Monday, February 4, 2008

Vote, or Stay Home

Tomorrow is "Super Tuesday," the busiest day of the American presidential primaries. This year's may be "the biggest day of presidential primary and caucus voting in U.S. history." ("Super Tuesday Briefing Book" (pdf)) Twenty-four states will be doing something about selecting delegates of February 5.

I'm involved in convening one of the caucuses in the Central Minnesota town where I live.

At this point, most people would write something about American citizens getting out a voting. The word "grassroots" would probably be used. A democracy won't work if people aren't active in the political process, but I've got an unusual request.

High turnout numbers in caucuses, and in elections, are nice: but I firmly believe that it's important for people to know what they're voting about.

If you haven't been keeping track of the issues, or don't care very much one way or the other, please: Stay home!

(More about my view of elections in "Watch for Weird Words: Election's Coming Up!," "Iran: Another Unilateral Quagmire?," and "'Cowboy Diplomacy' and 'Live Long and Prosper'.")

2 comments:

Brigid said...

I'd like to add that if the criteria you're using to decide how to vote involves to words "looks," "handsome," "pretty," or any synonym of these stay home! Please!

Brian H. Gill said...

Brigid,

How about "pretty handsome?"

And, of course, I agree.

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.