Democracy: Intellectual Hemlock

Allowing the ignorant to vote is suicide.

 

I agree with Socrates on democracy, it is tyranny, and stupid. To his question of why we let just anyone vote but would never let just anyone be a blacksmith or sailmaker, to his suggestion that we put philosopher kings in charge of everything instead - we have the benefit of 2300 years of subsequent history, the enlightenment resolved a lot of these questions.

That's why we have constitutional republics with democratic features instead of Athenian democracies.

I agree though that we should be suspicious of democracy wherever it is present.

 

America was founded as a capitalistic republic based on the principle of Individual Rights. Since then, it has become more democratic until anyone can vote. There is now a push to extend this right to vote to non-Americans, to murderers, to rapists, and to thugs. Not good.

As America has become more democratic, it has become more authoritarian and more socialistic. This has created a nation where humans are in prison for choosing to use drugs, choosing to make money, and for choosing to live as one wishes. A pure totalitarian dictatorship is the logical end of this democratic trend.

It has resulted in a cultural trend where its populace support populists and demagogues, Left and Right. There is a religious movement to put women and doctors in prison for choosing abortion; a youth movement for nationalizing certain industries for the public good, an environmental movement to ban industry and technology and to return to nature, as the primitives once lived, as hunter/gatherers; an anti-intellectual movement to ban unsanctioned speech; and a political movement to control the press.

This can only lead to mass diseases, mass poverty, and mass deaths. It will create re-education camps, concentration camps, and death camps.

What can save us? Objectivism and a return to our founding principles of Individual Rights, Republicanism and Capitalism.

Best wishes.

 

So the problem is that if we just allow everyone to vote (with few exceptions) once they reach a certain age, we will get stupid people making stupid choices that are damaging (similar to the idea of requiring all qualified people to vote by law). OTOH, the problem with reserving the vote for designated, informed, qualified "voting class" or "voting committee" is that those people can be manipulated to vote as a powerful, influential, wealthy class prefers.

So instead, how about requiring a couple of years of a class in high school, "voting Ed. 101" and "voting Ed. 102", and for students who dropped out of school, require they take the same courses if they want to vote? And require a passing grade in return for a voter ID.

Education is a good answer to the problem.

 

Now if we didn't allow stupid people to vote we would never have that classic comedy gift of Maxine Waters now would we?

 

Another problem is that politicians lie about their intentions and implement the policy of the elite contributors who paid for their campaigns instead of the voters who elected them. This is an insoluble problem that ensures that we will stay an oligarchy while pretending to be something else.

 

Democracy is still poison for the living.

 

TBH, America would be a better place if we had a HockeyDadocracy. He has the cure for what ails America.

 

Yes, and that is why we should only choose from candidates who take no big donations and none from corporations. Donations and funding of PACs should be banned. If we were to transition to taxpayer-funded elections it would solve many of these problems.

 

You're doing propaganda work for Trump and his planned dictatorship and tyranny.

 

While I agree that education has the answer, I don't know how we would conduct that as applies to voting as well as many other things. We can explain the process, the objectives and principles- but it is nearly impossible to teach someone something they don't want to learn and even more difficult to teach them how to discipline their own mental processes so that they can make properly considered decisions.

I think if we knew how to do that, we could solve most of the human problems on earth. Still at this point, education efforts are the best tool we might have- but even that is being eroded by the way politics are becoming identity politics in college classrooms- in effect propaganda tanks. We need to teach people how to think, not what to think.

 

Objectivism isn't a possibility in real life, just as a full libertarianism ideology is not feasible.

They are theories only.

Even Rand could add objectivism into her fictional novels.

I do agree with the early philosophers that voting should be earned, not a given right.

We can certainly debate the details of that but democracy, even the founders said so, is ultimately problematic.

 

So now Trumpers are fighting the very idea of Democracy.

What a shock huh folks?

 

That's right. And people can be taught how to research past politicians and current candidates. Then have the students write up what they find. Students can also be taught the importance of making good decisions and the consequences of making bad ones by case studies. There are plenty of data to examine along with history without teaching WHAT to think.

It can only improve voter turnout.

 

How "surprising"!! Trump recently spoke of how he might serve for FIVE TERMS if he so chooses. We're taking tyranny here. The Trumpezoids are ready to forego popular representation by vote, for a despot of their preference. How utterly STUPID can anyone be??? What unmitigated depravity!

 

the problem has never been that we allow "just everyone to vote". even the most ignorant among us deserve to have a say in the direction their lives take. the problem is that we have allowed the government we all vote for to become too powerful.

look back to the civil war. those of you who think the civil war was about slavery are almost too ignorant to be taken seriously. the civil war was about the supremacy of the federal government. it was about the federal government profiting from king cotton. since then we have gone to great lengths to ensure the growing power of centralized government through the power of the "democracy", the power of the ignorant collective. we have neutered the states by electing senators through the popular vote of the ignorant. we have given the federal government jurisdiction where it was never meant to meddle. we have shackled the individual with millions of laws designed to "protect us from ourselves". we have created mega-cities filled with the dependent and given the drones within them power to determine the direction of their entire states. we have given the keys to the kingdom to those who create nothing and are entirely dependent on the largess of the productive few. we have strayed so far from the design that protected the natural rights of the individual and entered into a realm where the indolent masses may enslave the ingenious few.

 

The Civil War was about slavery.

 

Government, by definition, is powerful.

 

"powerful" is relative. in a nation of free men there is a balancing act between the power of government and the power of the individual. we have lost that balance. society (the collective) has become more important than the individual, though it is the individual that society was meant to protect. we have forgotten that the collective is an artificial construct, that only the individual is real, and that the government was not intended to protect that construct, but the rights of the very real individual.

 

Pffffft. I disagree..... --obviously.

 

This is why I am glad the US is a democratic Republic.

 

Or the clown show that is Trump.

 

Quite a shock for sure. And to think, every time I point out, that by definition, left wing is the people centric while right wing is the leader centric, conservatives scream and holler that I have it backwards.

 

and the left wants to let criminals in jails vote! i wonder why!

 

Oh the irony!