Published early July, 2008 in the North Penn Reporter (www.thereporteronline.com)
" Just to fill you in on the necessary information, it is June of 2008, and according to Netcraft Internet Services as of May 2008, there are 168,408,112 websites on the internet. The vast expanses of the internet houses one of the greatest innovations of the 21st century: unfettered access to news, research information, and uncensored opinion.
I’m not going to try to advocate a political position here, but rather I wish to demonstrate a point. If you still believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim that hates America, or that John McCain is an evil man fully bent on handing over our lives to giant corporations, you have not been a responsible consumer of information. With the wide availability of the internet and the sheer volume of websites dedicated to politics I am astounded at the number of people that think of the world in terms of absolutes.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a nineteen years old college music student; in 2004 I campaigned for George W. Bush’s reelection and recently switched my party registration from Republican to Democrat and am going to campaign for Barack Obama in the fall of this year. When I was in middle school, my history/American government teacher Mr. Righter taught us something, not through direct speech, but by example, that I think everyone today should know, and take to heart: read the news, read lots of news from lots of places, and read it all the time.
It is our job as adults, voters, and human beings to be informed about the world around us. Part of that job involves paying attention to the political happenings of the country and the world. When doing this, we should treat it like being a detective investigating a crime: Listen to both sides, do the leg work, find out the real truth, and who has the honestly best idea, not who has the idea that sounds like it will benefit you the most. This isn’t very hard to do either. The major media outlets still provide some of the best resources available. The websites of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and ABC News provide the responsible citizen with an abundance of stories, commentary, and opinion. Yes, many news organizations have a latent bias to some extent, but by taking in news and opinion from a wide range of sources, one allows them self the ability to sift through lies and fact picking and reach the truth, and this method doesn’t even involve going into the vast number of blogs and personal analysis pages on the web.
It has been said that Montgomery County and the surrounding area is a bellwether for the entire nation. As such, we should strive to be some of the most informed citizens in the country, and make our best effort to make a decision in the voting booth that is based on honest research, and an open-minded perspective. As such, I encourage you to take the time this election year and do your homework. And if you don’t like the idea of just doing it for yourself, remember that you’ll be setting an example for everyone you know, which certainly can’t hurt anybody. So start the reading, and I’ll see you in November."
