Democracy and Ignorance

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Thomas Jefferson once wrote:
"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government."

A pretty good one sentence encapsulation of democracy. So, the question remains, are we well informed?

http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter. ... vey-finds/

The answer is no. We are largely ignorant. The same situation exists in Great Britain. People vote to leave the EU, see the chaos their ignorant voting produced, then went on the net and googled "what is the EU"? Too late, you ignorant fools.

"Think before you speak. Read before you think"
- Fran Leibowitz

"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education."
- FDR

Why doesn't anyone blame ignorant, thoughtless voting for the mess we see in our public life? Hyper-partisanship has destroyed public discourse. Hyper-partisanship is synonymous with ignorance.

I do not know you, so I have no idea of your intentions or proposed solutions so take the following remarks as generic.

Too often claims they are all ignorent, useful idiots, sheep etc mean they do not agree with me so they must be intellectually inferior to me. I am always suspicious that plans to educate the rubes means thought and language control to a certain way of thinking.

On Brexit I see about 64% of young people voted but over 90% older folk. Is this what you mean? Much better than in the U.S.

In the U.S. we get to vote on national solutions not-at-all. What you get served to you is typified by our upcoming National Presidential Election (taadaa). Your so important choices are one pile of Spit or another pile of Spit. It makes you really want to get out there and vote...doesn't it?

Legislation is considered by our Congress, but the average person has no idea what is in this legislation...in fact many legislators don't even bother to read legislation (or like Ted Cruz don't even bother to vote) and just vote party lines....MUCH too important for the common man to see...very secret and hush hush, you see.

How much do you see voting as a means for the Public to institute change (forgetting Brexit and the usual voter fraud)?

This doesn't make people wild to get to the voting booths now does it? We're ignorant because they keep us ignorant...hell, you can't even find out "what happened" afterward without the Freedom of Information Act...let alone know the truth of what is happening now.

So you reject the finding of the Annenberg survey? If so, why?

. FDR said it's about education. Do you agree? Our education system is a mess, but who's to blame? Our puppet masters? We were gifted a system of government "of, by and for the people". Does it work, or is it a fraud? The means by which voters can exercise control over their government is through personnel management. Hiring and firing. We have a 10% approval rating of Congress and a 90% re-election rate. Who can we blame that on?

I agree with the problem. I fear the attitude of many who agree with us. Americans arguably were less informed in when they elected Lincoln and FDR, a large portion of the population was illiterate in those days. So an educated population does not neccesaraly equal a better functioning democracy.

In those days and most certainly in the 1960's the "liberals" seemed to actually care and wanted the less educated,the poor and middle class to do well. Today's "progressives" seem for the most part about bragging how much smarter and up to date they are then the hicks. They may be less knowlagable but they figured out they are looked down upon and the solutions social justice and language policing does not help them out of thier economic problems thus they are ready for somebody like Trump. Trump may lose big which ironically will make the certain "progressives" even more self satisfied and double down on enforcing the correct "educated" way of thinking instead of actually educating, helping very little and causing even more resentment.

I find it hard to believe that anyone's attitude towards education is not well intentioned. The notion of someone so Machiavellian that they scheme to keep America ignorant is difficult for me to imagine, though I guess there are some.

The electorate during Lincoln's day was certainly no better, and likely less, well educated. I can't speak to a lot of the differences, but certainly a less "evolved" mass media made for a more free-thinking populace. What's needed, imo, is to acknowledge the problem, then proceed from there. England and Norway did so when they banned television advertising for political purposes. They decided that democracy would function better when candidates and public policy questions were not sold like toothpaste. Whether they were right or not will take some time to play out. At least they're thinking about the problem. In the US we do not think about the problem. Unfortunately the problem is deep-seated. The Brexit vote was decided by the least educated, the least informed part of the population of Great Britain. Clearly they have a ways to go in perfecting democracy, and we have even farther to go.

Hi Eben,
You said: Why doesn't anyone blame ignorant, thoughtless voting for the mess we see in our public life? Hyper-partisanship has destroyed public discourse. Hyper-partisanship is synonymous with ignorance.

Then I said: On Brexit I see about 64% of young people voted but over 90% older folk. Is this what you mean? Much better than in the U.S.

In the U.S. we get to vote on national solutions not-at-all......(snip)

and I said:
Legislation is considered by our Congress, but the average person has no idea what is in this legislation...in fact many legislators don't even bother to read legislation (or like Ted Cruz don't even bother to vote) and just vote party lines....MUCH too important for the common man to see...very secret and hush hush, you see.

So what I was trying to point out was that it was obvious our government keeps us uneducated...so if you don't know what the truth is about anything you hear how can you be motivated to vote....and what good would it do?

and you said:
Hyper-partisanship is synonymous with ignorance.

So this is what we get from the "ruling" parties. in place of actual information. Donald Trump isn't too different from any politician these days....a lot of bull s__t....big mouths...a lot of impossible promises (broken for VERY good reason) etc. etc. etc.

And this is what we get to vote for and allow to do what they will, in any way they wish.

How do you know that the people who voted to leave the EU were the same ones who then went and googled "what is the EU"? Answer: you don't.

Do you even know how many "what is the EU" google searches were responsible for the reported spike in searches?

According to the Daily Telegraph, "In the month before the referendum "What is the EU" was searched an average of 261 times a day in Britain, according to Google AdWords. That means if searches increased by 250 per cent [hours after the UK voted to leave the EU], as Google announced on Friday, there were still fewer than 1,000 or so people typing the question into the search engine.

But people see articles by butthurt Remainers called things like "Brits frantically google 'what is the EU' hours after voting to leave it" and then they start moaning about the ignorant masses who won't do their research. It's all rather ironic really.



I don't know if the EU referendum result inspired this post, but I sort of knew once I'd seen the title that the EU referendum result would get a mention.

To answer your question, these past two weeks I've heard loads of people (i.e., butthurt Remainers) blaming "ignorant voters" for "the mess we see in our public life".

Those on the 'right' (for want of a better word) have been criticising democracy for years. It's amusing to see liberals coming close to doing the same thing once a vote doesn't go their way. However, instead of blaming the masses for not spending all their free time researching politics (what do people expect) liberals should face up to the fact that liberal/parliamentary democracy itself is a fraud.

The "leave" voters were older and less educated. Fine me a source that says otherwise. People can delude themselves that the less educated do more research than the more educated. Perhaps, if they had ever studied logic, the absurdity of that would appear obvious, but in the US and apparently in GB as well, fact is irrelevant to an ever growing segment of the population. Democracy is a fraud, because ignorant people cannot sustain a democracy.

Not really. A republic depends on virtue, self control and being informed. Democracy is just another word for Mob Rule. Winston Churchill once said Democracy is the worst form government except for all the others.

The problem with Republics is that eventually will mutate into Oligarchy. Aristotle discusses that in detail in his book "Politics".

You declared: "Democracy is just another word for Mob Rule."

Could you please give your definition for "Mob Rule?" The way you apply this definition to our Democratic form of government (with all it's faults) sounds very demeaning. (Please your own definition and not Winston Churchill's, who I think little of.

Let us discuss this.

Whether elected or not, our countries have always been run by elites.
Commoners could join those elites, but it meant giving up their "common"-ness.

Nothing unusual so far.
The question always was, how decent tjese elites behaved.
Currently, we're in one of those eras of shamelessly greedy elites.
Well. We'll see if the Koch brothers and the likes will end up in a gouillotine.
But it might actually be that the particular way in which we are educated today makes us incapable of expressing our rage in such an unambiguous manner.

Trump supporters seem to be able to express their anger, sadly for a cause I don't support.

We'll see if there'll be a new deal, or if we all degrade to the level of gouillotining our elites, once again, to hopefully end up with an elite that's scared into being decent for a generation or so.

A temporary majority ruled by passions, rather than reason. That is why our rights our protected by the Constitution. If it were up to t he temporary majority we would soon find ourselves forbidden to speak or write freely (in public).

Keep in mind our "right" to free speech or expression does not extend into privately owned property.

Maybe if we discuss this a part at a time???: "Democracy is just another word for Mob Rule."

And you say "mob rule" is: A temporary majority ruled by passions, rather than reason.

But I must say, frankly, that this is nothing like the Democracy we have in the U.S.A.......I mean it COULD happen, and at some time in the far past it MIGHT have been the case, but certainly not today. Today we have the real masters meeting at secret Bilderberg meetings. It signifies a push by the world's powerful and elite to control and rule.

It's funny, but everyone has palpitations concerning Clinton's secret comments to corporate business, but they ignore the deep secrecy of these meetings that both Hillary and Obama attend.

I believe this is an indication of what "Democracy" means in the United States today...no "wild west" but a determined effort by those in power to reduce democracy.

You say: That is why our rights our protected by the Constitution. Please my friend, noting the recent decisions by SCOTUS, removing rights and granting rights to corporations, police, etc, etc, anyone can see our rights ARE NOT PROTECTED RATHER STOLEN.

And you say: If it were up to t he temporary majority we would soon find ourselves forbidden to speak or write freely (in public).

Actually "Freedom of Speech" is something our rulers don't worry about at all. If there's a large demonstration they'll send in police to break it up.
If a larger "demonstration" occurs they can always (and they have) send in the National Guard....they will shoot and kill people (remember Kent State?).
They control most of the Public Media.

Freedom..........of the beast in the field....this is what we have. A very terrible situation...turning worse fast.

EbenCooke, by making gross, sweeping generalizations about 17 million "leave" voters, about whom you yourself are ignorant in the truest sense, because you only believe what you want to believe based on equally biased "articles" on the internet, you're the one showing your ignorance of the true situation.

I also find it constantly amusing how Americans weigh in on this with vehemence and a pretended awareness of the reality of this complicated situation, as if they have a dog in this race.

Also of extreme amusement to me is that AMERICANS, if another country had started handing out directives and basically saying "Your our b***h now", there would be a revolt. What happened to the UK's self governance via the backdoor -- when the "EU" started out strictly as a trade agreement and nothing more -- would be aggressively resisted if it had taken place in YOUR country.

Yet you vilify another country for simply waking up and smelling the coffee regarding their governance. You are a hypocrite of the most bizarre kind.

Beware simplistic thinking and wholesale belief in the hysterical BS out there -- and yes, it's you who are the simplistic thinker here.