I am going to do an off-beat post today (but it still indirectly relates to local issues).
I’ve always maintained that people should be required to take logic, political science and personal finance in high schools. It’s absurd that we hand over a diploma to someone for finishing 12 years of schooling (not including kindergarten and junior kindergarten) without even teaching them how to balance a cheque book (still useful even though we don’t use cheque books anymore) or even the very basics of logical thinking.
Heck theoretically voting could even be a factor of someone successfully completing logic and political science courses. Is 18 a magic number where people suddenly become responsible enough to vote? I would argue that a 16 year old with understanding of deductive reasoning and knowledge of political system is more entitled to the right to vote than a 20 year old who doesn’t. I am not actually proposing this, I am merely stating this to show how strongly I feel about giving people proper tools to survive in the complex world we now live in.
I honestly cringe every time I see questionable reasoning from people. Even journalists show that sometimes. Okay I lie, journalists do it a lot but I think that’s intentional because that’s what pleases their readers. This allows politicians to control the masses a lot more than they should be able to do in a democracy.
Over the next few weeks I’ll analyze some arguments commonly presented (and sadly, accepted) by people that are about as valid as 1+1=11. Just because it seems logical, it doesn’t mean it is.
My pet-peeve for today? It’s when people switch their frame of references and arguments depending on the topic they are dealing with. Pro-life advocates suddenly became okay with the death penalty; a person would argue for gun ownership based on individual rights until he’s blue and yet would support lower privacy safeguard and higher spying power for the government based on the security; same person may argue for a smaller government based on the mistrust of governments but then happily give up civil liberties that require huge trust in governments.
Do you have examples of your own?
PRIVACY.. that’s my big one. I won’t even mention where I stand on this personally, but it is SO often you hear people wanting to protect certain information about themselves, but EXPECT to have access to certain information about others for safety reasons (or other). (E.g. some people are against national ID cards, and believe their internet browsing traffic should not be monitored, but they also believe in gun registries, and knowing the addresses of convicted criminals, and GPSing their 18yr old daughter’s boyfriend at all times (Sure, there are valid arguments for both sides)
…BUT THEN they’ll open a facebook account and tell us who their friends and relatives are, post pictures of their kids talking about their hobbies, fears, and school schedule, details on where they work, why their dog is sick, what they just ate for lunch, and when they’re going on extended vacations. SERIOUSLY?
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Zeeshan Hamid replies on July 6th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I think the next generation will have much different views on privacy than the previous generation did. City of Toronto, for instance, put up all financial contributions as a public record. So I can quickly go and see that Fred is a registered who donated money to and voted in the election. In the US which party you belong to, your full address, house price you paid and when you bought the house etc. are all public records often available online for free.
My pet peeve is similar to yours. It’s not about what opinion one holds about privacy, but rather how inconsistent people are.
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