Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Alasdair MacIntyre agrees with me

Via Verbum Ipsum, I discover this essay on voting by eminent ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre (his book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? was one of my required readings in a comparative ethics class I took at CUA). Note that his primary reason for not voting is exactly the same as what I laid out in my own essay on voting: it's an honest moral choice when faced with unpalatable alternatives.

There is, however, one major difference: in my argument, I say that not voting is part of how the system works. MacIntyre is saying that a considered refusal to vote is a rejection of the system. I disagree with him here. If Americans were obliged to vote, then yes, a refusal to vote would be an obvious rejection of the system. But in the US, non-voting is a live option and part of the process, not, as the misguided argue, opting out of the process.

_

No comments:

Post a Comment

READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING!

All comments are subject to approval before they are published, so they will not appear immediately. Comments should be civil, relevant, and substantive. Anonymous comments are not allowed and will be unceremoniously deleted. For more on my comments policy, please see this entry on my other blog.