Yesterday, I had a conversation with a woman who recognized my name from some political work I did a couple of years ago. The issue concerned the process of drawing political boundaries around school districts, and this woman, a retired school teacher, disagreed with the way the legislature had set up the voting.
When I told her that we'd have to agree to disagree, she slammed her hand onto the table and angrily stormed off, ending the conversation.
I have no quarrel with her passion in standing up for something she believes is unfair; where I have a problem is that she had such a hardened viewpoint that she wasn't even willing to explore the reasoning behind the legislation. In this particular case there was a sound reason why the legislature had decided to limit who could vote in creating a new school district using a particular procedure. (There were two other procedures in the statues, one that required no vote at all and one that allowed everyone to vote.)
In this particular case, the people who were not allowed to vote on the boundary issue had the ability to vote on other issues that the people who did get a vote on the school district boundaries did not, but which impacted them in terms of property taxes.
If the voting had been universal, then the one faction would have been able to force the other to subsidize their policies. Policies that the legislature felt needed to be moderated.
This type of knee-jerk reaction, and an emotional unwillingness to consider both sides of a question are why a democracy can never work. Fortunately, we live in a republic where the legislators do the due dilligence. Unfortunately, they are still dependant on being democratically elected.
When I told her that we'd have to agree to disagree, she slammed her hand onto the table and angrily stormed off, ending the conversation.
I have no quarrel with her passion in standing up for something she believes is unfair; where I have a problem is that she had such a hardened viewpoint that she wasn't even willing to explore the reasoning behind the legislation. In this particular case there was a sound reason why the legislature had decided to limit who could vote in creating a new school district using a particular procedure. (There were two other procedures in the statues, one that required no vote at all and one that allowed everyone to vote.)
In this particular case, the people who were not allowed to vote on the boundary issue had the ability to vote on other issues that the people who did get a vote on the school district boundaries did not, but which impacted them in terms of property taxes.
If the voting had been universal, then the one faction would have been able to force the other to subsidize their policies. Policies that the legislature felt needed to be moderated.
This type of knee-jerk reaction, and an emotional unwillingness to consider both sides of a question are why a democracy can never work. Fortunately, we live in a republic where the legislators do the due dilligence. Unfortunately, they are still dependant on being democratically elected.
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