Who Should Vote

    There has been a lot of talk recently about Republicans advocating limitations on who can vote and what we as voters can vote about, mostly involving the repeal of the 17th Amendment.  The head of the Tea Party nation has what some would consider and even more radical and anachronistic view, that we should limit the right to vote to only those people who own property, as was the case during the infancy of our great Republic.  Here's the excerpt of his remarks, which came from here:

• Phillips said: "The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn't you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you're a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you're not a property owner, you know, I'm sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."

    Phillips is quite right that the Founding Fathers had such restrictions on voting but he misses a clear opportunity to shrink the size the government by still allowing some rent-seekers to have a vote and corrupt us with socialism.  What he should really be advocating is the elimination of individuals receiving money from  the government from voting.  Think about it, so long as these people are sucking at the teat of government welfare they will continue to support such programs, effectively transferring money from hard workers to lazy layabouts.  We shouldn't allow people on medicaid or welfare to vote because they're only going to support candidates who will keep these programs in place.  The same can be said about Seniors when dealing with Social Security and Medicare, both of which massively expand the size and role of government at the expense of freedom.  Furthermore, this would cut out all of those lazy farmers who receive subsidies to grow corn instead of just manning up and dealing with the realities of the market.  We could get rid of all those stinking Marxist college kids who receive Pell Grants or attend colleges that receive federal funding.  We'd be without all of those pesky doctors that receive medicare/medicaid reimbursement from hospitals.  Politicians would no longer be forced to cater to policemen, firefighters, librarians, teachers, and all those other government employees because they only care about extending their benefits or improving their wages.  We'd also have the happy fortune of denying politicians the right to vote because they'd only vote for themselves, further extending their control of American freedom.  Really, I'm disappointed in Nelson for missing a wonderful opportunity to take our country back from all of these godforsaken leaches.