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Road Trip

The nation long ago removed such impediments to voting as property requirements, poll taxes and literacy tests. Perhaps we should add one: No one should be allowed to vote until he or she has driven across the country. ~George Will By the simple fact that essentially all of New York City would hereby be disqualified […]

The nation long ago removed such impediments to voting as property requirements, poll taxes and literacy tests. Perhaps we should add one: No one should be allowed to vote until he or she has driven across the country. ~George Will

By the simple fact that essentially all of New York City would hereby be disqualified from voting, I am all for it.  (I am still a little annoyed about my La Guardia experience.)  We flyover country folk would rule, while all the flyers from the coasts would be reduced to their geographically apt marginal political position.  However, this could create some potential problems, since it would mean that almost the entire electorate would be made up of truck drivers, itinerant graduate students, road tripping twentysomethings and hitchhikers.  This might create slightly skewed perspectives in its own way.  Actually, this would be a terrible idea, since it would not promote anything healthy in our politics and would definitely overemphasise the considerable nomadism, mobility and rootlessness in our society that are already terribly destructive of a healthy polity.  The best way for people to reacquaint themselves with regional variety is by turning off the dreadful television and cultivating some regional variety of their own.  Southerners could fight against the spread of the flat Midlander accent that creeps in over the television, while incomprehensible New Yorkers could create appreciation societies to preserve their baroque and strange accents.  New Mexicans could restore cockfighting to its rightful place as our national pastime, and make understanding of the “state question” a prerequisite for entry.  Anyone who did not know what a roadrunner looked like could be banned from ever setting foot on our beloved tierra amarilla.  Those who made Bugs Bunny references could be expelled from Albuquerque’s city limits. 

Incidentally, the very thing that Will seeks to encourage (appreciation of regional diversity in Americans) is going to be effectively destroyed by what the folks at Hotline call “Tsunami Tuesday” on February 5 next year.  Next year’s primaries will be the most nationalised, least region-specific primary season ever.  As such, they will probably end up producing the most blow-dried, cookie-cutter, homogenous candidates as the nominees.  Hey, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton do have a chance after all!

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