Since March 16 is national Freedom of Information day, I thought it fitting to focus today on knowledge. After all, why is it that we demand a right to remain informed, why reporters consistently fight for the public’s right to remain informed on the current issues affecting our country? We don’t want to “find things out” like a flighty, gossipy child does just so we can go “would you look at that!”, and then promptly forget it. We demand to be kept informed because knowledge is power. If we choose to ignore or dismiss the available information, at least we’ve been presented with the option to do so, rather than to be kept in the dark as God-knows-what happens behind closed doors and behind our backs… We prefer to know the knife is on its way toward our back, don’t we? Gives you a fighting chance of dodging, fighting it off, trying to outrun it, or maybe say a quick prayer.

Before we can ever get to the point where we begin to make our decisions based on all the available data, before we evaluate the data we have at hand and judge it to be insufficient to make an educated move and so demand (more…)