{"id":284110,"date":"2010-02-05T21:01:07","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T02:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=65392"},"modified":"2010-02-05T21:01:07","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T02:01:07","slug":"be-careful-what-you-wish-for-mr-tancredo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/284110","title":{"rendered":"Be Careful What You Wish For, Mr. Tancredo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tom Tancredo has put his sweaty nativist finger squarely on The Problem With Democracy Today:<\/a><\/p>\n

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And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country.<\/strong> People who could not even spell the word “vote,” or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Granted, everything after that first sentence is insane racist gibberish<\/a>, but aside from that, perhaps he has a point.\u00a0 Would it really be such a terrible idea to administer some sort of test to ensure that only people with at least a passing acquaintance with reality can vote for the government officials who have such a huge impact on our lives?<\/p>\n

Here, I’ll throw out some possible sample questions to get the ball rolling:<\/p>\n

1) Was Saddam Hussein responsible for 9\/11?<\/p>\n

2) At the time of the invasion, did Iraq possess weapons of mass destruction?<\/p>\n

3) At the time of the invasion, was Saddam Hussein harboring al Qaeda in the regions under his direct control?<\/p>\n

4) Were there any successful terrorist attacks on the United States between 9\/11\/01 and 1\/20\/09?<\/p>\n

5) Was Barack Obama born in the United States?<\/p>\n

6) Is Barack Obama a Christian or a Muslim?<\/p>\n

7) Is Barack Obama a committed socialist ideologue?<\/p>\n

8) Does Barack Obama hate white people?<\/p>\n

9) Does Barack Obama want to kill your grandmother?<\/p>\n

10) Is liberalism a form of fascism?<\/p>\n

11) Do tax cuts increase or decrease government revenue?<\/p>\n

12) Is Medicare a government program?<\/p>\n

13) Is homosexuality a lifestyle choice?\u00a0 Is it contagious?<\/p>\n

14) Are all gay people pedophiles and\/or “recruiters” for the gay lifestyle?<\/p>\n

15) Is abstinence-only sex education more effective at preventing teen pregnancies and STDs than comprehensive sex education with a pro-abstinence message?<\/p>\n

16) Is the Earth thousands of years old, or billions of years old?<\/p>\n

17) Did life on Earth evolve naturally, or was it created as is?<\/p>\n

18) Are human carbon emissions causing global climate change?<\/p>\n

19) Do scientists and academics contribute anything useful to society?<\/p>\n

20) Is individual voter fraud a widespread epidemic that is distorting our electoral process?<\/p>\n

It’s true that many of these questions would have the entirely incidental and unintended<\/em> effect of disproportionately disenfranchising conservative and Republican voters<\/a>, but doesn’t that seem like a small price to pay for an electorate that makes rational and well-informed decisions about who should run the country?<\/p>\n

\"Share <\/a>\n<\/p>\n


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Tom Tancredo has put his sweaty nativist finger squarely on The Problem With Democracy Today: And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word “vote,” or say it in English, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}