In my latest column for the
Aitkin Independent Age, I go from local to national to civilizational politics.
I don’t have an
opinion on the Aitkin school referendum. I don’t own any property that
would be taxed nor have I any children and if I did I would home school
them. I’ve been inside the high school and read all the Age has printed on the matter, but I still don’t feel like I know enough to make a judgment.
Therefore, I’m
going to rely on the judgment of someone else, who knows the school, the
students, the district and the administration very well, whom I admire
and whose opinion I trust completely; and I will simply vote however he
says I should.
Some might call this a dereliction of
responsibility, that the power of the vote should never be based on
anything but one’s own judgments. But representative government means
entrusting the right to participate in government to others all the
time. We have referenda on the local and state level but not national;
this is not a direct democracy. We vote for politicians and are asked to
trust their decisions rather than make decisions ourselves. I trust the
person I mentioned infinitely more than I trust any politician, so I
have no problem deferring to his judgment on this referendum.
This brings me to the current presidential race, the most intense and polarized of my experience.
Read the rest here.
No comments:
Post a Comment