[jozo]

I think you should vote, even if you don't seem to understand what representation[1] means. You also seem to only refer to liberals, but at the same time you say people shouldn't vote? I thought individual freedom and equal rights was a core principle in liberalism, but I guess you are only counting positive freedom.

If you really believe that people shouldn't have a say in elections based on your criteria, you should at least ask them to actively do so by casting a blank vote. Otherwise your motives might be misinterpreted as trying to demoralize people who don't share your views from voting.

And as someone once said: "It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so"

Not necessarily true just because someone said so, but I do agree with the point being made.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_(politics)

[CWuestefeld]

You also seem to only refer to liberals,... I thought individual freedom and equal rights was a core principle in liberalism, but I guess you are only counting positive freedom.

Huh? I mentioned JS Mill and Locke, Mises and Hayek. The first two were classical liberals. That's a very different thing than what we label "Liberal" (with a capital "L") today. You'll find individual freedom at the core of their work (e.g., Mill's advocacy for women's suffrage).

Mises and Hayek would, I imagine, also consider themselves as classical liberals, but by their time the definition (in America) of "liberal" was changing (which is why I drew the capital-L distinction above). Both of them wrote extensively about the primacy of the individual.

You reference positive freedom, but the idea itself wasn't coined until the mid-1900s, long after Mill and Locke were dead, and with much of Hayek's career behind him. But I feel safe in saying that none of them would find much of value in the concept of positive freedom.

But my advocacy that you understand something is not the same thing as saying that you must agree with something. Indeed, in order to disagree with an idea, you must first understand what that idea is -- know your enemy, right?

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the government backs up its policies with force and violence, ultimately. Thus, advocating a policy is, in the end, a threat of violence against those who disagree. If you're going to do that, you better be damned sure that your ideas are correct.

[jozo]

You must understand that other people don't necessarily share your idea of what's important. To me it seems you are saying that people shouldn't vote unless they know these subjects from this particular viewpoint and in extension therefor also share your view of what's important.

If you made the argument that no one should vote because no one can fully understand all different viewpoints and you yourself won't be voting, then I would at least understand the argument. But I don't think that is what you are saying.