Quote:
Originally Posted by DomnNC
These are the 22 states considering or drafting legislation similar to Arizona's.
Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
Let me amend this as I was not deflecting for Cody but responding to numerous comments made about "ignorant voters":
People seem to forget that during these economic hard times that some people cannot afford television, radios, newspapers, INTERNET ACCESS, COMPUTERS, or treks into a nearby larger city where one may learn of political activism and what is going on in their own back yard.
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Actually, beyond all these you list above I am MOST concerned that there are people in the US Congress who are seriously talking about trying to repeal the 14th Amendment. That, quite honestly, would be my breaking point. If the 14 is repealed or seriously changed, I'm gone because the ONLY thing that puts my mind at ease as I watch my country head down the track toward barbarism are the 1st and 14th Amendments.
As far as the argument re: access to information. I don't buy it. There are public libraries with newspapers and Internet access. Radios are cheap--it doesn't have to be an expensive radio. Most larger cities have free newspapers. One can go to a neighbor and say "hey, when you're done with your daily paper can I have it so I can look for a job and keep up on the world?" There are countless Americans who couldn't name three Supreme Court Justices, either of their Senators, a single representative from their state, their governor or their mayor but I guarantee you that they could tell you absolutely minute detail every last doing of some Kardashian sister or Snooki or 'the Situation' or Lindsay Lohan or what Bristol Palin wore on Dancing with the Stars. There are people living in genuine, honest-to-goodness Third World countries who will find some way to stay informed while we Americans, awash in a sea of information, will go out of our way to be blissfully, blindingly ignorant.
Now, I learned a different ethic growing up. I was taught that as a black American it was incumbent upon me to be aware of the issues of the day. "Ignorance is a luxury for white people, we negroes can't afford it" is something my mother would say to us on a regular basis (and yes, she used the term negroes because that's the term she grew up with).
And you know, I have to say that this pretense we Americans are in love with that there is no substantive difference between someone who knows about a subject and someone who doesn't is nothing short of madness.
If someone believes that global climate change isn't happening, they're wrong. It's not that they have a different opinion, they're simply *wrong*. If someone believes that Iraq had WMD in March of 2003 or had an active nuclear weapons program, they're wrong. Again, not a difference of opinion, just plain out wrong. If someone believes that evolution didn't happen or that there is some controversy within biology such that working biologists think creationism should be taught in public schools, they're wrong. If someone believes that gays and lesbians are more likely to be child molesters, or are more likely to have kids with social pathologies, they are wrong. Not holding a different opinion but demonstrably wrong in an empirically verifiable fashion.
There really ARE people who really ARE ignorant--willfully, deliberately, ignorant. Not uninformed--my granddaughter is uninformed on a whole raft of subjects but she's three. I'm talking about people who are ignorant, who hold forth on subjects expressing their opinions as if they were facts and then get bent out of shape when it is pointed out to them that their facts are entirely wrong. That is ignorance and ignorance is not something we should encourage or suffer lightly or long. Some of these ignorant people vote. I'm not saying they shouldn't have the *right* to vote but it's a mistake to pretend that an informed voter and an uninformed voter are doing the same thing--they aren't.
Cheers
Aj