The United States’ founding fathers understood the importance of a well-informed citizenry to vote wisely to elect good leaders, as these two quotations clearly show.
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government.
In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important?
And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?
The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.
To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty.
The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.
Today, like so many other democratic nations, not only are citizens not educated in the “science of government,” they do not have the ability to make sense of increasingly complex issues like the science of climate change.
Furthermore, they have little or no access to unbiased information to help them to make informed decisions.
These limitations undermine the democratic process.
Like the above, there are many criticisms of democracy
Winston Churchill is purported to have once said (though there is no evidence he said it) that
The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Credit: Unknown but often misattributed to Winston Churchill
I think today, in a far more complex world, we really do need to rethink democracy. Or maybe Churchill was right when he said
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Credit: This post was inspired by watching video interviews with Daniel Schmachtenberger. In particular, the problem with the lack of unbiased information and the quotations from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
Tweet: Has democracy outlived its usefulness?
Knowledge Letter: Issue: 253 (Subscribe)
Tags: Daniel Schmachtenberger (20) | democracy (33) | George Washington (2) | governance (4) | Thomas Jefferson (3)
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Photo Credits: Midjourney (Public Domain)