self-rec unintentional. sorry!

For starters, why not give Wyoming's ECl Votes to the EU?

Seriously, the entire system of nation-states is so antiquated I can't it seriously anymore. People start dishing out lectures if you say this, but the world's moved on. Big money certainly doesn't pay attention to borders, right? How about CO2? Travel & tourism, music & film, international alliances & arm sales & intercontinental rockets, immigration, satellites, tech transfer, religion, sports, the Internet... and TPM. All cross-border.

The U.N. was a nice try. Still some value there - but boy, it's not very creative anymore. The nation-state feels to me like the castle in the Middle Ages, the Maginot Line in WW-I. Overun.

Utah too. We'll take theirs. They don't have a clue how to use them.

No offense, Lux, but I'm taking a Poli Sci class right now and reading Madison's notes on the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, and your idea would have the entire group of founders, federalist and anti-federalist alike, set upon you and give you the biggest wedgie you ever had, so bad there would be slack after they hung the waistband over your ears and stuffed some more in your mouth to keep it occupied with less dangerous ideas.

You do know we fought several wars to keep foreign influence out of our government,right?

Hmmmm. Well Lux, so far we have "loopy" and "wedgie" and "complications from foreign influence" and "they don't let us in."

Gotta say, it kinda makes me giggle. Sounds like a good idea in its earliest stages of adoption - "Ridicule."

Try this, kids. How about EVERY nation in the OECD agreed to set aside 10% of its seats to represent the interests other nations have in their own activities? Can't see any virtues in that?

as a citizen of your northern neighbour, i would not have your extreme nation having more of a say here.

I strongly object to this post for entirely different reasons from everyone else. You have appropriated the title of one of the greatest "snark posts" in history without paying homage to its satire. Like Swift's Modest Proposal, I doubt your proposal is sincere, though (as with Swift) many think it is. But the difference between your proposal and Swift's is that you seem to proposing an extreme version of your own views rather than an extreme version of views with which you disagree. Swift pretended to be critical of the Irish poor and proposed eating their babies to satirize the callousness of English society. Along those lines, if you were a conservative isolationist, you might pretend to argue for closer international ties and end up proposing to give electoral votes to other nations, including of course Iran, N. Korea, and the Taliban. Or, if you were liberal multilateralist, you might pretend to believe in immigration fences and end proposing to build a giant tinted bubble over the entire country so that we don't ever have to see any foreigners ever again (especially Canadians.) But to be a multilateralist proposing to give electoral votes to other countries turns the original Modest Proposal on its head. Thus, I protest.

We have this antiquated electoral college everyone would like to see abolished.
_____

Your "We" doesn't include ME.

Abolishing the Electoral College might be anti-elitist -- but it would be foolish in view of the idjit sheeple who get to vote while the intelligent and civil non-extremists are disenfranchised by the sheepleherders.

The Founders/Framers distrusted democracy. They were wise; and itt remains wise to distrust the direct vote by far-right lunatic fringe fruitloops.

Well, all I can ask is: think about it.

I am at a downstate conference all day today, so will get to miss all the fun of seeing this idea, obviously so far ahead of its time, test the limits of the TPM readership's political intuitions while simultaneously being shredded and run through the blender.

Be Gentle!

Loopy, wedgied Lux

Giving other countries a say in a sovereign state's elections is more or less the first step towards a global gov't -- but let's indulge the 'loopiness' for a bit!

On the one hand, you have things like the New World Order/Illuminati conspiracies, where a world government is seen as inherently corrupt and evil. Consider Pat Buchanan's claim that global entities or groups with an interest in foreign policy (like the United Nations, CFR, Bilderberg, etc.) are fronts for banking interests that want to replace free market economies with a socialist world state, an Orwellian oligarchy wherein free peoples are turned into slaves of the system.

On the other side, you have political philosophers like Hobbes who extrapolate their thinking on individual rights into theories of social contracts and civil gov't. Hobbes' concept of bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all, refers to man's state of nature -- how man acted 'in the wild' before forming social contracts and societies. In the state of nature, there's no such thing as injustice or rights, there are only freedoms. Man is free to do as he likes in the interest of self-preservation, including murder and theft - every man for himself, against every other man. By entering into a social contract, man gives up some of his freedoms to get a measure of peace in return.

Nations still exist in that state of nature -- every state for itself, against other states. In Hobbes' view, true peace isn't possible until nation states give up some of their sovereignty and freedoms to enter into a social contract with other nation states. Of course, as the United Nations/League of Nations shows us, such arrangements are only good if entered with good faith and the willingness to actually follow through with mandates and the associated loss of individual freedom of action.

So, giving other nations a voice in US elections? Yes, in my view, it makes sense (and reciprocal arrangements, also) -- but the US is a nation of Buchanans, where absolute freedom of choice and action is valued more highly than cooperation.

Wouldn't this take all the fun out of voting fraud?

Lord, how I love this place!

Is there anything, anything at all the world can agree on?

Ask three different people what is absolutely essential to human life and one will say oxygen, another will say guns, and the third will point to a large rock and say the spirit god.

I'm baaaack!!!!

Once again a deep thoughtful Lux blog degenerates into a hectic free-for-all!

I am going to turn my sole remaining beleagured graduate student to the task of writing a grant proposal for my next research study:

Effects of Intelligent Blogs on the Reptilian Hindbrains of TPM Habitues

Surely I can get the NIMH to shell out a few million......