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Wagner: Don't let your vote reflect your ignorance
Paul A. Wagner, UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
There are two Americas. How many times have you heard that cliché from the talking heads on television or at the front of university classrooms? But what are the two Americas? Well, it's whatever the talking heads want them to be, of course.
The two Americas could be legal and illegal residents, men and women, the haves and the have nots. Political pundits like Al Franken, Katie Couric, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter may divide the world between Republicans and Democrats — and on and on it goes.
All of these distinctions leave me cold. But rather than leave well enough alone, I will contribute my own distinction. After all, this is America. And America is the place where hubris of all sorts is protected by the First Amendment — right?
The two Americas catching my attention are the Americas made up of those who understand democracy and those who don't. The material for this distinction comes from watching the Tonight Show's "Jaywalks."
On his Jaywalks, host Jay Leno asks ordinary Americans simple questions about government, geography, international affairs and so on. Basically, Leno asks stuff everyone should know before casting an informed vote. And it's depressing how little our fellow citizens know about such matters. I say our fellow citizens because if you are reading this on the editorial page, chances are you would fare well on a Jaywalk.
Leno doesn't target any special class of people. Many of his subjects are college students. On a more serious level, the Wall Street Journal did a story a few years ago revealing how little graduates of major universities knew about basic world affairs. One graduate of Princeton and Columbia University Law School confessed to not knowing that China and Japan had fought in World War II. Her explanation: "I guess they don't teach much history at Princeton."
Many Jaywalkers seem entertained by their own ignorance. When asked what it means to be an American, some defiantly laugh into the camera and declare: This is America and that means you have a right to do what you want! If you don't want to learn anything, you don't have to.
What a ghastly summation of what America means.
Democracy isn't, first and foremost, about having the freedom to do what one wants. Mindless talk about freedoms blurs the intellectual font from which democracy sprang. Most democratic theorists never advocated democracy as the best form of government. Rather, they simply noted that other forms of government are worse.
Government, whatever the ideal form, is about how people organize themselves to secure their collective well-being. Democracy's principal advantage is that it divides sovereignty among all citizens. Such sharing means more than simply securing certain rights — equally important is the sharing of duties.
Rights and freedoms are like goodies; people like having them. But unfortunately, there is a price to be paid for these goodies. The price for democracy is that everyone shares a responsibility for the well-being of every other citizen. Our rights and freedoms are the benefits we earn from this collective commitment.
When it comes to voting, everyone has a primary duty to become informed about the issues and candidates before voting. This duty pays for the right to vote.
Citizens have a duty not to abuse democracy. When a voter doesn't ante up and fulfill the duty to become informed, democracy is in peril.
Many Texans think it is their "duty" to vote for, say, a judicial position, even when they admit they know nothing about either candidate in the contest. What an odd notion of duty!
I sometimes don't know the candidates running for a particular position, and so I don't cast what would amount to a random vote. This doesn't invalidate my ballot (something else many Americans don't know).
Randomly cast votes cannot secure a robust democracy. Unfortunately, in elections today, the casting of random votes determines our shared destiny far more than responsibly refraining to vote on a particular candidate or issue.
Those who have informed themselves on a given issue or candidate should vote with the interests of all Americans in mind. At least that is the way Aristotle, the father of democracy, would have us believe.
Ideally, every voter should become informed on every issue and every candidate. But when voters fail in that duty, they have a derivative duty to stand aside and let the more informed cast a relevant vote.
If the voter doesn't want someone else making decisions for her, she should fulfill her duty to become informed. Only the informed voter is in a position to better the destiny of us all.
Wagner is director of the Project in Professional Ethics at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
Paul A. Wagner, UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
There are two Americas. How many times have you heard that cliché from the talking heads on television or at the front of university classrooms? But what are the two Americas? Well, it's whatever the talking heads want them to be, of course.
The two Americas could be legal and illegal residents, men and women, the haves and the have nots. Political pundits like Al Franken, Katie Couric, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter may divide the world between Republicans and Democrats — and on and on it goes.
All of these distinctions leave me cold. But rather than leave well enough alone, I will contribute my own distinction. After all, this is America. And America is the place where hubris of all sorts is protected by the First Amendment — right?
The two Americas catching my attention are the Americas made up of those who understand democracy and those who don't. The material for this distinction comes from watching the Tonight Show's "Jaywalks."
On his Jaywalks, host Jay Leno asks ordinary Americans simple questions about government, geography, international affairs and so on. Basically, Leno asks stuff everyone should know before casting an informed vote. And it's depressing how little our fellow citizens know about such matters. I say our fellow citizens because if you are reading this on the editorial page, chances are you would fare well on a Jaywalk.
Leno doesn't target any special class of people. Many of his subjects are college students. On a more serious level, the Wall Street Journal did a story a few years ago revealing how little graduates of major universities knew about basic world affairs. One graduate of Princeton and Columbia University Law School confessed to not knowing that China and Japan had fought in World War II. Her explanation: "I guess they don't teach much history at Princeton."
Many Jaywalkers seem entertained by their own ignorance. When asked what it means to be an American, some defiantly laugh into the camera and declare: This is America and that means you have a right to do what you want! If you don't want to learn anything, you don't have to.
What a ghastly summation of what America means.
Democracy isn't, first and foremost, about having the freedom to do what one wants. Mindless talk about freedoms blurs the intellectual font from which democracy sprang. Most democratic theorists never advocated democracy as the best form of government. Rather, they simply noted that other forms of government are worse.
Government, whatever the ideal form, is about how people organize themselves to secure their collective well-being. Democracy's principal advantage is that it divides sovereignty among all citizens. Such sharing means more than simply securing certain rights — equally important is the sharing of duties.
Rights and freedoms are like goodies; people like having them. But unfortunately, there is a price to be paid for these goodies. The price for democracy is that everyone shares a responsibility for the well-being of every other citizen. Our rights and freedoms are the benefits we earn from this collective commitment.
When it comes to voting, everyone has a primary duty to become informed about the issues and candidates before voting. This duty pays for the right to vote.
Citizens have a duty not to abuse democracy. When a voter doesn't ante up and fulfill the duty to become informed, democracy is in peril.
Many Texans think it is their "duty" to vote for, say, a judicial position, even when they admit they know nothing about either candidate in the contest. What an odd notion of duty!
I sometimes don't know the candidates running for a particular position, and so I don't cast what would amount to a random vote. This doesn't invalidate my ballot (something else many Americans don't know).
Randomly cast votes cannot secure a robust democracy. Unfortunately, in elections today, the casting of random votes determines our shared destiny far more than responsibly refraining to vote on a particular candidate or issue.
Those who have informed themselves on a given issue or candidate should vote with the interests of all Americans in mind. At least that is the way Aristotle, the father of democracy, would have us believe.
Ideally, every voter should become informed on every issue and every candidate. But when voters fail in that duty, they have a derivative duty to stand aside and let the more informed cast a relevant vote.
If the voter doesn't want someone else making decisions for her, she should fulfill her duty to become informed. Only the informed voter is in a position to better the destiny of us all.
Wagner is director of the Project in Professional Ethics at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
