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tcome of an election by withholding that one vote instead of by giving it to this or that candidate then that is his prerogative and there should be no moral imperative to cast the vote anyhow what if a voter dislikes all of the candidates in an election and is not interested in voting for any of them are we to look down upon him for refraining from giving his vote to a politician that he dislikes what about the person who finds that he has better things to do than vote the person who would prefer to spend his time working or playing with his children or sitting at home reading a book because he is not terribly animated about an election for one reason or another some people see a person who does not care about the fate of his country all else being equal i see an individual who is content to mind his own business and who might reasonably wish that everyone else would return the favor besides which the people who are so anxious about the fate of the country can cast their own votes it comes down to the fact that the institution of voting and all of its political implications exist to serve the individual citizen not vice versa just as with freedom of speech and the right to bear arms the right to vote necessarily implies the right to refrain from engaging in the activity in the end the right to vote is something that is there for the individual citizen s sake and therefore there is nothing wrong with each citizen deciding for himself whether or not to employ it in a given election it is tempting for someone making my argument to bring up the fact that most get out the vote types are not so anxious to see people vote as they are anxious to see people vote for their preferred candidates for example a democrat no matter now incredulous or indignant he may become upon hearing that a fellow citizen does not care about politics enough to vote is more likely to prefer that that fellow citizen refrain from voting than that he vote republican there is nothing wrong with this it is just a reflection of the democrat s own concern for the fate of the country and his desire to make it right according to his own moral compass but the point is that most get out the vote activists are actually targeting one group or another in the hopes that their respective preferred candidates will receive the extra votes that are cast however while the above point remains true it is not intellectually honest to base my own argument around it because there are indeed a few people who sincerely believe that a vote for anyone is better than a withheld vote that is there is the occasional democrat who would rather see his fellow citizen vote republican than not vote at all so let us consider the rational intellectual reasons why it might be objectively true that the more votes there are cast the better the inherent good of the situation period actually i can think of only one such reason perhaps some people believe that a high voter turnout is necessary for the preservation of the liberty in other words if voter turnout is consistently low then it will be all the easier for that right to disappear and vice versa i do not think that all people who think that voting is so important are also conspiracy theorists convinced that there is a plot to cancel elections and install an oligarchy or despot however it is true that in a modern democracy the size of the usa in this day and age it is not unheard of for certain freedoms and liberties to be slowly and surely watered down and washed away it is one thing to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist but in general being vigilant about our rights as americans is not unwarranted however in this instance i would not be concerned about the right to vote disappearing as voter turnout decreases first of all even people who do not vote appreciate the importance of the right to vote second of all it would be impossible to sneak such an outrageous act past the american citizens you see with speech it can be done slowly first a few words are banned from the airwaves then certain topics become unfair around election time and so on it is the same with the right to bear arms first you have to be licensed then you have to have a background check then you have to wait extra time then you can only have certain kinds of firearms then you have to store them a certain way then you can have the gun but not actually use it etc and even with these examples plenty of americans have raised their voices in opposition to the encroachment on their freedoms given that the right to vote is a zero sum game either you have it completely or you have not even a hint of it it would be blatant and overt if the government did anything to remove it and the outcry would come from all sectors not just the folks who actually participate in elections besides which i do not find any reason to believe that there is any movement to restrict the right to vote or that there will be any such movement in the foreseeable future there is no political reason for it after all and should the day come when the government does try to work such mischief then our problems as a republic will be greater than anything that a get out the vote campaign could ever solve something along the lines of a get out the firearms campaign would more likely be warranted in addition to having my reservations about the motives of those who profess voting to be more of a duty than a right i am in fact convinced of a few reasons why certain people should not vote not that i would ever recommend any moral or legal imperative against voting that is i withhold ad hominem judgment on the matter but i think that objectively speaking it is in some cases better for a citizen to refrain from voting let us consider the large percentage of non voters whose reason for not voting is indecision or apathy most members of that group are probably not very educated about politics therefore it is best if they refrain from affecting the outcome of an election in which the educated engaged involved active citizens have cast their ballots after all elections are not about the assuaging of people s feelings nor are they as the media would have us believe about the careers of the politicians no the elections are fundamentally about the fate of the nation and the affect that subsequent policies will have on people and society therefore every indifferent joe should not be dragged to the polls just to cast a random ballot and perhaps radically alter the outcome of an election from the way it would have gone had only the politically informed people voted in other words quality is better than quantity again i am not recommending that there be some ordinance requiring a certain level of political savvy in order to acquire voting eligibility not least because no american should have the authority to decide how every other american must answer certain questions before he is allowed to vote that is a power best left out of any mortal s hands all i am saying is that the less politically educated the citizen the more likely he is to decide on his own to stay home on election day and this naturally occurring system happens to be a good one that no one need tinker with there is nothing wrong with it just because the vote counter will have one less ballot to go through in fact i wonder if i should not turn that accusation around and direct it at my opponents in this argument surely if voting is a civic duty then as with every other civic duty the citizen has a responsibility to be diligent about it in other words if someone must vote then he must not only cast a ballot but he must take good care to do so in such a way as to affect society in the best way possible after all what other civic duty or anything else for that matter will have such a major effect on not only the citizen himself but on all 300 million of his fellow citizens so if my opponents are so inclined to make voting a responsibility would they also require people to be educated about it would they have people spend their precious free time reading a certain amount of newspaper articles per week so that they vote in an informed manner this is not even to touch upon the question of who gets to decide which newspapers and articles count as sufficiently informative and unbiased and which are not worth the paper on which they are printed perhaps on the contrary my opponents would overlook even the most remarkable ignorance just to collect another ballot with a random uninformed guess caliber hole cast in it and damn the consequences to the country either way my opponents are presented with a problem do they take the duty to vote seriously enough to require the logically corresponding responsibilities which necessarily include intrusions into citizens lives or do they profess that voting is a duty only in a superficial sense the solution no doubt is to recognize voting for what it actually is not a duty at all but a right sacred only for the more general political liberty that its existence implies and justly given entirely to the discretion of each individual citizen posted by daniel mencher at 10 51 pm 6 comments sunday october 21 2007 science and religion couldn t evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why were it not for the occasional glimpse of intelligent commentary strewn about the average episode of south park it would be a real disconcertion that such an astute insightful question must be attributed to a show so generally foul but the wit that the show s creators manage to display at least once per episode make it easier to admit that i first heard that line from the character stan marsh and that i immediately understood the evolution creation debate much more clearly at that moment in a recent article the origin of species and everything else national review 10 8 07 jim manzi points out scientific atheists put forward two propositions as logically deducible from science that evolution eliminates the need for a creator and that evolution has no ultimate goal or purpose the mistake that such atheists make is to consider evolution an end in and of itself on the contrary evolution is a mere tool of creation the first of the atheists propositions is easily disproven by applying aristotle s realization that any chain of cause and effect must ultimately begin with an uncaused cause as manzi puts it ironically it was my college philosophy professor daniel dennett a world famous proponent of atheism who first got me thinking about this topic when on the first day of lecture he dismissed the class with the question why is there something instead of nothing every time that we come up with an answer of what caused something to come about we would be remiss not to then wonder what in turn was the cause of that cause even if we identify a chain of events going back to the big bang we have to consider who put that ball of mass there and what caused it to adhere to what we recognize as the laws of physics and even if scientists could discern the exact force that created the mass that banged big so to speak the question would remain whence came that exact force i am convinced therefore that there must necessarily be an immortal power that has always been and will always be and from which the rest of creation comes about that is g d whatever the case the question of ultimate origins is not one that science is meant to answer as per the very definition of the scientific method itself manzi says it well a scientific theory is a falsifiable rule that relates cause to effect a scientist would therefore be out of order in claiming that any scientific theory including evolution eliminates the need for a creator the second proposition that manzi identifies is not disproven quite as easily as the first but it is necessary to address the point manzi himself refers to a very keen but very complex and fairly boring analogy involving computer software known as genetic algorithms in order to make his point those who are interested in reading his explanation in full are encouraged to do so but i would rather speak more generally here in short evolution must have a goal in the same way that any applied algorithm must have a goal it takes a large number of possible genetic combinations and even as new combinations join the mix weeds out less fit combinations so that over time the collective gene pool becomes fitter and fitter it would be astoundingly difficult for us to determine what the genetic goal of evolution is but that does not mean that the goal does not exist or even that figuring it out is literally impossible it just means that as human beings we do not have the lifespan or brainpower to do it on our own and we have not come up with the correct technology to accomplish that goal for us the way to determine evolution s genetic goal would be to take all possible gene combinations in other words all possible organisms compare their abilities to survive and reproduce over time and see which one has the most fitness of course as i said we humans rather lack the ability to do that but the fact that we cannot figure it out does not mean that the conclusion does not exist after all the algorithm known as evolution is literally performing that task for us as we speak if rather than waiting until the end of time we would like to know the answer a bit quicker then perhaps we might collect the genetic information of every species on earth and re create the world in a computer model that we can fast forward so to speak here i am going to hear some protests that say something to the effect of but you are not taking into account the fact that the physical environment of earth is always randomly changing so the evolution of species far from being the tool of some ultimate goal of creation is really just a reflection of the fact that some species do better in certain environments than others but that argument does not hold water first of all that argument does not take into account the evolution of species that takes place within a constant environment once a new species comes onto the scene in a certain environment if it is more fit than the species that were there before it then the older species might become much fewer in number or perhaps die out altogether within a few years the exact same spot on earth without a changing landscape or climate may have a very different gene pool that can only be altered if a new species fitter still comes onto the scene evolution really does imply a gene pool that is destined to approach in the mathematical sense of the word ultimate fitness over time second of all and more substantially the changes that take place in the earth s environment are not necessarily random people tend to forget that the earth and all of its natural phenomena are just another small part of the workings of the universe as a whole the natural environment changes according to physical forces that have been present in the universe since long before the first life...