by
Fred Reed

Recently
by Fred Reed:
Screwing the Troops

I have decided
to take the government of the United States in hand and put it on
a more practical footing. (Care from hand to foot is policy in this
column.) I say “more practical,” instead of “practical,”
because government always falls into the hands of the crafty, remorseless,
and unprincipled. Anyway, I undertake this emendation in a radiant
spirit of noblesse oblige. I am that sort of person.

To begin: The
country desperately needs to embrace an uncompromising elitism,
this being simply the belief that the better is preferable to the
worse. Somehow America has gotten this simple principle (if I may
employ the Latin phrase) bass-ackward. In the things of civilization,
we worship the lame, the halt, the dimwitted, and the proven unable.
How smart is this?

In correction,
I will first raise the voting age to thirty. The present practice
of allowing children of eighteen to wield the ballot is transparent
madness. The excessively young are callow, uninformed, and lacking
experience of the things they affect with the votes. Hormonal turbulence
and an eighth-grade education – about what a high-school diploma
is worth these days – do not recommend them as fit to stir the
pots of governance. If you are parent to teenagers, you will see
the unwisdom of letting our tender sprouts decide anything beyond
their choice of godawful music.

When the Teen-Vote
Amendment was being pondered, the argument was made that since eighteen
years was sufficient to die in Vietnam, it was sufficient for suffrage.
This is like saying that because a five-year-old can die in a traffic
accident, he should have a driverÂ’s license. Youth is a serviceable
substitute for stupidity. We regularly outgrow youth and, occasionally,
stupidity. We should give future voters the chance.

By the age
of thirty, most people have experience of life as it is actually
lived, perhaps of parenthood, of making a living and of the shocks
the flesh is heir to. I grant that my laudable policy runs against
the cult of brainless youth which is thought the apotheosis of democracy.
Good. This opposition constitutes near-perfect proof of its advisability.
As a rule, any idea that you cannot utter without losing your job
is a good idea.

My second contribution
to enlightened government will be to reinstate the literacy test
as a requirement for voting. It is not evident why an inability
to read qualifies one to influence policy regarding, war, schooling,
and the intricacies of national finance. The situation is dire.
In Detroit, for example, the rate of functional illiteracy has been
measured at some fifty percent. If half of the population cannot
read at all, most of the rest donÂ’t read much. In most cases
this will mean never having willingly read a book. I donÂ’t
want these running a country. Or a car wash.

The objection
will be raised that to require literacy will be to disenfranchise
various minorities. The solution is for the various minorities to
learn to read.

However, in
my humble (but infallible) opinion, the bare ability to read is
hardly grounds for participation in government. For that matter,
neither is the possession of an alleged college education. Survey
after survey has shown that, with exceptions to be sure, college
graduates do not know in what century the Civil War was fought or
what countries engaged in World War One, cannot name the three departments
of the federal government, list three cities in Mexico, or find
Japan, or for that matter Africa, on an outline map of the world.
The universities in America have become a profitable fraud, and
should be prosecuted under the RICO act. (I will consider this happy
prospect in a future column.)

My solution
to this measureless ignorance will be to require potential voters
to sit for the Graduate Record Exam and score modestly on it. Why
is it thought that people who hardly know what they are voting about
will do it wisely? I repeatedly see that about half of the public
believes that Iraq was responsible for dropping those buildings
in New York. Here we have categorical proof that half the population
should not be allowed within rifle shot of a voting booth.

Actually, while
spilling forth these my luminous policies, the thought comes that
it might be reasonable to limit the franchise of those of IQ 130
or higher: roughly Mensa intelligence, the top two percent. This
will outrage those of us who do not meet this standard. But why?
If I need brain surgery, I want it done by someone who can do it
better than I could do it myself. Why should this principle not
apply to government? Do we not hire plumbers because they plumb
better than we do?

Registration
of voters by IQ strikes me as a good idea if only for its value
as amusement. Think what it would do for campaigns. No longer would
election be possible by orating endlessly of The American People,
and The American Dream, twelve times per teleprompter screen. I
love to imagine: “Yes, Mr. Bush. You are against evil, doubtless
because it is a very short word. But what consequences do you see
of de-Baathification in light of the doctrinal divides of the eighth
century?”

Now, the US
being a profoundly anti-intellectual society, my admirable plan
will be objected to on grounds that Americans donÂ’t want to
be ruled by pointy-headed intellectuals at Harvard. Let us think
about this. An intellectual is one who deals in ideas. He is not
necessarily of high intelligence, nor necessarily right. The majority
of the highly intelligent arenÂ’t intellectuals, and they are
not clustered in ivory towers. They are doctors, engineers, scientists,
soldiers, and businessmen. They are geographically dispersed and
politically all over the map. And they would be a hell of a lot
harder to herd by the imbecile-ranchers and con men of Washington.

Of course the
distaste for intellectuals means distaste only for those intellectuals
with whom one disagrees. Conservatives love Rush Limbaugh and detest
Rachel Madow, while liberals take exactly the opposite position.
Both Limbaugh and Madow are intellectuals.

However, a
major current in American political life is resentment of oneÂ’s
superiors. It isnÂ’t universal, but itÂ’s there. Thus the
whole edifice of fiat egalitarianism: the insistence that all children
should go to college when most havenÂ’t the brains, putting
students in advanced-placement courses on grounds of race and sex
instead of ability, the desire to abolish grades, the insistence
that intelligence doesnÂ’t exist and that all people and groups
have the same amount of it. Me, IÂ’m happy to let those smarter
than I am invent things for me. If the world had waited for me to
come up with Newtonian mechanics, it would still be waiting.

There you have
my plans. I expect outpourings of gratitude from a nation jubilant
at its deliverance. These can take the form of large checks. IÂ’d
like a Maserati, too.

April
18, 2013

Fred Reed
is author of Nekkid
in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well, A
Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be, Curmudgeing
Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle, Au
Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About Viet
Nam, and A
Grand Adventure: Wisdom’s Price-Along with Bits and Pieces about
Mexico. Visit his
blog.

Copyright
© 2013 Fred Reed