I make it clear to my students that it is not only their right but their duty to arrive at their own conclusions. They are free to defend rendition, waterboarding, or any other aspect of America's post-9/11 armamentarium. But I challenge their right to tune out the world, and I question any system or society that can produce such students and call them educated. I am concerned for the nation when a cohort of students so talented and bright is oblivious to all such matters. If they are failing us, it is because we have failed them.
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As a nation, we spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about illegal immigration and painfully little on what it means to be a citizen, beyond the legal status conferred by accident of birth or public processing. We are too busy building a wall around us to notice that we are shutting ourselves in. Intent on exporting democracy — spending blood and billions in pursuit of it abroad — we have shown a decided lack of interest in exercising or promoting democracy at home.
This ties into a discussion I had a while back. I think, on a moral level, voting should be mandatory. It is more than a right, it is a duty. The problem comes when you try to actually make it policy. Voting day is not a national holiday, workers are not guaranteed time off, voting credentials are constantly questioned inappropriately, etc. Also, how do you enforce it? Economic penalties? A large portion of the people that aren't voting for all these reasons are doing so because they are already poor. Several other countries do levy a fine for not voting, even absentee, but I'm just not sure that's fair, given our country's current makeup. And I suppose voting is useless if the voter is uninformed, so Gup's perspective may have more relevance. We are in complete agreement in that democracy requires participation - if there is no will to participate, how can we hope to control our own fates?
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