disgusting

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/opinion/12mon1.html?ex=1127188800&en=ac87280ce4645610&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Many historians (ironically, usually from the U.S.) argue that history has been a gradual process towards the best possible government. That form of government, naturally, "is" democracy (our own republic notwithstanding).
By upstreaming (starting at the finishing point and working backwards, or "reading" history from the end to the beginning) it has seemed natural that history has developed solely to present the government of freedom such as that now held by the U.S.
Of course, saying we have freedom is nothing but a pop culture myth. If you do not hold a centrist view then you do not have the freedom to hold and express your views, whether you are from the right or the left. If you are an atheist, you do not have the right to bring your "personal morality" into the public political realm. To do so is to inflict your personal beliefs on others. If your morality is sourced in God, that too you do not have the right to bring into the public realm. To do so is to inflict your personal beliefs on others.
In other words, the "freedom" that exists is perceived to be boundless and in actuality very limited freedom at the whim of whomever is in power. The greatest freedom is perhaps the ability to form coalitions that can push your agenda. And believe it or not, no matter who you are or what your agenda, you, by pushing it, are hurting someone.
From time to time one party or the other has manipulated who could vote according to how it helped them. A frequent victim of this (in the U.S.) has been the black community. The Democrats fought hard to keep the black voice from being heard while still gaining the benefits of them as population prior to the Civil War (remember the 3/5ths Compromise? Do you truly know what that meant?) Then they demanded, and the Republicans gave, the end of black civil rights and Reconstruction in order for Hays to gain the Presidency.
The Tammany Hall shenanigans of NY are well known and documented. The 30s and 40s saw both parties enact various measures meant to limit or eliminate the black vote. Then the great Civil Rights wars of the 50s and 60s saw some of the most extreme abuses all over the place...and, like the 1940 election, not always by whom you would suspect (http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/40a01.htm)
For instance, it has always been part of our national narrative that it was Republicans fighting against Civil Rights. Anybody remember Governor George Wallace?
That is what makes the article referenced at the top so sad. The Republican Party in Georgia is taking a position that they have not often taken in the past. The parties seem to be in the midst of another of the sometimes slow and subtle, sometimes rapid switches on various positions. Just as the Republicans led the Civil Rights charge in the 60s...the 1860s, that is...and for much of the 1900s until the Democrats...at least on a National scale under Johnson...co-opted that stand and the votes with it. (I know many people would argue Kennedy...those people have not studied his record as closely as they might. He spent much more time on international matters and in fact accomplished little if anything on the CR front)
While in some ways Nixon was good on Civil Rights (Vine Deloria Jr. once referred to him as "the best administration for Indians the U.S. has had since Washington"), for the most part from the mid to late 60s the Democrats have been viewed as the proponents and the Republicans as the opponents of Civil Rights, a direct reversal of the previous hundred years history.
Here is a question; Why has one party always been "for" and another "against"? Even more telling, where are the people rising above their party affiliation to do what is right for people, not right for party people?
The stated intention of the Republicans in Georgia, to prevent fraud, are certainly noble. And, if they prevented voting fraud, it would be the first time in this country since...what...the election of Washington, something NOTHING could have prevented?
But they are going about it the wrong way and no mistake. This same method has been tried repeatedly in this country, England, and other portions of Europe. And whatever the real purposes, which can be debated, the real results cannot; poor people are told what they want since they can't afford to vote and therefore cannot say what they want.
Regardless of who is doing the real disenfranchisement of poor people (and it has repeatedly been done by both parties), it is a shameful thing. And regardless of your personal party affiliation (or, like me, lack thereof precisely because both parties suck so bad), every decent person has a responsibility to speak out against the wrong.