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Comment by muerdeme | Hacker News Reader

How is protection from politics protecting the kids from themselves?

Given how much it pisses me off, I kinda wish I were still protected from politics.

If I said "woman need to be protected from politics", I think you'd justifiably interpret that as suggesting that they be protected from themselves. Maybe you think they should be protected from themselves, but that is what you're doing, essentially, when you try to shield someone from exposure to ideas and the capacity/responsibility to make judgments about those ideas.

Put another way: you're trying to deny them the opportunity to make a certain choice (that is, vote) for their own good. That is the definition of protecting someone from them-self.

Your logic doesn't work. There is no similarity between "protecting women" and "protecting children". Women don't need to be protected. Children obviously do, at least from some things.

You misunderstand me. I was not, in that comment, stating that women and children should be protected (or not) from the same things.

I was pointing out, simply, that (whether right or wrong), being "protected" from politics is in fact protection from oneself.

Now, you may feel that children should be protected from themselves, whereas women should not. That is a perfectly consistent position. The grandparent seemed to be unclear that that is what you were advocating, and that is the confusion I was clearing up.

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