February 18. - Theories of Democracy

Where did I leave off last time? My mind is blank in here. Did I finish up on words and federal, confederal, unitary? Then I talked about parliamentary and presidential systems, but I did not start democracy right? I always distrust the memory, which is the first thing to go. I can remember, finally, the interface sheet. A little chart on democracy that I would like to talk to you about a bit. I would like to tell you this right away. Oh, I saw some eyes which means some of you are paying attention. 90% of you are going to screw up on the exam even though I tell you this, so pay attention. I don't know why I have to say this, but I do. I try to get you as good a grade as possible. I'd love you all to get good grades. It makes me feel good to be happy. You never are happy when you flunk. There are some of you who were convinced you're failures and I've said that before. There are certain things you learn about taking commands. Certain things you learn about doing any kind of course. Some people do it naturally. Others simply don't know how to do it. Maybe it has to do with intelligence. I'm not convinced it does. Years back when I first started this -- I don't know how many years it's been now -- I put a question on the exam and I said to the student, well, why didn't you use the chart in your head that you learned from the chart? And she said, but I didn't use it because you didn't ask me conditions of a
democratic government. And I thought for a second and I realized how anal retentive students can get. If you don't ask it the way the words are, they don't know how to synthesize sometimes. The point is that being a good student means the realization that materials you've gotten from other sources can be used if you think about them. They don't have to have the exact wording.

What I'm actually saying here is that if on the mid-term exam the word democracy appears on the essay question, this chart is usable. It doesn't matter what the hell is the question. I don't mean you take it out of your book. I don't mean you have to memorize it. I mean the concepts in the chart are usable and if you study and you study the chart, then you should be able to use it and what's the chance the word democracy will appear? Probably 80% on one of two questions on the mid term because it is a major section in this course. It may not, however. The fact that I am giving you an outline of the conditions of a democratic government almost any question I asked you pertaining to democracy could be usable.

Somebody want to give me a fast question or do I have to do that? Anybody want to ask a question pertaining to democracy? What are some of the principles and practices of democracy? That's listed there, so you can take that and of course that's direct. I'm thinking words that aren't quite as direct. For instance, do you believe in democracy? Explain. Yes, no, or maybe. How would you use this chart with that question, do you believe in democracy? Some of the benefits we get from it? Where is there a benefit from it? On the right column. Right to vote. Why is that a benefit? Because we have a choice. Some dictators would think it was not right, right? Because you have a choice. Do you believe in democracy? Well, I have a choice. Do you believe in democracy? I mean it's usable but it will be usable near the end of the essay. How would you use this chart? What are your reasons for believing in democracy? Does that appear in the chart? I believe in democracy. I believe in people. To believe in democracy is to believe in people. I also believe that since we're dealing with democracy we must understand that to have involvement and that means majority rule, but you can't ignore the minority so therefore you have to give them rights. I also believe in democracy because -- you can't have it. Or I don't believe in democracy because I don't believe any government can weight people's positions. They're going to rise to -- . Everybody's position isn't going to be weighted equally. It's not hard, really. Okay? If you're willing to go, I don't know the step of anal retentiveness. Looking for exact words. Following me? Scary? Of course. Any exam is, but that's what I'm saying this chart gives you the -- okay let's take another one.

Do you think the United States is a democracy? How would you use this chart? Maybe talk about the principles, saying how about the U.S. enforces those principles. The U.S. allows for active consent and so it enforces active consent and how? By promoting the right to vote. It allows you freedom of expression and the right can't exist unless you formulate your -- and therefore I can formulate my preferences when I have alternative sources of information. Now if I can do it that fast, granted, sure I've been around long -- but there's no reason why you can't. You start in the right direction. You see, it makes it a lot easier then simply -- now, I don't believe the United States is a democracy, why? Because in the United States I'm not allowed to signify my preferences, but if I want to watch child pornography I'm going to be busted. Or my principle isn't equally weighted.

As long as you have the chart, there isn't a right or wrong answer as far as your belief is concerned, but there is a right or wrong approach as far as the ability to show me something that has been involved in the courses, okay? Any questions then? And what I just did in dealing with the chart was show you how the chart reads and how things can be tied together. I specifically did that with active consent by talking about formulating preferences and tying it over to alternative sources of information. Which are really practices of a democratic government.

Another question. What are the practices of the democratic government that appear in this chart? What are they? process -- the word practice isn't there. I just told you one. Alternative source of information. Freedom of the press. Freedom of expression which refers to freedom of speech. A practice of the democratic government allow people to vote and run for office. Those are specific actions that you will expect from a democratic government. So, keep this chart in mind.

What sometimes happens which is just as bad as not keeping the chart in mind is people had heard me say that you can use your chart. So they go home and figure I'm going to get an A on the exam and memorize the chart and then I ask a question on democracy and they put the chart down, but they never answer the question. So they regurgitate the chart. See a question that doesn't ask about democracy, so they just put the chart in. Again, part of answering and getting a grade is the ability to synthesize the material. Make sure of the best way possible by analyzing, by critical thinking. You learn that, and this is part of being freshman or sophomore in college as the years go on you improve your grades dramatically. Hopefully they should have been taught to you since kindergarten you had not been required to critically think or analyze and therefore synthesize material. You haven't been asked to put it together. You've been asked to regurgitate at some of our private schools. They don't want you to think. They want you to be able to do your mathematical problems, but as long as you don't create conflicts in the school and wear their uniforms everybody either sits there calmly or they give them Ritalin and nobody has an opportunity to be different.

We lose the whole basis of what American education is with. Individuality. Creativity and all of that is a democracy. Because without you don't have democracy and if it -- I am a firm believer in democracy. If I were asked what my point of view is, what kind of government I support, the answer is really simple, a democratic government. Almost everybody in the world says they support democracy. Saddam Hussein supports democracy. Khadaffi supports democracy.
Who doesn't? However, the real issue is are they really supporting democracy? First we need to ask if they're saying they support it? What is democracy? The answer is very simple. Government of the people. So if you support the democracy, who do you have to believe in? People. Okay if you say people are shits, then it will be very difficult for you to be able to support democracy. You could say people are shits, but they're soon going to be non-shits, But -- is there a word for non-shit? That's terrible. We have to have a good word. See, we have all these negative words. I want a positive word. That's bad. And at that point, you can believe in democracy coming. It's going to be here once we educate people or give them a better life. So you can still believe in democracy.

The real question comes down to if I believe in people. Who were the people? Very easy to say I believe in people, but you can kill your whole sense of democracy by defining people differently then people being everywhere. To me, which may be more radical, people are the whole species like, Koko is not a person. Whose Koko? She's the guerrilla that speaks about 3,000 words in sign. Uses the American sign language. She thinks they analyzes, but I'm not sure she's people. She does it at a third grade -- about a 3-year-old level. Are 4-year olds people? Well, they're potential people. I'm not sure they're full people yet. They're individuals. They certainly are individuals. They're becoming what we would call people.

I taught in the South, I think I told you that. It was an upper division university which was a senior college. You have heard of senior colleges, but most people have not heard of senior colleges. Translation, we only had juniors, seniors and graduate students. We didn't have freshman and sophomores. It was definitely a different system. I'm not sure I liked it. I think a community college serves a purpose. Translation, again for those that aren't -- which would be difficult is junior college's philosophy is that you're preparing people for a senior college. Which means that you do only the academic subjects and then they go on to a regular 4-year school. I think although there's a lot lost there, you lose a lot of the activities of a 4-year education and I think those 4 years of interacting with students of the diversity programs you can take academically has a benefit, but obviously the community college offers not just transfer programs, but other kinds of opportunities and again, the benefit in California is it's cheap.' Comparatively. It used to be free. $12 a unit is still cheaper and it gives people a chance to try it out. But something is lost by not going to a 4-year school. Although granted again most 2-year schools have better structures. So for the basic courses they do serve a purpose. Anybody that's gone to a 4-year school you're lucky if you ever see a professor. Most of the time they have graduates assistants and they have these massive courses.

Well this course has 1200 people in it in one big lecture hall, in an auditorium, the professor lectures with a microphone and then they breakdown into smaller groups of 30 with teaching assistants. So there's something definitely lost and you might be lucky and get a good teaching assistant. Most of the professors themselves don't want to teach anyway. They make their money through research. And I did teach at universities, so I know the number of professors who could care less about students. Well, in any case, we had graduate students as well and I had this assistant principle who had his degree, therefore, and wanted to do graduate work in Masters degrees and I don't know how we got off the conversation, but we were talking about Brazil and I rambled on as you already know and I started about how in Brazil when they deal with race, they're consent of race is different than the United States. In this country if you're a mixture of white and black, you're called black. In fact, in this country you've got probably 20% black blood, you're black. We don't use words like mulatto or various distinctions in Brazil. If you're half white and half black, you can call yourself white. Now it's logical, okay. Why not? If you're half black, why can you call yourself white? Because our country forces people into a category. Brazil also has 16 different words for mixture of color and so you don't have the heavy prejudice as we have. I was rambling about this and he looked at me very upset and he said, you know, for every degree of white blood, a black's intelligence goes up one percent. Blacks are no higher on the evolutionary scale than orangutans.

Well, you have to understand that this is still the South and this is 30 years ago. How has it changed? Well, if you've been following the newspaper story about how they dragged that guy and hung the guy up and all this other stuff that goes on in places in the South and the guy's got tattoos on his body. I mean, the KKK is still fairly active and still racial hatred and prejudice that exists in there and this is different than the upper classes who keep it covered until -- like this guy because he was the principal. Well I know from long years of experience as most of you do that you don't change somebody merely by telling them you're full of crap. In fact, you can't reason with a racist. You'd be stupid to try and show them that their hate or prejudice is misguided. So in those kind of situations my approach is to ridicule the person. Just for the hell of it so I feel better because I don't know what else to do. I'm not going to scream and yell at their stupidity because I'm not going to. But I'm going to make them feel like a fool, but I'll feel better in the long run, so I got to feel better and I looked at him and I said, if you shave an orangutan they're actually white underneath. So they're probably close to the -- whites are probably closer to the orangutan than blacks. He gave me this -- you know, look and I don't stop with just one, you know. And I said besides that, orangutans are furry and hairy and so are whites. Blacks have less hair. They don't need to shave as much. So obviously whites are, not the blacks. And then I went on and I said, you know, and when a black baby is born they're white and then they become black which means that God preferred the black to the white. He created the white and then he wasn't perfect, so he created them black. Guys going nuts but the -- and this is true and I don't know why -- many southern racists have this feeling that you can tell somebody with black blood by looking at their fingernails.

This is real strange. If there's a blue tint, and don't go looking. If there's a blue tint around your fingernail they believe you've got black blood. Remember the Mark Twain story? Where he found out that it was male because he put his legs together rather than spread them apart wearing a dress? What story was that from? Was it Huck Finn? Little difference that comes through. It's got nothing to do with genetics. Do not get me wrong. It's called conditioning. He stormed out of my office, went to the principal of the college president and attempted to get me fired as this weird carpet bagger from New York. They finally fired me a few years later. I wonder if they evolved a little bit in the South? I mean, it's interesting because also the argument that you can't legislate values and when I got to the South they had just integrated Pensacola Florida which was really South Alabama and attitudes are so different that it was interesting to watch you're not going to change them through legislation they say but the school was becoming integrated and it was called Washington High School. But it was not George Washington, but Booker T. Washington and this white kid who's the son of the Realtor that we're buying the house from was all upset that this year he was going to go to a black school which by the way they got rid of the Booker T. and now named Washington at that point. So it wasn't the whites wouldn't feel bad about going to a school named Washington and his father, well, that's the way the law is'. Just accept it. It will be fine. You understand those people who have kids at -- your kids are going to go to Irvington. You're stuck with it and those that don't know what the hell I'm talking about, you're not following the Fremont controversy. So, it was interesting to see his reaction. I don't like it, but I'm going to accept it.

Translation? Many people become involve by having things forced onto them and over the years they change. It's an -- a friend of mine called it action psychology. You change your behavior, you change your values, true your actions, and I think that does, but it's tough to change Alabama. Alabama is Alabama they still have in their constitution that women couldn't vote in Alabama. Did I tell you about that? It's still in the Alabama constitution. Now obviously under the Article 6 of the Constitution, federal law supersedes state law. But they never bothered to change their constitution and coming to school yesterday, I'm listening to the radio, and Alabama is in another big dispute. They have banned the sale of massage units. Did I talk about that? Did anybody know why they banned the sale of massage units? Because women use them as sex toys and they don't want women using them as sex toys. I wish I were joking, but I am dead serious. Would you ever have thought of that? But then would you thought that Donald Duck was obscene because he wasn't wearing pants? This is Alabama. The ACLU is arguing that it is sexism. Because if men can get Viaga, then the women should be able to get something to get pleasure too. And this was on the news and I'm cracking up. This is why I like
listening to the news. I mean, it is fun and I am not joking. Only in Alabama.

So the South is different. It literally and -- any of you ever lived in the south at all? How long? 3 years? Where'd you live? North Carolina. Okay so you experienced? Oh, yeah. I got thrown out of a store. Did you actually? Yeah. They didn't serve to my kind, and I said what kind is that? They said they wouldn't serve to that kind? Just a regular store. Just general store? Yeah. So there's an answer.

So, defining people is a big part of the democracy. The first democratic society that we know of historically was where? In Athens, Greece. Greece was made up if cities in ancient history and Athens is usually what city state in Greece? It was not democratic. Sparta. In our history books Sparta being tied to totalitarianism and Athens to democracy. In Athens, which we call a democracy, to have all physical and social and political rights you have had to be male over the age of 20 and a citizen. Aliens could never become citizens and I'm not talking E.T. here. By the way, Japan had that policy for a long long time and they still have people who live there for a hundred years for reasons are not given full rights. Some of the pressures going on. So it's not too unusual. The United States is fairly relaxed compared to some countries citizenship policy. You have to be a resident for 7 years however because they're so backlogged with people applying for citizenship, it pretty well takes 9 years to get through it. A pretty extensive written test now they gave you an eight question. Yeah it's just a hundred questions they have. But you didn't have to take the written test did you? They just pull you in and -- no, just an interview. That's it. It's a basic interview now. So, although I think it will be easier to just take the test.

In any case, in Athens, women were secluded, parts of Greece they still are. They had no rights to speak of. Except interestingly, the prostitutes. Well, you know one of the reasons the women's movement, feminism, identifies with prostitution is that it has been historically a liberating factor for women despite the fact that in our society we see it as oppressive because it's being abused by pimps and drugs and things of that nature which has happened here, but historically, the identity of a person who could make their own choice which dates back to Lillith. Where'd you hear of that? A woman spirituality class. At Moreau High School. That's interesting. My attitude towards Moreau just grew a lot, but the fact that they could have a spirituality class for women sounds great. I see those nuns. You got to watch them, boy, you got to watch them getting their ways through this.

In mythology, going back thousands of years, Lillith -in Jewish and Christian mythology as the original woman in the Bible. If you know the Bible, you know that there are two segments to the first part of Genesis that God creates woman God create then and then man and woman and then the second part where he creates women out of Adam's rib. There's always been a question as to why the first equality and the second inequality. Someway off the subject, it's just a further explanation as to the creation and therefore was carrying it through. However, mythology indicates that upon the creation, the first woman was Lillith and she's considered herself equal and she wanted at times just found on top not just always on the bottom and Adam was upset he didn't like somebody having equal to him so he begged God to create another partner and get rid of Lillith. So she was expelled from the Garden of Eden even before the serpent and then Eve is created for a submissive female who could be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Where Lillith which he would go around and take man's seed especially which was identified in young men with wet dreams. The reason they had the dream was because Lillith was doing things to him to get their seed and then creates these demons. But they could do and whatever she want to and lives through life as the independent person. The independent female who did not have to depend upon men. The prostitute, the lesbian, the woman who raised her kids by herself who was not dominated. Who ruled herself. And channel 44 tonight if you're interested has a show where women rule the world and the men are going to repel, you know, men's fantasy. I guess somebody wrote this stupid movie.

So, Lillith and the mythology of her which is thousands of years old first revised by the feminist movement and there are many books on Lillith identifying the independent unique female. Which is not controlled dominated by the power physical power in the male. Now I'll go on with my other stories as long as this was identify to me the other day in part. I made a comment the other day joking around that if the homosexuals inherit the earth we won't have the earth because there wouldn't be any children. Well we need to make it absolutely clear that homosexuals have kids. Okay, and as I was saying, I used to run a gym and I had a woman who was a lesbian nationalist. She believes in creating a lesbian country. She used to joke about it and beating up on men just for the hell of it. But she decided she wanted to bear a child and hope to make it a female child, but it didn't matter, and she would not have sex with a male and so she used a turkey baster to put the male sperm to create the child which she did just bear. There is a sperm bank in Berkeley for homosexuals. So I want to identify the fact that the Lillith does exist and certainly reflects on again the oppression and the reaction to oppression that men have created historically and Greece underlies that specific oppression.

It was Plato who said that men are for love and women are for bearing babies. Now he was not talking sexual love. Okay? We're not talking quote unquote the Greek way. What we are referring to is the word fila. Greeks have more than one word for love. In America, we have one word. Love means rape, it means sex, it means Valentine's day. I love you. I made love. We don't know how to distinguish between various forms of love. Which sort of creates certain problems in our attitudes.

In Greece, among the words for love are Eros. Eros and then there is fila which is brotherly or sisterly love. But the brotherly love certainly. Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love. And then the word that the Christians have adapted agape Which is the Greek word for different word for love. That's sort of a spiritual love you love all people because they are human. Agape. You have to love people. Gee, I tied that together somehow. I also amaze myself. Absolutely. In Greece, women were secluded. Weren't even allowed to sit at the dinner table when men got together. Of course we still do that, but then they go in the kitchen and do the dishes while we sit around afterwards, right? Slavery, existed. And slaves were not a part of the society. They had certain legal rights, but they were not part of the society and therefore generally not people. So if we've got a society that segregates people by age, and women, then we don't really have a democracy because we are not allowing them based upon the fact they're not real people. And obviously we know in our own country historically we have had periods of time when we call ourselves democratic and we certainly did not recognize all people. It's only been in recent years that- at least under the law that- almost all people are people and when I say people I'm talking about members of the species. We know that about slavery in this country. When the blacks were first brought over from Africa, they were allowed to get their independence. They were allowed to become freed by buying their way out and they actually owned other slaves, but that was within the first 50 years of our colonies.

Then in the South, it was determined that no black person would be free because they were inferior. They weren't real people. In 1783 during our right at the end of our war. The Massachusetts legislature banned slavery under the principle of their constitution and the principle of our concept in America and their interpretation that all men are created equal. Slavery, was banned because blacks were men they said. In the South they simply continued slavery with the stipulation that slaves were not men. That they were both of burden in a sense and therefore could not be free. If they're not equal because they're not humans it's like having sex with sheep. It just happens that they produce things, but they're no better than having animals as your sexual partner and accidentally bearing babies. Which obviously Thomas Jefferson did. As did many southern race plantation owners .

I didn't realize the mixture of African American blacks until I went to Jamaica. The island where everybody was the same color. Blacks all looked pretty much the same tint, but in this country we have so many variations and gradations and, you know, as we sit in the class the other day and the Irish and the African American says that she's got Irish blood in her. We forget how mixed our society is and it's an approach and yet once again historically we said they were not people. Slavery was finally ended after the civil war. However, we created in the south especially Jim Crow laws which prevented the freed slaves from fully participating in our societies. There were those that fought for equality and in 1911 the National Association of Colored People was formed. NAACP was formed.

However, once again very little was accomplished. One of the most viciously racist films produced 1919 called The Birth of a Nation. Glorified the Ku Klux Klan. People continued this attitude right through World War II. There were some minor acts, but very little because the south elected democratic senators who prevented any legislation through the filibuster they would talk it to death any changes. The first action, if you will, that began some integration in society was in 1988 (that's the year he said) when president Harry Truman himself once a clan member back in the twenties,
Harry Truman, ordered the integration of the military. Most of you have at least some knowledge of that explosion that took place in Concord where black soldiers and black civilians were used for loading ships and they refused to go after many of them were killed in an explosion and that's still in the news again because there's still some question about Port Chicago, right? Whether it should be overturned and it was in the news just a couple of weeks ago during World War II. And those black units all black had white officers. 1948, that's fifty years ago. That's not a long time, historically. I mean, it is in your lives but not a long time historically. By the way, the military high command said that there would be no way that black military would work. It would fall apart. That the people would not work together not talk together and most of all no white man would want to shower with a black man. They didn't want to feel inferior. I don't know what the story is.

You hear the same argument today about gays in the military. However when Clinton went forth and they said we don't want to shower with gays. Or women in the military in combat basis Clinton did not stand up; he backed down. He wasn't the Harry Truman where the buck stops -- okay. The 1950's saw some minor legislation, but saw demonstrations. Finally, people began to support once again the abolitionist cause ending of slavery. In a different way for black people to change the law. The hero of the period was a woman named Rosa Parks who appeared at the democratic convention who refused to get up. She was just too tired to go to the back of the bus and of course the cause was picked up by a man who just sort of celebrated -- Martin Luther King. The name that rings in our history. Yet, it wasn't until 1964 and '65 that we've got during the great society of Lyndon Johnson real civil rights legislation. The civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 finally banned inequality in this country.

I skipped the -- Brown v Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. We mentioned Brown before, but let me review it. The Supreme Court took a major step in overturning segregation. Specifically, in the schools in this decision. Actually, in 1896, in a Supreme Court case, Plessy v Ferguson. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal. That you could separate the black from the white race in the United States as long as you provided equal facilities. If you had equal facilities you could segregate. In Brown v the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, the court ruled that in 1944 that segregated facilities that unequal -- because you created a stigma even if the facilities weren't inferior and ordered with all deliberate speed the integration of the schools. I mentioned that in 1969 1 lived in the south and they were just integrating the schools. That's 15 years later. It was all a very very slow process. With various court ruling and interpretations.

I doubt if there are many laws in this country today, if any, that permit segregation. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist and people won't kick you out of their business or store or won't rent an apartment to you. But it's against the law. Up until that time the law supported inequality. Example; the blacks aren't people. Today the law says that all blacks are people. Even if in some situations they're not treated as people be it at Dennys or be it at Marshals where we've had problems in recent years.

Abigail Adams, wife of the later president John Adams our second president, strongly advocated to Thomas Jefferson and her house that women be given the vote in the Constitution. They said no way. The first state to give the vote to women was in the 1850s. Does anybody know what state that was? Wyoming. Yeah, strange. Wyoming has taken the lead in a lot of the different ways maybe because all they had were horses and so they weren't concerned about women. I'm not sure. I haven't figured out why Wyoming.

In 1848, the first women's rights conference was held. we didn't have a major celebration in this country. We probably should have. It was mentioned among feminists but I didn't see any stamps coming out. The first women's rights was held at Seneca Falls, New York where women got together with men, you know. Their supporters. They're weak. Who advocated women's rights especially the right to vote? However, the women soon lost the activity as they became involved with the abolitionist movement. However, after the Civil War, women got heavily involved again in the movement to vote called the suffrage. They were active in pushing for prohibition. What's prohibition? The banning of alcohol. Why were women so big in moving for prohibition? Because they are getting beat up by men who were drinking and, more so, was the fact that men would get a paycheck and by the time they got home there was no money left because they drank it away and the woman would be stuck whatever with no funds for food and so woman very much
supported the prohibition.

It wasn't until 1920 that women were given the right to vote and prohibition instituted. Although an experiment that failed. Some would argue that a women's right to vote failed. The good looking guy with the better tie. You still hear that among some assholes. When Dan Quayle who has announced he's running for president. Dan Quayle was chosen to run for vice president with Bush because the republican party was convinced that they had to get women to vote for them because women had been voting for higher percentage for the democrats than men had been and since Dan Quayle was good looking they felt women would vote. Well of course what the republicans didn't understand is that women can tell a male bimbo as easily as men can. It's still fun to watch, but you don't necessarily vote for them.

In 1923, women convinced a number of legislators to introduce a constitutional amendment which gives women equal rights. It was defeated. At the end of the 1960s they also introduce what has become known as the Equal Rights Amendment. The Equal Rights Amendment went through 35 of the 38 states necessary, but it never got the other three states. It had a deadline on it and by the end of the 1970s, a woman's right amendment to the constitution was defeated. However, many people argued perhaps correctly that the laws that were passed and the judges in ruling on those
laws were able to use what we already have in the Constitution to guarantee women equals right. Their arguments was very simple. We don't trust you. Just the same argument that was done with the Bill of Rights.

The reason the Bill of Rights was introduced was because people said we don't trust government. We want to be sure that our rights are spelled out. We want to see them spelled out. Women same thing and still, the argument prevailed. Number one, we don't need another amendment. It's there and number two, many people felt that if you get an equal rights amendment that would take away protection from women and they will have to go in the military and have to be fighting and if women go fighting in the military obviously it's going to be tougher for men because they're going to be interested in the woman than protecting their lovers. I don't know any man who's going to think of sex then being killed. In fact, because in Sparta, they made sure that male lovers were put in the same fox holes because they knew they would fight harder for each other, watch each others back. No pun intended.

The one that was most exciting to me - the biggest argument was that if the women's equal rights amendment passed - if the women's equal rights amendment passed, they would have to have unisex bathrooms and the women would have to be able to go to the men's bathroom and then the men would have to wait in line and that upset a lot of the people. So they weren't about to wait in line there. All of these were literally the kinds of arguments that were made. Helped to defeat it. But legally, basically in most states women still are considered full people today. Despite some people's attitudes.

So, who were not people? Children. They're becoming people. Until the age of 18. Used to be 21. Wyoming by the way was one of the first states to reduce the age to 18. There were many states that allowed women to vote and allowed 18-year olds even 20-year olds to vote before the federal constitution amendment . Women were given the right to vote in 1920, 18-year olds were given the right to vote in 1972. I know some 13-year olds or 10-year olds that probably know more about politics then some 18-year olds. I've got a kid at home that way. But the fact is that we have to draw an arbitrary line and maybe 18 is the arbitrary line. It is interesting how some of the best opposition came from 18-year olds. They themselves didn't feel they were mature at times. But most states. And I don't necessarily -- you do have to -well fight in the sense of you have to petition. Usually you will, but it's still an issue.

How about non citizens? Citizens are considered human, they just can't vote. Translation, if you're a non-citizen you have the same rights than anybody else. The right to carry a gun. Where a felon doesn't. Things of that nature. You have the right to sigh in the courts. You have the right to freedom of speech. All of those rights are now there. As long as you're a legal alien. Non aliens who were illegal lose their rights because they're breaking the law which makes sense. Okay?

People who put themselves in a mental institution maintain their rights, but if the state says you're insane you lose your rights while you're in the institution. And it may be that makes sense. Mental retardation is another issue that's really controversial because that's by the institution. But legally people who were retarded are considered people. If they're institutionalized then the institution can have certain controls based on the level of retardation. So, translation, again, in our country we consider all people with a few limitations to be people. And that is a major element of our democratic society.

Granted, when we were first founded, you weren't a person unless you owned property. Almost every state required a certain amount of property to be owned to vote. The feeling was that if you had a vested interest in the country then you would learn about them what you needed to vote for. It was the revolutionary Thomas Pain who said a man owns a jackass, his state requires him to have 50 pounds of property to vote, the jackass is a worth 50 pounds. He can vote $50. English money. The jackass dies the man can no longer vote. Pains' comment? Who really voted? The man or the
jackass?

So there was even opposition in those days to the concept of the property ownership. However, a few years ago there was a group that went down to get some money so that their soccer group could go to the regionals and this particular woman attacked another woman there saying she should not be even speaking and didn't deserve to speak because she was a renter and therefore had no vested interest in Fremont. She rented her apartment. She didn't own a house. There are still many who believe that if you don't own property you really shouldn't have a say because you shouldn't. You're not really taking a true interest in the community. You're just a transient. We can say times changed, but they and they change radically, but will there are still vestiges of the past and those kinds of values in our society. The chart itself then talks about active consent. Many dictators say they're a democracy because they have the consent of the people. They know. They embody the consents of the people but if we believe in a true democracy, we have to have the active consent of the people. They have to be able to participate and throw you out of office if need be. Not just the passive consent. They have to express preferences. They have to be able to formulate their preferences before expressing them. We can't allow others to interpret for us and that brings us to the sending part of the principles liberty and equality.

I have two major principles of democracy. We talked about the John Birch Society earlier and it is true that the Birch Society perceives liberty as more important than equality. In fact, the framers of our Constitution probably held liberty above equality. They were fearful of equality. Today many people feel we have gone too much the other way. We've pushed equality over liberties and certainly that is changing. For instance, in San Francisco you may have heard they finally over through after a major court suit and board decided they will no longer have a 45% majority required for any school in San Francisco. In their attempt to create equal schools and making everybody equal in San Francisco, it was ruled that no matter where you lived, no school could have 45% more than 45% of any one racial or ethnic group. And for example many students who qualify for Lowell high school who were Chinese could not get in because there were more than 45% Chinese applying to that school. Right now, there will be no qualifications against that people will get into the school based upon academic performances and if that means one hundred percent of Jews that becomes irrelevant to Lowell high schools history in the future.

Is it good or is it bad? What do you do about segregated neighborhoods or racial segregations under those kind of rules? Those are real heavy issues. Translation, affirmative action is under attack. Was it good? What purpose did it serve? Some of these thing we'll touch on the next time.