{"id":95,"date":"2007-12-20T14:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T14:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2007\/12\/20\/bringing-out-the-atheist-vote\/"},"modified":"2007-12-20T14:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T14:54:00","slug":"bringing-out-the-atheist-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2007\/12\/20\/bringing-out-the-atheist-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing out the atheist vote?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently in voting limbo. I&#8217;m not a Canadian citizen yet, so I can&#8217;t vote in my country of residence. And while I am eligible to vote in the UK, I choose not to; I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s fair for me to, say, vote for a party that might raise taxes (I&#8217;m a bit of a lefty) if I don&#8217;t have to actually pay them.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s an interesting development in UK politics that might change things. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Liberal_democrats\">Liberal Democrats<\/a>, the third-largest UK party and the most left-leaning of the big three, just appointed a new leader, Nick Clegg. I have to admit I don&#8217;t know much about this bloke, but a headline on the BBC website caught my eye yesterday. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/7151346.stm\">Clegg has publicly stated that he does not believe in God.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I would never vote for someone just because they&#8217;re an atheist, but it is definitely an attractive idea to have someone in office who will not be influenced by outdated religious ideas. (There&#8217;s an interesting quote from Tony Blair in the same BBC article &#8211; he was scared of discussing his religious beliefs while in office as he thought people would think he was &#8220;a nutter&#8221;. That says a lot about the differences between British and American politics I think!) I&#8217;ve voted for the Lib Dems before and I&#8217;ll definitely keep an eye on how Nick Clegg develops as a leader. I might just be tempted to become part of the ex-pat vote next time around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently in voting limbo. I&#8217;m not a Canadian citizen yet, so I can&#8217;t vote in my country of residence. And while I am eligible to vote in the UK, I choose not to; I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s fair for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2007\/12\/20\/bringing-out-the-atheist-vote\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,19,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-personal","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}