People Aren’t Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say

Apparently evolution has failed us

Churchill, I believe it was, said that democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others.

He was right. For the findings of the intrepid “scientists” do not take into account that not everyone is so un-self-aware that they fail to realize there are things they don’t know; that some people can still recognize a mountebank when they see one, or sense when they are being lied to, etc.

Trashing democracy, they do not take into account that there must, somehow, be a selection of leaders—and that inherited privilege has at least as dismal a track record as democratic selection.

Of course, the other thing that gets lost in the shuffle of a study like this is that the great genius of our Constitution—and that remarkable confluence of talent which produced it—is that we do NOT live in a democracy. We live in a republic which has elements of democracy. It was the particular brilliance of the Founders that they recognized the problems inherent in democracy and worked to limit its influence so that the natural problems which these latter-day scientists have “discovered” would be minimized and mitigated.

Apparently evolution has failed us