THE COLUMN: To Save America, Repeal the 19th Amendment

Michael Walsh23 Jan, 2023 8 Min Read
Not a joke, folks.

With Jacinda Ardern's welcome exit from the ranks of world political leaders, leaving a shambles of constitutional freedom and human rights in her wake, now is perhaps an opportune time to reconsider the passage of the 19th amendment in American politics as part of our ongoing series of "To Save America" modest proposals advocating repeal of the most destructive tamperings with the original Constitution. We've already made the arguments for the repeal of the 16th, 17th, 18th (done!), and 26th amendments, so now it's time for the women's suffrage movement to take its turn in the barrel.

Oops.

Start with this: there is no intrinsic, enumerated right to vote in the Constitution; eligibility was left up to each state. Voting therefore is neither a civil right nor a God-given natural right (as history clearly shows), but an earned privilege to be granted under certain circumstances or after an individual had satisfied various specified criteria such as attaining the age of his majority, being a male, a property owner, etc.

This was an outgrowth of the original conception of the United States as a voluntary alliance of hitherto sovereign states, each of which ceded some portion of its autonomy to the new federal government, but which reserved all other rights to itself. Indeed, the Tenth amendment makes this explicit: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words, the federal government did not create the states, they created the federal government.

In no previous historical iteration of either a Republic or a Democracy was universal suffrage allowed or even contemplated. The Greeks and the Romans had a quaint notion that only productive male citizens, especially those who put their lives, honor, and sacred fortunes on the line for their city, nation-state or empire (and who bought their own weapons and armor) could earn the right to vote. While this strikes us as both "sexist" and "racist" today, such considerations were unthought of; and while slaves could win the vote via manumission, women were never considered worthy of the vote. They were too emotional, too devious in their machinations, and certainly too weak to fight: in other words, too "unmanly," which is definitionally correct.

Besides, what Rome needed most from the time of the Punic Wars right up to the end was neither educated (although some were) nor liberated women, but mothers by whom the legions could be readily replenished, and wives who could patch up their warriors and send them back into battle. Thus, Rome could survive near-catastrophic defeats by Hannibal at Trebia, Lake Trasemine and Cannae and quickly bounce back by replacing the lost legions. A woman's job, therefore, was not to fight but to breed and nurture future citizens of the Republic; you could be a citizen without having a vote.

At Cannae, dead Romans everywhere.

One of the foundational myths of early Rome is the Abduction of the Sabine Women (often mistranslated as the Rape of the Sabines). The Romans under Romulus, new arrivals in Latium, found themselves severely lacking in women and sent embassies to the  neighboring tribes requesting the right of intermarriage. This being roundly refused, the Roman invited the Sabines to a religious feast, whereupon they fell upon the Sabine women and carried them off while expelling the Sabine men. When, some time later, the Sabine men returned and attacked the Romans to get their women back—well, let Livy tell the tale:

Then it was that the Sabine women, whose wrongs had led to the war, throwing off all womanish fears in their distress, went boldly into the midst of the flying missiles with dishevelled hair and rent garments. Running across the space between the two armies they tried to stop any further fighting and calm the excited passions by appealing to their fathers in the one army and their husbands in the other not to bring upon themselves a curse by staining their hands with the blood of a father-in-law or a son-in-law, nor upon their posterity the taint of parricide.

It's all right there in Livy. And Giambologna.

`If,' they cried, ` you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans.' The armies and their leaders were alike moved by this appeal. There was a sudden hush and silence. Then the generals advanced to arrange the terms of a treaty. It was not only peace that was made, the two nations were united into one State, the royal power was shared between them, and the seat of government for both nations was Rome.

This may sound warm and fuzzy, but one of the lessons the Romans derived from this episode was the fickleness and malleability of women. Far from being happy that their former countrymen had come to rescue them from domestic slavery to the Romans (as males would be), the Sabine women were appalled at the slaughter and sought a compromise—which ended with the effective disappearance of the Sabines from history and ensured the survival of the Eternal City.

What has all this history got to do with women's suffrage or Jacinda Ardern? If you've read my book Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost, you will know that I believe the human animal doesn't change very much, and no amount of wish-casting can alter reality. To take Ardern as an example, her reaction to a single case of the imaginary disease known as "Covid-19" was quintessentially female and maternal: she immediately shut down her entire country, then instituted a breathtaking regime of ruthless totalitarianism involving lockdowns and forcible "vaccinations." (She had previously displayed these same panicky instincts in the wake of the 2019 mosque shootings, when she almost instantly imposed a draconian anti-gun policy nationwide.) In other words, she acted according to stereotype, her policies not the product of calm thinking and reasoned judgment but of inflamed emotions absent any rational thought. After which she walked away from the chaos complaining of burnout.

But as the western democracies matured, such elemental considerations came to seem outmoded, and so the push for women's suffrage began in earnest. In the U.S., women first got the vote at the state level, in frontier Wyoming, in 1869; by 1920, when the 19th amendment was ratified, they had the vote nationwide. A "long march" that began with the suffragette movement in the mid-19th century had come to fruition. But was it wise?

One signal that it might not be was its abandonment during the Civil War when, oddly enough, the country had more important things on its mind, such as the survival of the nation; clearly, women's suffrage was not deemed important enough, a luxury to be considered once the life of the nation was no longer on the line. Nor did it come up for a vote until after the First World War was over; and in neither case did anyone advocate for putting women in the fighting military in order to win the right to vote, especially women.

Any port in a storm.

Another is that its moment came practically simultaneously with the Four Progressive Amendments (income tax, direct election of senators, prohibition) and in fact there is considerable resemblance between the 18th and 19th in their back story. Both came about in a long-delayed backlash against the great wave of immigration, which was soon to be ended  with the Immigration Act of 1924, that effectively shut it down until 1965. Prohibition, a midwestern Protestant idea pushed by women, was meant to target the men of suspect ethnic groups (Irish, Italians, Germans) whose fondness for grape, hops, and grain was legendary, as well as the merchant urban Jews who readily sold it to them. While the 18th amendment was simply punitive, the 19th was passive-aggressive: since the immigrants were largely single men, who quickly became voters, the WASP ascendency could avoid being out-voted, at least in the short term, but doubling its vote to include its wives. 

(There is no comparison between the extension of the franchise to African-Americans via the the 15th amendment and women's suffrage. Once legal slavery was abolished there was no philosophical or historical reason not to allow black men to vote; many of them had, after all, fought heroically for their freedom in the Union Army. By contrast, there was no historical precedent for allowing women to vote.)

Further, many women themselves were against suffrage. They rejected the facile arguments offered by Jane Addams and others—"I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance"—by deciding they didn't want to give women the chance to make things even worse than they already were. There was even a National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

Summing up the arguments against suffrance with barely disguised contempt, one Alison Lange, Ph.D., wrote:

Anti-suffragists argued that most women did not want the vote. Because they took care of the home and children, they said women did not have time to vote or stay updated on politics. Some argued women lacked the expertise or mental capacity to offer a useful opinion about political issues. Others asserted that women’s votes would simply double the electorate; voting would cost more without adding any new value.

That last argument has proven spectacularly wrong, but not in the way Lange clearly meant. The electorate has doubled but it has also become widely skewed, adding new value via the phenomenon known as the Single Woke Female—unmarried, exploited women of a certain age who fell for the siren song of "feminism" and the "sexual revolution" and are now approaching retirement from a pointless career who go home in the evening to their cats, bust out the ice cream and the white wine, and nurse their grudge against males for their barren, empty, childless lives. Foolishly seduced by Hugh Hefner's Playboy Philosophy into providing easy sexual access to their bodies in the name of "empowerment" and by the feminists who lied that they could "have it all," they now in their anger and resentment vote the straight Democrat ticket, looking to the federal government to be a surrogate lover, husband, and father. It's Obama's "Life of Julia" writ large.

Even some lefties laughed at the "Life of Julia" when it first appeared—they even "fact-checked" it—but who's laughing now? Government, most especially including the federal government, is now not only the employer of last resort for the otherwise unemployable, it's now the sugar daddy of first resort. And so the Left has hit another milestone in its goal of destabilizing the United States by using its weapons and its weaknesses ("tolerance," "compassion," purposeless egalitarianism) against it.

What even purported good has the destruction of the nuclear family accomplished? We're in the middle of a vicious, feninized cycle that includes an ineffective military, a police force that cuts and runs at the first encounter with a raging street madman after "negotiation" fails, and raging misandry from "fourth wave" feminists the ancients would have called by their real names: harpies.

Men, especially younger men, have not only dropped out of academe and the work force after realizing that the deck is stacked against them but are also withdrawing from society into a virtual mom's basement of video games, drugs, and porn, punctuated by occasional outbursts of random, horrific violence as the anomie becomes unendurable and rule by regiments of women becomes intolerable. History shows that disempowered, castrated men eventually take to the streets, and female cops shaped like Schmoos will be powerless to stop them.

From Romulus to the fall of Constantinople, Rome lasted 2,000 years without ever offering women the vote. How long will America last as it makes one last attempt to prove that history is, in fact, bunk? Men are Romans, women are Sabines. The only iron law of history is that imbalances will be corrected, sometimes violently. Based on current voting patterns, if women didn't vote, there would never be another Democrat president. Now, who wouldn't make that trade? Come on, ladies, do your duty to God and country, and give it up for America. Otherwise, a Jacinda Ardern looms in your future, too. 

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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33 comments on “THE COLUMN: To Save America, Repeal the 19th Amendment”

  1. For any women disturbed at this don't forget what it really is: the impotent mewling of (alleged) men from beneath the boot of the woke single female, lol. They won't be taking anything from you because crying on the internet is the peak of their powers.

  2. What a ridiculous essay. So many generalizations and unfounded statements. Even the Jacinda Ardern example doesn't make any sense, as there were multiple other countries with extremely strict lockdowns (e.g. Australia and China) who were led by men. If men can impose strict lockdowns, it can't possibly be due to anyone's maternal nature. Same with anti-gun policies: there are plenty of those to be found in countries led by men. So here's a radical idea for you: how about we just accept that the world is made up of individuals with different views, preferences, interests, talents, intelligence levels and emotional profiles? Making so many statements about a person based on gender is utterly bizarre. It's also very insulting both ways, shoving people into two categories based on a whole ton of assumptions, as well as being infantilizing towards women.

  3. I still have friends who bragged about being an Obama Momma. No idea about his ideology but that they were special for voting for him

  4. Amen. I get tired of asking the men who to vote for. I have no business voting against a man. I’m happy and not stressed about what I don’t understand.

  5. Don’t vote then. You don’t get to decide who votes and who doesn’t based on your own self hatred, lauren.

  6. Married woman here (who votes conservatively). I would happily give up my vote if it meant all other women were taken out of the pool. I really do agree it's the only way we're going to save this country. Too many women vote with their hearts, not their heads and it's exactly why we've ended up where we are politically and culturally. Women have intentionally lost the meaning of what it is to be a woman, and they've dragged men into this same identity crisis.

  7. Give up my right to choose my elected officials, which I cherish as an American? Not a chance! Those who have no right to vote have no power, which I’m sure is just what this author would like to see. Well, we’re going to go right on voting whether you like it or not, Mr. Walsh. Deal with it.

  8. I assume this is the latest weak attempt to get attention by being offensive. Trying to be th e new Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, whatever.

  9. It's cute how you tedious America-hating misogynist fascists wrap your manias in the guise of "saving America" when what you're trying to do is make America into the same system the founder fought a revolution to overthrow. For all their flaws and hypocrisies, America's founders understood the world would evolve and thus made the Constitution a living document. The fact is, you tedious misogynist, racist, hate-mongerers can simply GTFO and move your oh-so-put-upon carcasses to some of the world's conservative dream lands. Here's one... no taxes on the rich... no "gub'mnt" schools... no social safety net... women know their "natural" place... gays are in the closet... church and state are intertwined... it's Pakistan! Go for it, traitors! It's PERFECT for you. If not, how about "Liberland" - a "dream land created specifically for oh-so-put-upon American fascists whose inherent lack of fundamental maturity, intellectual vapidness and moral bankruptcy makes them fundamentally incapable of functioning in the type of free, democratic, diverse society American fascists can only pretend to love. Think about the freedumb! No "others" who don't know their "natural" place to challenge your "superiority". No gub'mnt to hold you down by your bootstraps! No gub'mnt at all! Do one decent thing for once (I know that's a lot to ask fascist sociopaths) in your waste-of-human-DNA useless existence and GTFO. America will be so much better without the fascist albatross around our national necks. Send us a post card. If you can find a post office, that is.

  10. Don't worry, as China and Russia continue to grow in power with little to no female input and the West continues to wain, western men will see the writing on the wall.

  11. Interesting comments here. My spouse was a notorious liberal until she started to listen to me. Then she realized that she always had been conservative in nature and just did not understand what she was doing at the polls!

  12. Pierre Proudhon was an early socialist and he thought female suffrage was crazy ca 1855.

  13. How about getting America out of the United Nations and getting the United Nations out of America it would be far better Why should we have anything more to do these Globalists Crinimals

  14. Your definition of 'maximized liberty', of course, that does not allow half the population to vote?

  15. I think it would be very honest for your side to come out and just admit that you want america to be iran. I think you should run on that platform and be shocked when you lose again

  16. The vast majority of killings throughout history have been carried out by men. It is men who should be prevented from having the vote.

  17. "... lives, honor, and sacred fortunes ..."
    Was this an intentional malapropism to make a point about the Romans? If anything, they were much more literal in their worship of honor as sacred than were the American founders, and much less crassly commercial (I'm looking at you Hamilton).

  18. St. Paul has gotten a lot of bad press as a supposed woman-hater, but he knew whereof he spoke when he warned about females controlled by emotional gullibility:

    "...Men will become utterly self-centred, greedy for money, full of big words...creatures who...find easy prey in silly women with an exaggerated sense of sin and morbid cravings—who are always learning and yet never able to grasp the truth." - 2 Timothy 3, Phillips

    (And I speak as a female - the genuine XX article.)

  19. We've seen a lot of ideas about how societies should be organized, going back at least to Plato. Lots and lots of theories. Sometimes the theorists get a lucky hit, and the society is stable and even progressive.
    Other times the plan doesn't match the reality of human psychology, leading to decades of misery (e.g. communism, wokeness). And while some of those theorists were brilliant and intelligent men, their theories were, in the end, guesses.
    I sometimes speculate that the growth of digital data and the development of AIs might support a pragmatic understanding of how human beings actually act. Sort of a ChatGPT for human psychology. Maybe, armed with that knowledge it might be possible to design a society that both maximizes individual liberty and social stability. If that is the case, my guess is the "New Society" would not have women voters.

  20. Actually, Michael, I think women who are married vote rather conservatively. It's single women which are the problem. I'm thinking of starting a foundation to fix these women up with spouses.

    1. Perhaps allow the vote for women who have been married to the same man for at least five years... they have skin in the game.

  21. Men fight when all is lost, while women slip out of the besieged city's gates at night, clad only in a coat to save their lives but not their honor.
    I can't find where I read this, but it is somehow associated with a siege of some medieval city in the Alps.

  22. I've been saying for years that most of our problems would be solved if we just raised the voting age to 25 and defund all public education. Easy peasy!

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