[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Shearwater

I would agree that it is a skill. But to me, it is very much a right to which every citizen of a free state is entitled.

I'll be more precise: it may be a right or not, but without the skill to be free and use freedom, and without you learning that, the right to be free does not have any meaning that you could fill with substance. It is pointless.

And to make one thing quite clear: There is no such thing as self-explanatory.

Offensichtliuch. Selbsterklärend. Selbstzeigend. Call it what you want

To revert to the freedom issue: Because I care about freedom, I strongly oppose any attempt, even a hypothetical one, to deny anyone the right to vote.

And I say that somebody not knowing what he is doing and why, is a threat to himself and to others. Nobody should be given powers (not even the power influence political landscape with his perosnal vote on election day), if he is unable and too uneducated to understand the consequences of what he decides for or against.

What you are doing (or so it appears to me) is that you sort people into the cateogires 'fit to vote' and 'unfit to vote'. You cannot determint that objectively. It's always subjective, like it or not. Stupid people do stupid things, and because they are free, they themselves are responsible for what they do.

Go back to what I said on the difference between freedom as a right and freedom as a skill. Without the latter, the first means nothing. A person cannot be worried by living in a tyranny if he has no idea of what freedom should be. and you can't miss something if you do not know that it exists. You cannot make use of and benefit from a skill that you have not learned. You cannot use knowledge you have not gained. You cannot reasonably guess where you have had not the educational basis and necessary information. It's not all a question of taste and opinion only. Some things, many things you cannot value and/or understand if you lack the information and the skill that are prerequisites to it.

Freedom is a burden. By that nobody should conclude that people should be saved from that burden. It is a burden that makes us needing to invest more work and energy and ressource (to raise it, to keep it, to defend it), but it also turns us into self-detemrined, responsible individuals that take respnsibility form their own lifes (instead of claiming the state, the party, the law, the whatever being responsible for our wellbeing). It means that people needs training in order to be able to bear that burden, like an athlwete trains in order to train the race or win the match, or - at least - being competitive even if winning is not his ultimate goal.

Doing that training, increases the number of options available to us in our life. And that is what is called to be free: have a range of options. The right of freedom only claims that such options may exist, and that you have the right to raise them. But raising them you must yourself.

And where such right for freedom does not exist, in an opressive regome for example, you ablöity to act freely and rasie the number of options possible nevertheless can form and create it. First comes your skill of freedom. The right of freedom always is just a product of that, it always comes second only.

The right to become free, is all nice and well. But it means nothing as long as you are not able to get there. It's remains to be only political catchphrasing then. A person having no legs does not need the explicit right to run. And it cannot make use of it even if being given that right.

If you would like to know if people who vote do so because they have more than just an opinion of, or a vague idea about, what they're doing, you'd have to be able to look inside their heads. That's something nobody can or should do.

The Whal-o-mat is meant as a serious tool to help people decide where to make their precious tiny cross on that ballot. that is the problem here: that it is meant serious. By that it makes obsolete the need that people should raise their awareness and educational level on politics to become able to find by themselves what they want to vote for. The crutch no longer is the tool to help you becoming fit again and stay mobile until then, but the crutch is declared the reason why health is no longer needed.

Remember what I said about the lowering of school standards to raise the classes mean score although students do not learn better? The same principle works here.

And I like your sarcasm

I am not sarcastic here, nowhere.