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My overall point, I think, was adequately well-stated with my first comment in this thread: America has been one of the freest countries in the world for 150 ye

My overall point, I think, was adequately well-stated with my first comment in this thread: America has been one of the freest countries in the world for 150 years. Your counterarguments seem to consist of, “so was Britain” (which is insufficient to refute my point) and “Britain didn’t disenfranchise based on race” (which is factually dubious when you consider colonization as well as insufficient in terms of proving that Britain was substantially freer than America as a whole). You also alluded to “lots of Western countries”, which is why I specifically broke down specific periods where many (most?) Western countries were not free within the past century. This is when you doubled down on the UK angle, which is a fair point but proves very little. You also claimed the UK enacted women’s suffrage before the US. I didn’t bother fact checking this at the time, but the US enacted full women’s suffrage eight years before the UK. > In 1928 the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act equalizing the franchise to all persons over the age of 21 on equal terms. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_Unit...) The US: > After a hard-fought series of votes in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920.[4] It states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_Unit...

foldr 7y ago
You're reading a lot of things into my original reply that just aren't there.
- philwelch 7y ago
  If so, it’s only because I was making the IMO generous assumption that your original reply was meant to actually refute my thesis that “ America has been one of the freest countries in the world for at least 150-some years.”, and CDSlice’s argument that “America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.” If you were intentionally making insufficient and hence irrelevant points, why wade into the thread in the first place? > I think there are lots of Western countries that have never had laws barring people from voting due to their race. This might technically be true, because many of those Western countries have taken the further step of abolishing democracy altogether. I hope you would agree that the various fascist and fascist-adjacent dictatorships of 20th century Europe were “even worse” than racial disenfranchisement. > E.g., there has never been any such law in the UK. The use of “e.g.” here implies that you’re discussing Western countries in general and not just the UK. Also, this point is rather fatuous for reasons I’ve already discussed. > Women in the UK also got the vote slightly earlier. This is false, as I’ve already discussed.
  - foldr 7y ago
    >If so, it’s only because I was making the IMO generous assumption that your original reply was meant to actually refute my thesis It wasn't. Note that I was not replying to your comment.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      You were responding—fatuously—to CDSlice’s comment that “America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.” Which is a restatement of my thesis.

foldr 7y ago

You're reading a lot of things into my original reply that just aren't there.

philwelch 7y ago
If so, it’s only because I was making the IMO generous assumption that your original reply was meant to actually refute my thesis that “ America has been one of the freest countries in the world for at least 150-some years.”, and CDSlice’s argument that “America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.” If you were intentionally making insufficient and hence irrelevant points, why wade into the thread in the first place? > I think there are lots of Western countries that have never had laws barring people from voting due to their race. This might technically be true, because many of those Western countries have taken the further step of abolishing democracy altogether. I hope you would agree that the various fascist and fascist-adjacent dictatorships of 20th century Europe were “even worse” than racial disenfranchisement. > E.g., there has never been any such law in the UK. The use of “e.g.” here implies that you’re discussing Western countries in general and not just the UK. Also, this point is rather fatuous for reasons I’ve already discussed. > Women in the UK also got the vote slightly earlier. This is false, as I’ve already discussed.
- foldr 7y ago
  >If so, it’s only because I was making the IMO generous assumption that your original reply was meant to actually refute my thesis It wasn't. Note that I was not replying to your comment.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    You were responding—fatuously—to CDSlice’s comment that “America could still be one of the freest countries in the last 150 years if most everyone else was even worse.” Which is a restatement of my thesis.