Are Ordinary People Too Stupid To Be Trusted With Voting?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4258522/A-poisonous-conviction-taking-root-Left.html

The Left and elite think that most of us are unqualified simpletons who shouldn't take on the responsibility for making decisions of great complexity and sophistication.

/// In the Left-wing New Statesman magazine, Professor Richard Dawkins, the leading evolutionary biologist and renowned humanist was unable to suppress his true feelings that the large slice of humanity who voted Leave were ‘stupid, ignorant people’. He protested that ‘it is unfair to thrust on to unqualified simpletons the responsibility to take historic decisions of great complexity and sophistication’. ///

[ichkeria]

Wasn't it that great leftie Churchill who said something along the lines of 'the worst thing about democracy is that people are allowed to vote ' : no doubt spoken in jest. And a US president of around that time said something similar . Maybe the recent at the time rise to power through elections of far right leaders like Hitler had something to do with that I don't know (cue the on-form Peter :-) )

[ichkeria]

Tho there is a difference between the freedom to choose which garage you go to and the mechanic handing you a spanner and democratically allowing you to diagnose the fault :-)

[Samjenko]

Well, seeing as 'they' voted for Bliar 3 times, he might have a point.
But that's democracy for you. Some of us just had to suck it up for 13 years.
Oh, that the liberal/left were so accepting of it.

[douglas9401]

"Ordinary people" may not be best qualified to deal with complex and historic issues but they would stand a better chance of doing the right thing if they weren't lied to by politicians, right and left, and partisan press barons who have serious issues with their own importance.

Still, we are where we are and can only, I suppose, wait for some benevolent snipers with their hearts in the right places, to even the odds.

[ichkeria]

Here is the article by Dawkins quoted in the piece which one may or may not agree with, it at least it's a firmer ground for debate than the skewed rant by Mr Hume

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/07/second-referendum-only-way-get-britain-back-brexit

[mushroom25]

the new statesman article is dated last july. why is it being resurrected now, I wonder? there was no chance of a second referendum then, there's probably even less of a chance now.

[sp1814]

AOG

You wrote:

The Left and elite think that most of us are unqualified simpletons who shouldn't take on the responsibility for making decisions of great complexity and sophistication.

That's not a supportable position.

[bednobs]

i did not vote in the referendum for the simple reason that i elect an MP to make these complicated decisions on my behalf. I fundamentally disagree with referenda per se.

[mushroom25]

//That's not a supportable position. //

it's a populist position. rather like the assertions that brexit voters are all NHS-sponging, bed blocking, knuckle-dragging racis bigots who only want to destroy the country for its inheritors..... or something like.....

[ichkeria]

There's all sorts of stuff quoted in that article: even Animal Farm, which is 70 years old. No harm quoting people or articles, tho this does seem to be a pot pourri of selected sound bites to suit a pretty daft thesis

[Zacs-Master]

The amount of moaning from the leave voters on here about the trials and tribulations of implementing Brexit (which were all researchable prior to the referendum) would seem to indicate that giving the vote to the general public is fraught with issues.

[ichkeria]

On the article AOG quotes, 'The tyranny of the minority' , its rather unwise of the author to cite the Trump regime (outvoted by 3,000,000, current approval rating 38%) as an example of the virtuous and popular majority. Takes out gun and shoots himself in foot in para one :-)

[New Judge]

But the greatest difficulty is that the alternative is to leave such decisions to "experts". And we all know how good many of them are at getting it right.

This is a strange (but not unsurprising) attitude taken by the Good Professor. The idea of democracy is that the people hold sway. A decent definition of that state that I can immediately find says this:

“Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”

It doesn’t say that the people should exercise that power only if they are intelligent enough. On the particular issue of the EU, successive governments have betrayed the electorate by signing away their rights to democratic freedom. It is quite true that these governments (or at least the MPs that formed them) were duly elected under a democratic system. But many of the rights they signed away were never specifically mentioned in their manifestos. As with everything that the EU does, its current powers were achieved by stealth or “mission creep”, with each step being just a little different to the previous status so “not really such a big deal”.

These governments (of all persuasions) have only themselves to blame for the current situation. They succumbed to the charms of the EU without the electorate’s specific consent. UK citizens were deceived or ignored when successive Treaties were signed which stripped the UK Parliament of its powers of control over UK affairs. The last thing the EU wanted was for anybody to find out what they were actually up to. Well they did in the end and Prof. Dawkins should ask himself why it is that unintelligent knuckle-draggers felt the need to extract the country from the clutches of the EU at the first opportunity they were given. It was quite rightly a decision for them because it addressed the threat to their supreme power as citizens of a democracy.

[-Talbot-]

If Ordinary People are Too Stupid To Be Trusted With Voting ... how would we get any MP's?

[anotheoldgit]

Welcome back New Judge, nice to have you back on board.

[Patsy33]

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
Mark Twain.

[anotheoldgit]

-Talbot-
An excellent point.

[ichkeria]

The Dawkins article, as New Judge indicates, is just about the EU referendum.
He does say:
"We are those who believe not in plebiscites but in parliamentary democracy" - so whatever the pros and cons of referenda, he's not saying that "thick people shouldn't be allowed vote"

[jno]

you're not suggesting that the Mail has indulged in selective out-of-context quoting, ichkeria?

Goodness.

[Khandro]

As Dawkins is wrong on most things, there's no inconsistency in his views on Brexit..