“roughly a third of American voters think that the Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability to each according to his need” appears in the Constitution. About as many are incapable of naming even one of the three branches of the United States government. Fewer than a quarter know who their senators are, and only half are aware that their state has two of them.
Democracy is other people, and the ignorance of the many has long galled the few, especially the few who consider themselves intellectuals. Plato, one of the earliest to see democracy as a problem, saw its typical citizen as shiftless and flighty:
Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other times, he’s idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy….”
we dont want equal voting power. we need to distribute more votes to smarter people, some argue.[/quote]
People also forget that the founding fathers did not want it to simply be one great big country. They wanted the power to be decentralized. The states were considered much more independent, separate and significant. So the electoral votes were not supposed to represent a certain number of people – they were (in part) supposed to represent the significance of statehood.. By the way, you never saw the DNC lift a finger after Gore lost in spite of having the popular vote. The pols like it this way.
And it still bugs me when Americans talk about our right to a “jury of ones peers” (Magna Carta ensuring that nobles were tried by nobles).
