting Rights Act Mindset

[marmar]

This Jonah Goldberg is a real POS - OP's special comment.


from HuffPost:


Matt Ortega
Jonah Goldberg's Pre-Voting Rights Act Mindset
Posted August 1, 2007 | 04:48 AM (EST)



In his latest Los Angeles Times column, National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg endorsed Jim Crow election law.


Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens? A voting test would point the arrow of civic engagement up, instead of down, sending the signal that becoming an informed citizen is a valued accomplishment.


Naturally, upon reading this, Oliver Willis was floored because you see, Jonah, we already tried that. In fact, in the American South they were referred to as Jim Crow laws until a little thing called the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Department of Justice notes this in their Frequently Asked Questions about the legislation. Take, for example, this passage:

What does the Voting Rights Act do?
The Voting Rights Act bans all kinds of racial discrimination in voting. For years, many states had laws on their books that served only to prevent minority citizens from voting. Some of these laws required people to take a reading test or interpret some passage out of the Constitution in order to vote, or required people registering to vote to bring someone already registered who would vouch for their "good character." The Voting Rights Act made these and other discriminatory practices illegal, and gave private citizens the right to sue in federal court to stop them. In recent times, courts have applied the Act to end race discrimination in the method of electing state and local legislative bodies and in the choosing of poll officials.


Goldberg, by his own standards, may be unfit to vote. Wouldn't that make him even less qualified to engage in political punditry?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-ortega/jonah-goldbergs-prevoti_b_58660.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. It's the rich-boy wise-ass attitude

He's the kind of guy who takes the poll about banning "dihydrogen monoxide" to prove that he's intelligent and "street wise," and that everyone else is stupid.

The kind of guy who goes to the bookstore looking for Cliffs Notes on the music of Robert Johnson.

I'm sure he know exactly what he was doing, and will probably work it both ways to impress the mandarins he serves.

--p!

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. I believe there was a short story by Art Buchwald

In which a Black PhD tries to vote in the South, and is given a literacy test, involving Chinese writing and reading a passage in Hebrew, but flunks the test when he mispronounces a word in Hebrew, after he leaves a white voter is asked to spell cat.

[NI4NI]

3. another right-wing attempt to disinfranchise certain legal voters.

This article was discussed on C-Span WJ Tuesday.
One of the questions suggested in Goldberg's "civic test" "how many Senators represent each state"?
What does that have to do with how a voter considers a candidate.

BTW, is Goldberg the son of Linda "there's a blue dress" Tripp?