June 27, 2012
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The Problems of Democracy
Democracy – that is the right of the people in a nation to vote to select their leaders in a free and fair election and said elected leaders to be responsible to the electorate - is the current preferred form of government in the majority of the world’s governments.
A problem with this form of political selection is that if suffrage is adult-universal, then a majority of voters may not be informed or may not vote in their own best interests because they don’t really understand what those are. The theory is that in the long run the majority will either select right or easily correct any errors of elective judgment, either by recall or at the next election.
Is this enough of a check and balance to insure the best form of government, or should there be other criteria or campaign checks to insure fair elections?
Should groups be allowed to band together anonymously (as for example corporations) and exert influence on elections and government?
Comments (4)
This is why an educated and moral people are also required with Senators and Congressmen that have the option to vote against the majority following one’s conscience at the risk of not being re-elected. A Democracy must be supported by an educated people that are moral or Democracy will not work.
The American Founders understood the necessity of a moral and well educated public. Without a virtuous people a republic cannot survive.
There is some evidence that the success of a democratic system depends on a knowledgable electorate; but the idea that people must be “educated and moral..” brings up a problem in a large modern multi-group society: How do you define educated and moral? The theory seems to be that extremes and kooks will cancel each other out – leaving the real undistributed middle to decide elections. The writers of the US Constitution were somewhat suspicious of pure democracy – leaving only one branch of government, the House of Representatives, as directly elected. Over the years the US government has become more and more democratic – the last vestige of anti-democratic electors being the Electoral College which votes for President and Vice-President, but even that group is now pretty democratically constrained.
Nowhere in the US Constitution is there any mention of education and morality being a requirement for voting and there is no federal law requiring such
The phrase “educated and moral” is very open to interpretation. How much education is “educated”? Completing high school? Earning and AD? A BA/BS? An MA? A PhD? What is moral? That question really opens a can of worms! And how do you change the form of government if someone decides that the electorate is not educated and moral enough? Who decides that?
Unfortunately, in the United States right now, I fear that we have a large number of people who never think for themselves. They prefer to allow others to tell them what they should believe. I don’t know if that is because they can’t think for themselves or whether it is because they won’t think for themselves. Either way, I think it is dangerous.
We have the form of government that we have, though. Until something disastrous happens, we will have to try to work with the system in place.