Addendum to 'Democracy'
The will of the people is paramount.
Lest the earlier essay be taken as yet another attack on our beleaguered democracy, it should be noted that elections were never intended to be a matter of the rationality of the voters, the educational level of the voters, the passions of the moment, even the generally accepted facts of the time.
Elections were only intended to faithfully reflect the will of the voters- misinformed, illiterate, irrational or not as that will might be. Many efforts were mounted over the centuries to filter the franchise from earliest colonial times to the present using pretexts like wealth, education, literacy, or recently by a vice presidential candidate, stake in the process. Sadly, most of these recent efforts have come from one of our major parties.
But our system was based on factoring in and consideration for human frailties. It was brilliantly engineered. There should be absolutely no means tests (beyond the most basic) imposed or that destroys the soundness of the structure.
I personally, am of the majoritarian persuasion. I believe that the majority should rule. Distorting 18th century institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate should be either discarded or heavily modified to insure that such grotequeries as individual voters from unpopulous states having a hundred times as much influence on national affairs as voters from more populous ones. This is the true defect in our system and has led to the current dolorous state of our political affairs.
The above point was made well by The right honorable Charles James Fox addressing the House of Commons almost two centuries ago in England. At issue was what obligation did elected representatives have to reflect the sentiments of their voters when the former viewed the latter in error. Let us sit on the bench as the great Whig orator addressed the chamber:
"What, Sir, is the conclusion to be drawn? Why, this. Let us satisfy ourselves. Let us act according to the dictates of honour and conscience, and be at peace with our own minds. It is thus that we shall sooner or later regain the confidence of our constituents, if we have lost it; and not by humouring, as foolish nurses humour great lubberly boys, the wayward whims of a misled multitude."
Why, that puts paid to those mooncalf advocates of representative democracy, doesn't it?! The educated elite should do as their own lights prompt them and surely the mob will eventually follow. If they don't, so much the worse for them!
But the people are not omniscient, nor can they see far into the future. In the heat of some moment, in a gust of folly they may ordain some malign change which they cannot later undo and therein lies the danger you speak of.