Many times, over the last couple of days, I have heard someone saying that they have a right to have an opinion.
Well, I say that this right is also connected with a certain duty; if you want to have an opinion that will have any value in society, you must first get informed enough to be able to base your opinion on a reasonable argument.
It may seem obvious, but to many people it isn't.
I spent my weekend at grandma's. Me and her have different views on presidential elections that just ended in Czech republic. And that's okay. The problem was, she could not explain a single reason for her choice that was factually relevant.
Her candidate's campaign was aggressive, used false facts and was generally built around "low" instincts, such as nationalism, ad hominem attacks, rallying the good ole' country against the cities and its lazy bourgeoisie, attacking the other candidate's family...
and she admitted all that. She also well remembers when her candidate was a prime minister, how corruption rate multiplied several times back then.
Why did she vote for him then?
She couldn't really say. She blamed my candidate for not being Czech enough (he was forced to emigrate by communists for a long time), for being to old, for being too rich...
She said my opinion doesn't have any value, because I am not experienced enough, I'm too young. She said that everyone in her county votes for her candidate and there are many intelligent people.
Not only this was a personal attack, not a political argument, it was also completely irrelevant. It simply cannot be said that older = more experienced in politics. Neither it equals more intelligent = "better" political opinion.
Informed political opinion can be only built by one thing: getting informed. Getting information today is cheap and easy, so there is really no excuse. If you want someone to respect your opinion, you must build it on a certain knowledge.
It's not called political science for no reason.
Politics = science. A social science.
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