Dangers of Democracy Pt. 1
OCTOBER 19, 2022
by ThinkingWest
The word “democracy” appears exactly zero times in the United
States Constitution. And yet, no form of government is celebrated
with the same fervency as democracy. Recently, the phrase “Our
Democracy” has been co-opted by nearly every politician as an
attempt to appeal to the populace’s supposedly unshakeable faith
in the voting process. Appeals to the fragility of “Our Democracy”
are commonly made by political figures hoping to discredit rivals;
rivals they unhesitatingly accuse of threatening that ancient
Athenians inheritance. A keen extraterrestrial might conclude that
conclude that many of the developed nations of the world embrace
democracy as religion.
But is this unquestioning reverence for a form of political
governance healthy, reasonable, desirable? Does such reverence
blind us to the shortcomings that democracy may possess relative
to other political arrangements and lure us into complacent, even
dangerous, self-satisfaction?
Let’s review a few of the major issues that beset democracies.
The aim is not to condemn democracy as a form of governance, but
to critique it such that we may be better informed of its imper-
fections. After all, politics of any form must involve human
beings and human beings, despite their best intentions, are far
from perfect.
1.) Democracy is only as Noble and Reasonable as its Voting
Citizens
The first critique of democracy concerns the responsibility
that citizens have to exhibit character in daily life and to stay
well informed about the issues for which they vote. It does not
matter how passionately a citizen may feel about a particular
issue; if that passion is not tempered by objective investigation
and the application of
reason to the issue at hand, the voter abdicates a central re-
sponsibility as a citizen. No degree of passion is a substitute
for clear-headed thinking. Understanding well the tendency that
democratic citizens have towards this failure, Winston Churchill
once quipped,
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation
with the average voter.” Unfortunately, many citizens of modern
democracies fall prey to emotional pleas and assume that heartfelt
emotion is sufficient to guide ones voting decisions. The media,
with that oh-so-dangerous self-satisfaction, appeals to the smug
assuredness of over-confident voters through emotionally manipu-
lative means.
The voters are constantly reassured that their viewpoint is the
only reasonable one.
Democracy has yet to find a solution to the Dunning-Kruger ef-
fect, the phenomenon where the less a person knows about an issue,
the more confident a person is in their knowledge about the issue.
A 2018 study by Ian G Anson published in the journal Political
Psychology investigated how the Dunning-Kruger effect affects citi-
zens’ perceptions of their political knowledge. Anson examined over
two thousand American adults via two online surveys which quizzed
the participants on basic political knowledge. Most participants
of the study performed poorly and those who performed poorest
were more likely to be confident in their knowledge of politics
than those that performed well.
The Dunning-Kruger effect, combined with patronizing and pander-
ing from politicians and the press, results in a poorly informed,
but highly opinionated public. A hyper-emotional public is incap-
able of cool-headed, rational debate and is, instead, prone to
political provocation and manipulation by media and power-hungry
politicians.
A successful democracy requires citizens to continuously revisit
and revise their understanding of core issues in a level-headed man-
ner. Such revision is best embarked upon with temperance and reason.
Source: Wikipedia
2.) Democracy Makes Neighbors Political Adversaries and Makes All
Issues Political
A less considered shortcoming is the tendency for democracies to
create adversity between citizens who hold differing political opin-
ions. In the United States, this adversity has become so intense be-
tween Republicans and Democrats that distrust between members of op-
posing parties extends far beyond just political issues. Nearly
every issue brought to the public eye, whether science, sports,
movies, or music becomes irreversibly burdened with political
interpretation, intention, and influence. Ideas and concerns sub-
mitted by one side of the political aisle are a priority rejected
and condemned by the other
side before the slightest consideration of the idea’s merits. This
effect may be particularly amplified in a democratic political
system where there are only two major parties. Then, nearly every
political issue inherits a kind of adversity that is more likely
to be absent when the number of available choices exceeds two.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes the need to be aware of
the tendency people have to view apolitical issues through partisan
lenses. As thoughtful citizens we should be cognizant of this ten-
dency when evaluating actions to take to solve these issues. A June
2020 article from FiveThirtyEight detailed the divergence of exper-
iences between Republicans and Democrats during that time. Republi-
cans generally exhibited less concern about the pandemic while Demo-
crats exhibited greater concern about it. The intent of this article
is not to determine which political party was correct or incorrect
about the pandemic, but to demonstrate how partisan politics played
a crucial role in shaping people’s viewpoints about a major issue.
One would presume that the pandemic should never have been a poli-
tical issue. Instead, the pandemic and its mitigation efforts should
have been matters of public health and science.
Source: FiveThirtyEight.com
Ideally, an open scientific investigation and discussion should
have been facilitated to find the best solutions to counter the pan-
demic while maintaining the minimum possible obstruction of freedoms
upon citizens. Instead, political parties championed separate causes
and blamed the opposition for any and all Covid-19 deaths. This
turned the opposing party into literal “murderers” while one’s own
party used these deaths to lobby for votes.
This is not to say that there were no valid issues that were
brought up during the political chaos. Examples of valid points of
disagreement included masking policies, vaccination mandates, lock-
downs, and experimental drug treatments. However, actual open scien-
tific debate on these issues was rarely carried out.
The COVID-19 pandemic response is just one example of where the
political divide contaminates problem-solving and leads to further
distrust between those that share different political opinions. As
the political divide in America (and across the West) widens, more
and more aspects of society become political, from sports to music
to education. Nearly every aspect of life now contains political
undertones, which only divides us further and makes cordial politi-
cal dialogue near impossible. The U.S.’s current circumstance stands
as an example of the tendency for democracies to politicize every-
thing and divide its citizenry.
I will continue this in Part 2 to further explain how we as a
nation seem to lack the ability to separate current events from our
political views.
May God save our nation.
Conservatively,
John
Conservativelyjohn.com 