Democracy Is Not For You
Just before the 2006 midterms, right wing talk radio host Sean Hannity said
the following:
HANNITY: Now, one other thing here. You know what? I think some of you need to stay home on Election Day. What? That's right. I think -- I know it sounds terrible. I don't want everybody to vote; I want well-informed people to vote.
It does sound terrible, Sean, so who should skip the election?
...and I want you to stay home on Election Day because you must accept the fact that your party has abandoned you. You've gotta accept the fact that your vote doesn't matter anyway. So all you Democrats, stay home. So, you know, why don't you stay home on Election Day? [Fuzzy's emphasis]
Oh ye little faith. Conservatives these days couldn't give two shits about democracy. Neither here nor abroad. Thanks for the advice Sean. Somehow I'm guessing it didn't quite work out how you might have liked.
On a more serious note, isn't this sort of rhetoric actually dangerous for democracy in our country? This guy has one of the most popular radio shows in the country, and here he is asking registered Democrats and swing-voting independents to stay at home come election day. Apparently, for Sean the "throw your purple fingers in the air" doesn't apply here at home.
Citizen Dummy
The Carpetbagger highlights a new
Pew Research Center study and finds:
Americans have countless ways to learn about current events, but we remain a woefully ignorant bunch.
The bedrock of America's democracy rests on an informed citizenry. It's really that simple. More from the Bagger:
One in three Americans don’t know who the Vice President is. One in four don’t know that Democrats now run the House. One in three can’t name their governor. Four in five can’t name the Secretary of Defense. Two in three don’t know that there’s a difference between Sunni and Shia.
The poll asked 1,502 respondents 23 fairly straightforward questions that, I suspect, nearly all of you would get right. Eight answered all 23 correctly in the survey. Not eight percent; eight people.
This has been a pet issue of mine for a very long time, so forgive the rant, but I strongly believe that an uninformed electorate creates a dysfunctional democracy. As Digby put it a while back, “We simply cannot adequately govern ourselves if a large number of us are dumb as posts and vote for reasons that make no sense.”
[...]
But our system relies on a certain level of sophistication among the public, and there’s ample evidence, including this new Pew study, that we’re just not at that level.
[...]
But at a certain point, people have to some making excuses and start taking some responsibility for having a clue. When 31% of Americans don’t know who the Vice President is, it undermines our political system.
The solution to this problem probably requires a multi-layered approach. Perhaps we need required high school
and college exit courses pounding home the responsibilities the people of this country owe their own democracy: you need to make an effort to stay informed and vote. Maybe we need a massive taxpayer-funded media campaign to remind people that, hey, we as a nation need to hear from you, come to the table with informed opinions, and make informed decisions based on current information.
By the way, this isn't new. This is well worn turf. Thomas Jefferson
wrote:
"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree."
"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity."
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."
The population of America seems to think we can all glide on cruise control because our nation was some kind of immaculate conception, and that no tending to the garden is needed at all. That we need not participate because some kind of collective correction will come along at the moment of crisis and right the this listing ship of state. Wrong. It doesn't work that way. This is why we have an incurious idiot for a president.
In the end, you get the democracy you deserve.
Let's Manage The Legacy
This report, from the Washington Post, has been commented on by a number of bloggers, but I haven't seen anyone state the obvious. At least three Generals have balked at Bush's invite to be the "War Czar" that he seeks.
This one's really simple folks. He needs someone to point the finger at when he leaves office. And so do his supporters. Someone, anyone, has to take the blame on January 21st, 2008. And Lord knows it can't be him.
So, who's signing up for that job?
Exactly, no one in their right mind.
The one point that can't be stated enough is that this president has never taken any responsibility for the decisions that he's made. Now his administration is floating the notion of a "War Czar". They must think we're really that stupid.
(The Carpetbagger has some more of the details.)
