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[James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>]

On Nov 9, 2004, at 12:13 AM, Ian Meyer wrote:

> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 23:10:12 -0500 (EST), rua AT mindspring.com
> <rua AT mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > "I don't know about anyone else, but to me, someone who puts blind
> > faith in a canidate for no reason other than its who their pastor,
> > family, whatever told them to vote for, is ignorant and backwards."
> > --The way I grew up, I would have knee-jerked agreed, but then I 
> > thought about all those kids who the left was hoping to vote because 
> > Eminem said so, or The Boss, or Madonna. And then I think of a 
> > life-long member of a church, that has been given good guidance and 
> > assistance over the years by their pastor, and I wonder who is being 
> > the most ignorant.
>
> <snip>
>
> following *anyone's* lead in voting, because thats how they told you
> to vote is wrong.
>
> yes, i have as little regard for people who voted for kerry because
> Eminem told them to as for the religious who voted as their Pastor
> told them to. The "guidance and assistance" as you put it, however
> valid a point, is moot. I can help you out all I want, but I still
> expect you to, in the words of the Oracle, "make up your own damn
> mind" who to vote for.

Good point - and extra points for the Matrix reference.  But, just as 
the Oracle provided guidance, and then left our heroes to choose, so do 
experts and other trusted authorities provide context, even though they 
don't pull the voting lever.

Following the lead of others is how the world works.  For example, I'm 
a Mac user, and a fan of the fink project.  When I have a problem, I 
ask other fink users for help on the email list.  Many people can and 
do help, but I tend to trust advice from the developers and package 
maintainers.  I don't necessarily do exactly what they suggest, and I 
may sometimes have to pick-and-choose when they offer contradictory 
advice or alternative hypotheses.  But I certainly trust them more, in 
that context, than I trust other people.

(Okay, that may have seemed a little heavy-handed.  But you know why I 
picked that example. =)

That's not to say that voting is the same as application 
troubleshooting.  But the issue is one of trust, not the applicability 
of metaphors - yours with The Matrix, or mine with fink.  And free 
societies work better in high-trust environments than they do in 
low-trust environments.  Even subsets of societies - for example, some 
people have learned to trust people like Ana Marie Cox or Markos 
Moulitsas or Glenn Reynolds or Dan Rather or whomever.  (For further 
reading, I suggest _Trust_ by Francis Fukayama.  It's a seriously good 
book.)

So voting for a candidate because people you trust have laid out good 
arguments in favor of or against one candidate or another is actually a 
very *good* reason to vote for one of them.  Because, as you said, you 
still have to "make up your own damn mind" - about whom to trust, and 
why.

--
James Dasher
misterdasher dot com
IM misterdasher