A few months ago I had the privilege of discussing the voting process with a very young lady (19? 20?), and she offered the opinion that people who didn't have college degrees shouldn't be allowed to vote. I was amused by how serious she was. I wanted to spend some time talking to her and hopefully dissuading her of this position, but the BBQ we were at was wrapping up and my wife was giving me the sign that it was time to leave.

Today I saw the title of a news story that read, "Tony Perkins: Pay a million in taxes, 'get a million votes'." Mr. Moneybags thinks he should have more votes than you because he started with way more money than you'll ever have, was in the right place at the right time, got lucky with his investments, and is now so rich that his effective tax rate is zero because he can live off interest on capital squirreled away in off-shore accounts. He's the same guy that seriously thinks taxing the rich is equivalent to the Nazis rounding up and killing Jews, and whose publicly-expressed, greatest fear is being taxed until he's merely part of the 5% instead of the 0.001%. He honestly sees his money as an expression of himself, and he thinks he's WAY better than all of you and should be running things by simple virtue of his hoarded assets.

I actually respect the young lady's opinion far more. Her assertion is that some people are so uneducated, so incapable of critical thought, that they should not be allowed to touch the levers of power. I get it, and I sympathize with it, even if I strongly disagree with it.

I was no more or less surprised by Mr. Perkins' stance as I was with the young lady's. Both, though, suffer from a basic flaw in premise. First and foremost, democracy is not plutocracy -- it does not reward wealth with comparable political power. But it is also, unfortunately at times, not a government of academic elites. The people that founded this country were both well-to-do and well-educated, so had that been their thought, we might very well have found ourselves with a system that skewed power in favor or property or erudition.

In fact, just the opposite is the case. When the original draft of the Constitution, inspired by John Locke's governmental theories, read "life, liberty, and property," Jefferson and Franklin argued for the common man and convinced the assembly to make it "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," so that, from the very beginning, the preference of money over man was a failed proposition.

The voting franchise upon which our democracy is based, and without which it crumbles, is that we, the people, from the least significant to the most, set all else aside and enter the voting booth the same way we will exit this life, with nothing more than our souls. We vote equally, and we vote our life experience -- not our wealth, not our education. We vote for the person that we feel will best represent our interests, the person best suited to lead us, the best person for the job, and we base that on what makes us who we are. But money is not a person, and neither is a diploma. We are the sum total of our life experiences, and no one may stand in judgement of that, no matter how long and tainted or brief and mundane that life may be. It is with this universal, hard-won treasure that we govern ourselves as a body.

And that is as it should, and was meant, to be.