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Old 02-26-2007, 10:12 AM   #23 (permalink)
politicophile
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The fundamental problem with this poll is that it abstracts away some important factors. Namely, in a real U.S. election, you are given a choice between two candidates. If Candidate A loses, then Candidate B will be elected.

My problem, then, with asserting that you are unwilling to vote for a [group] is that it seems to imply that you would rather vote for a non-[group] with a disagreeable ideology than for a [group] who better represents your ideological committments. In addition to being extremely non-ideological, this position strikes me as bigoted, by which I mean that it requires you to paint all members of a group as sharing an undesirable characteristic. So, while some 72-year-olds are in bad mental or physical health, I think it is highly inappropriate to categorically decide to not vote for someone in that category just because it is not uncommon for them to possess a negative characteristic.

The majority of people belonging to any social category whatsoever would make very poor Presidents: why hold this specifically against minority groups? This kind of reactionary intolerance is not something I have come to expect from TFP.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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