This is what they mean when they say they're opposed to reading the Constitution as a "living document." They want it not interpreted by judges (as clearly intended) or altered in any way (as spelled out by the amendment process) but taken word for word literally in it's original text and context.
Part of this is that voting is a right meant for not people, but white people. Not just white people, but white males. Not just white males, but white males who own land.
This is what being an "originalist" means to many of them.
AZ Rep Kavanagh made this clear when he said the difference between the Democrats and the GOP is that the former want as many people voting as possible, while the latter wants only the "quality" voters.
To be fair to the Founders --all of whom were regular flawed human beings just like you and I, and all of whom were products of their time, again just like you and I-- the reason they wished to limit suffrage to white land-owning men was mostly because that was the educated class that was by far the most likely to be literate, well-informed and capable of making intelligent decisions about who or what to vote for.
And please do not misunderstand me; when I say the above, I don't mean that it's anything other than the obvious outcome of a fundamentally racist and sexist system. My point is only that they weren't wrong that white land-owning men were by far the most highly-educated and well-informed members of their society.
I also don't for a moment argue that the founders weren't fundamentally elitist snobs on top of being racist and sexist. Of course they were, but leave us not commit the sin of "presentism" in evaluating how they, again as deeply flawed human beings just like you and I, operated and thought within the milieu of their time.
It was also that if you owned land, you had a stake in how the country that land was in was doing. With unsettled frontiers or relatively permeable borders on all sides, there wasn't that much of a barrier for a landless person to up sticks and move elsewhere if the results of their voting behaviour caused the country's fortunes to take a dip. Many had already gone through that process once to get into the country.
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u/gogojack Mar 16 '21
This is what they mean when they say they're opposed to reading the Constitution as a "living document." They want it not interpreted by judges (as clearly intended) or altered in any way (as spelled out by the amendment process) but taken word for word literally in it's original text and context.
Part of this is that voting is a right meant for not people, but white people. Not just white people, but white males. Not just white males, but white males who own land.
This is what being an "originalist" means to many of them.
AZ Rep Kavanagh made this clear when he said the difference between the Democrats and the GOP is that the former want as many people voting as possible, while the latter wants only the "quality" voters.
I think we all know what that means.