Well argued. In our representative democracy curiosity and inquiry must be promoted and defended both today and likely for…well, for as long as democracy stands. What your father so visibly did is as the Founders of our republic intended for her citizens, to become educated about the candidates and their platforms. After all, while we don’t yet know which of them will be our next president, one candidate certainly will be sworn-in on January 20, 2017.

Are we today any more enlightened in listening to views with which we disagree than were past voters? I’m a bit doubtful. My own father, who was only a decade older than your own, never ceased to amaze me of his willingness to at least hear what political and social opposites had to say. Less doubtful is the breadth of the tools available to those seeking to promote the civic passivity that is group-think. But those same tools are available to people such as you, and to all of us, in promoting active civil curiosity and inquiry.

I had not thought about it, but it does seem like knowing well, that is in a well-organized, comparative, ans searchable way, our possible political leader’s policies and statements is a Big Problem, as Gerald Zhang-Schmidt recently argued. Interestingly, it doesn’t really seem like there’s an app for that.