Compulsory Voting: The New Fatwa?
Sunday, January 17th, 2010Voter apathy is something to be lamented about. However, the quick-fix solutions that politicians and people offer for national (and also for the not the larger) problems is to be lamented even more. It seems that idiocy is at a premium when it comes to solving problems that affect the masses.
Some years ago I read about the inmates of a home for mentally handicapped. The directors, or someone of that ilk, decided to sterilize all the women inmates because they were repeatedly getting pregnant. The unscrupulous men who were forcing themselves upon these helpless women were not blamed because the directors, presumably, discovered that the act of getting pregnant was more serious than the act of rape. It also did not occur to them that sterilizing the men could have the same result. Even if that had occurred to them, they would not have dared to do that because imposing a punishment on normal people is not as easy as imposing a solution on hapless women.