Date Posted:15:49:36 08/13/05 Sat Author: Bembix Subject: Yeah, I'd worry . . . In reply to:
TastingTheBlood
's message, "Thanks, Kathy!" on 22:39:59 08/12/05 Fri
It would be dishonest for me to say otherwise. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't worry if the same person were 65. I worry that my bishop votes. I worry that most of the members in my ward vote. I worry for one simple reason:
When the president-elect takes his oath of office, he makes a promise to the people. It's quite simple. Is it possible, or even reasonable to think that you or anyone can judge whether or not a person is keeping his promise if you don't even know what that promise is about? I would dare to say that most members and most non-members have no clue about what the president-elect is promising when he raises his hand and takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the united states. And that describes most people who vote.
I think that there needs to be an age where people are expected to have a reasonable sense of what the proper role of government should be. I suppose that there are some who are much younger than 18 who have more knowledge about it than there are who are much older than 18. Knowing what I know today and from the kind of person I was at 18, or even at 28, I would raise the voting age considerably above 21. An alternative might be to give a qualification test to see if they have at least a Constitution 101 education.
Most members ignore half of the counsel that we get from the Church. We are asked to vote, but we are also asked to study the issues. It's impossible to understand the issues unless one understands the laws. If the issue was that one candidate wants to increase government control of parks and wilderness areas and the other candidate was opposed to it, it would be quite simple to see what the supreme law of the land says about it. But most people don't bother. And that scares me. We have the government we deserve.
