Who decides how you should live

Britain, like the United States, forbids sentenced prisoners from voting. The European Court of Human Rights just ruled that such a ban is unlawful. Now for me a prisoner is there for a reason. Maybe its rape, murder, or some other destructive evil that government must protect society from but whatever it is liberty needs to be taken away. More than a phsyical separation there needs to be a political break as well. If a person is not fit to live in society is he or she really fit to make judgements about its possible political structure?

I am an old style Whig who believes in self-governance but also fears the impulse of uneducated people do things they think is right. In addition, I believe intellectual eggheads look down on citizens and think they know better. This is happening in the United States where more and more local and state governments are losing power to a centralized governments that doesn't make decisions based on your needs but on a calculation from some ecomonic egghead. Local governments are the best protectors of liberty and the best deciders of who shall vote or not. A European Court or a Supreme Court should play a limited role in our every day lives. Remember once we allow (yes, allow because we have the power) government to do something we would otherwise do, then liberty through choice is taken away.

I am a dreamer. A dreamer who sees the world not as it is but as it could be. Many out there are like me. In my world local governments would decide if prisoners could vote, not some far away body who knows nothing of who or what we are. How can someone 3,000 miles away trully understand or care for the life that we live or want? In the end "all politics is local." What we need is fewer Washington or Bussell elites telling us what is good for our lives and more saying, "let them decide." A great jurist, Oliver W. Holmes once said, "if my fellow man wants to go to h-ll, I am not going to do anything to prevent him." Liberty and freedom can only happen when government stops trying to mother its citizens and actually listens to them. That is what the Constitution embodies and that is what the Founders fought for.