Ignorance is Unpatriotic
- by Pixel
The better the citizenry as a whole are educated, the wider and more sensible public participation, debate and social mobility will be…Highly sophisticated Élites are the easiest and least original thing a society can produce. The most difficult and the most valuable is a well-educated populace.
John Ralston Saul
It’s hard to see how a person can fully participate in a democracy without voting. Truly, elections are what make representative democracies superior (theoretically) than other forms of government. Representative democracies allow people to freely and easily choose their leaders.
One doesn’t need to vote in order to be a responsible citizen. Indeed, if a person is going to vote based on vague ideas and hazy feelings (“John Kerry is ugly!”), then it seems the responsible thing is to not vote… or have children.
However, if someone has decided to do his ‘duty’ and vote, then the best thing for that person to do would be get informed about the issues. Truly, a democracy with an educated populace would hopefully do far better than a democracy with a poorly-educated populace. In essence, by voting without being informed of all your options, you’re not doing your duty; you’re subverting it and adulterating it. If you vote and don’t have good reasons why you vote for each particular candidate, you’re being unpatriotic.
If H.L. Mencken is right and democracy is the belief in the collective intelligence of individual stupidity, then it follows that we should lessen the individual stupidity.
Thankfully, the readers of this blog need not worry about their own ignorance. I, in association with Project Vote Smart, Wikipedia and the candidate’s own literature (that is, I’ll use them as sources), will write a series of articles about this upcoming election. After which, you’ll not only know the candidates, but be the best informed citizen around.
… Just don’t vote locally, because I’m not looking up those guys for you too!
Related posts:
- Please, hold the tongue of arrogant ignorance Don’t you just hate it when you write a beautiful piece of work and somebody else gets all the credit? Eh, Drew? What do you think of that? Wouldn’t that suck if it happened to...
- Get the Vote Back In Warning: sociopolitical analytical post. This is part two of a two part series. The question for this post is: “Why do Americans vote?” The analysis is broader than the U.S., however and can be applied...
- Here’s an idea! Some people ((Libertarians)) have already proposed a ‘none of the above’ option when voting. Some ((Third parties)) have proposed a tiered voting system which would work sort of like a caucus. I have a better...
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The better the citizenry as a whole are educated, the wider and more sensible public participation, debate and social mobility will be…Highly sophisticated Élites are the easiest and least original thing a society can produce. The most difficult and the most valuable is a well-educated populace. John Ralston Saul It’s hard to see how a…