Quote:
Originally Posted by scryer
The latter .
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I was going to rudely invite you to be direct next time, but the friendliness of your smile emoji has disarmed me.
Nonetheless, adhering too blindly to the liberal notion of equality is naïve and problematic. Not only is a bad reading of history – in Canada, federally all women received suffrage before all men, aboriginals only received the right to vote in the 1960s; and in the US, completely ignoring slavery, states may not allow felons to vote – it’s also unscientific and destructive.
We are not ‘equal’ in our capacities or abilities, nor do we inherently deserve ‘equal’ participation on matters of material policy that affect the common good, especially when 35% of Canadian adults don’t care enough about their enfranchisement to exercise it. Moreover, imagine being the person who legitimately believes that the uneducated Boomer promoting climate denialism on Facebook should have an equal say on climate policy as would an active climate researcher with a doctorate. Completely baffling, that’s a policy rooted so outside of reason as to be seditious.
You mention class as though you might be a Marxist - very admirable - but if we accept liberalism as a suitable option for the future Canadian state then we would continue to accept merit in all aspects of our lives from our entertainment and educations options, to how we are employed, to who is selected for cabinet. Voting is a logical, reasonable extension of this paradigm. After all, what do public education and citizenship exams represent but a nod toward enfranchisement merit?
Ah, but surely in our post-modern world where the great, modern, ideological project of Liberalism has been consigned to the dustbin of history we alone should hamfist principle into a hypothetical direct democracy like a toddler who cannot align a square block with a round hole. Buddy, even the social justice identarians - those weak-kneed
Ressentiments - have abandoned ‘equality’ in favour of equity.