Ignorance

July 11th, 2004 Chris
Tags: culture, favorites, meta | 1 Comment »

In response to a question asking for people’s “outrage of the year”, Dailykos poster PC had this to say:

To me the outrage of every year is the American public’s lack of interest in knowing the issues and what our government is and isn’t doing here and abroad.
As a democracy all of us are responsible for the anti-democratic and immoral activities of our government. Shame on us all.

I couldn’t agree more. When will people quit watching reruns of Friends and living in their bubble of banality? If you do one thing this election season, be informed. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you’re on, but if you don’t know what’s going on, how can you possibly cast an informed vote?

Jim Chapman weighed in on uninformed voters before the recent Canadian election

If you don’t understand the issues, please stay home on Monday. An uninformed vote is just as dangerous as a blindly partisan one, and neither is much use to governments trying to gauge which issues the public thinks are important.

When voters lose the motivation to effect change in their government, democracies degenerate into corruption and tyrannies emerge.

So take a few minutes, read up on the issues that matter to you, discuss them with your friends, and then vote in November. About 400 votes gave Bush Florida, and thus the election, last year. This year is likely to be just as close.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
— Martin Luther King Jr.