Democracy

If I have a value, it's a belief in democracy. But, of course, it's a nuanced belief. I'm fully aware of Walter Lippmann's critique of democracy in which an ill-educated, ill-informed citizenry tries to make decisions on challenging, complicated issues. The current health care "debate" ought to make this problem clear. Or sometimes people bemoan the lack of an adequate scientific education in America, especially when the ignorant offer their opinions on evolution or climate change. But it's not the fault of science education: it's cognitive dissonance. They just don't want to believe in these things and no amount of education is going to change that. Yet Lippmann's advocacy for the idea of a technocratic elite making decisions for people is equally problematic, since such an elite inevitably starts to make decisions that favor itself. Intellectual or technocratic elites can't help but become nomenklaturas. At the same time, I believe in a reasonable level of discrimination. I despise discrimination based on meaningless characteristics--like skin color, gender, religion, wealth and so forth. And I especially despise those who discriminate against others who have been denied the opportunity to educate themselves. So, for example, a racial discrimination that argues that one group is inferior because of its ignorance is an outrage, particularly if the discrimination itself is responsible for that ignorance. Yet I have no problem with discrimination when it's directed toward those who have had the opportunity to educate themselves but decided not to. So I'm intolerant of fools. And the problem is how to reconcile the vast swathe of fools who inhabit this country with this belief in democracy. I cringe when I hear some bombastic politician refer to the ingrained wisdom of the American people. As an uninterrogated assumption, it appalls me. All too often Americans have shown a lack of wisdom.

So what we need is a wise democracy--perhaps an impossibility.