Business, Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Political Ignorance

34 Comments

It’s time to start taking it seriously:

You don’t have to be a libertarian skeptic about government to worry about political ignorance. Indeed, the greater the role you want democratic government to play in society, the more you have reason to worry about the quality of voter decision-making. The more powerful the state is, the greater the harm it can cause if ignorant voters entrust that power to the wrong hands. Here too, the rise of Trump is a warning we should take seriously. He is not the first or (most likely) the last demagogue of his kind.

I have long argued that we can best alleviate the dangers of political ignorance by limiting and decentralizing the power of government, and enabling people to make more decisions by “voting with their feet” rather than at the ballot box. Foot voters deciding where they want to live or making choices in the private sector have much stronger incentives to become well-informed than ballot box voters do. There is much we can do to enhance opportunities for foot voting, particularly among the poor and disadvantaged. Limiting and decentralizing government power could also reduce the enormous scope and complexity of the modern state, which make it virtually impossible for voters to keep track of more than a small fraction of its activities.

But I am open to considering a variety of other possible strategies for addressing the problem, including voter education initiatives, and “sortition,” directly incentivizing citizens to increase their knowledge, among others. Perhaps the best approach to is a combination of different measures, not relying on some one silver bullet.

A large part of the problem is the public-education system (and academia), which is doing a terrible job of explaining civics (and history), because the Left finds an ignorant populace not only convenient, but essential.

34 thoughts on “Political Ignorance”

  1. Public ignorance is a major contributor to the racism, xenophobia, and zero-sum thinking that facilitate their rise.

    It sucks doesn’t it Ilya? For so long now, accusing those who disagree with you of being racist, xenophobic, homophobic troglodytes has worked so effectively to shut down discussion. And, and, now it’s… not working anymore! The public is ignorant, so they don’t shut up properly when called racist.

    The horror. The horror.

  2. Presumably Ilya Somin means the ignorance of those who voted for Trump, whom he opposed. But I don’t see that ignorance had much to do with it. The more one knew the less one liked Hillary Clinton.

  3. Trump is going to be a better president than we deserve. There are all kinds of ignorance. Trump’s gift is he exposes it in others.

    Isn’t the argument that what’s right and what’s popular should converge? That being so, care should be used instead of knee-jerk denigration of popularism.

    The problem is more than just ignorance; it’s ethics. Project Veritas exposed criminals and crime. Wikileaks, the same and more. Emails, ditto.

    The fact that they could even run Hillary is one of the lowest points in our history. That the media sees itself as it does in even worse. We have a long way to go beyond just teaching our kids civics.

  4. These diatribes Somin does on ignorance (he did some for Brexit too) are not very convincing.

    They all sound like, “You are not focusing on the priorities *I* find important, you ignoramus.”

    It is facile to say, “If you were more informed, you would value the same things I do.” But I guess that’s where we are.

    Our educated class will become much happier and more effective when they realize that when the people they dismiss as toothless hicks say, “I prefer X to Y,” what they *really* means is, “I prefer X to Y.”

      1. We haven’t reached peak SJW.

        Because of the freedoms our country has, they wont be going anywhere. They need to be persuaded that racism and bullying isn’t justice and wont change history or be a positive in the future. Good luck with that.

        1. There used to be a thing called disturbing the peace. When a ‘protest’ becomes just ranting and threats of violence they need to consider putting them all before judges. I can see them each getting a thousand years for contempt because they have no understanding of civil discourse.

        2. In SJW cognitive dissonance: insisting on the same rules regardless of rage and gender is bigotry, and saying NO to their demands is bullying.

  5. Ever hear of a company town? It refers to a community whose local economy is wholly dependent on a single major business. If the town had a newspaper, it usually was little more than part of the company’s PR office. Those papers almost never criticized the company and vigoriously defended it from any external criticism.

    DC is a company town and the company is government. The Washington Post is the company paper. Treat anything you read there from that perspective. Any criticism of the federal government will be harshly opposed.

  6. Talk of Trump pardoning Clinton bothers me, a lot.

    A huge part of why she was so offensive to many was the reckless arrogance of privilege she’s exhibited in her violations of the law, including pay-to-play rackets and running a charity as a slush fund. And that’s just what’s known.

    Pardoning her sends a message, a message that the law does not apply to all, the elites and powerful can do as they please. This is the very thing Trump ran against.

    There’s also the little detail that the president (be it Obama or Trump) does not have the ability to pardon her out of all offenses; the ones involving her charity are prosecutable by the states having jurisdiction, and a presidential pardon only has effect for federal crimes.

    The only sensible and just way forward is don’t try to pervert justice again. Let the law apply to all.

    As for public ignorance, there is no silver bullet. However, a superb start would be to address a core problem; the politicization of schools. There is no excuse, none, for using schools to politically indoctrinate kids, something the Left has been doing for a generation. And, to be fair, it happens on the Right, too, such as in some religious schools. Get politics out of the classroom, period. In the immortal words of Pink Floyd: Teacher, leave those kids alone!

    1. Maybe wait for the trial to occurs and then pardon if convicted.

      It would be a way of bringing the country together if done by Trump. But if it wouldn’t have any impact on Democrats becoming more civil and accommodating, it shouldn’t be done. The Democrat party are already organizing riots and protests because they don’t accept the peaceful transition of power. They say one thing in a speech and other with their organized activist brigades.

      Chances are Obama pardons her unless there really is bad blood there.

      1. I agree both with CJ and Wodun. A prosecution needs to happen. There’s no need to pardon innocent people, and I’m sure Hillary and Huma want to clear their name.

          1. She belongs in jail, or at least punished somehow, but surely you can see the political implications in that right?

    2. Talk of Trump pardoning Clinton bothers me, a lot.

      1000 dittos.

      Why the assumption that we want to bring the country together? Question that.

      Does rule of law matter? How do you bring together the lawful and the lawless? If I wash one hand and grab a load of shit with the other, what happens when I bring those together?

      Who had the bigger crime network: Al Capone or Hillary? Who killed more people and affected more lives over a greater territory?

      Let the education of the left start now. Elections have consequences a recent president informed us.

      Trump has a soft heart. That concerns me. The left is already working on it to our peril.

    3. Why couldn’t there have been a John Deutch-type resolution? That is, admit to wrongdoing and plead-out-to-a-lesser-charge?

      Such would have given political cover to the e-mail/private affair as a matter of damaging national security. There would have been howls of Secretary Clinton getting off with a slap-on-the-wrist, but there would have been precedent, and it would have immunized her from further discussion of this issue?

      On the other hand, the Deutch laptops genuinely appear to be the absent-minded-MIT-professor-as-Director-of-Central-Intelligence whereas the Clinton server has the flavor of a willful dodge. This wouldn’t have addressed the pay-for-play allegations, but those eventually bounced off of Ted Stevens and Bob McConnell, true, only after they were bounced out of office, but pay-for-play appears to have a high legal burden of proof?

      I guess everything is part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and Secretary Clinton didn’t believe in giving a single inch of ground?

    4. Not in her defense, but quite a lot of charities worldwide are slush funds. One rather infamous case here in Europe is IKEA and several people claim the Gates Foundation in the US is another slush fund made to dodge taxes.

  7. I’ve tried to persuade people that the only way to reduce the activities of companies and lobbyists being involved in the political system is to reduce the budget they compete over and the regulations they speak out on but it never sinks in.

    Democrats prefer force to keep the money and regulations flowing and people who are impacted by their policies silent.

    WA passed a resolution to propose a constitutional ammendmemt to strip groups of there right to free speech. We all known this wouldn’t be applied against Starbucks or Apple speaking out or having corporate ideals and culture.

    The fascist lost the election but the fightngoes on. Too many people embrace the idea of fascism, often they are the ones with more education, money, and identity of superiority. School is worthless in many ways if our colleges churn these people out.

    1. We won an election, not the war. We blew it the last time which is why we have Trump now. Hillary supporters are crying now, but will be back to howling about injustice as they continue to promote injustice.

      The solution to injustice is justice. Justice requires penalties. You don’t give a spoiled child what they cry for because that trains them to just cry more.

      1. A professor of Slavic studies here at the U and an ethnic Serb from the ‘hood in Cleveland spoke of his time in an officer’s uniform representing our country before the Yugoslav Communists who were ruling that country in the aftermath of WW-II. My colleague, friend, and South-Slavic kinsman recounted asking our Communist WW-II ally “What are you going to do with (Serbian Nationalist leader) Draza Mihailovic?”

        Mihailovic was also our ally in resisting the common Axis enemy in occupied Yugoslavia, but he was an anti-communist, making him an enemy of the Tito regime. The terse reply was, “He is a traitor, what do expect us to do with him? What did you (Americans) do with Robert E. Lee” to which my friend recounted that he quickly answered, “Make him president of a university!”

        C’mon guys, blowing off steam and everything, but the Grand Gesture is the American Way.

  8. The only “ignorance” that led to Trump were the highly educated fools who were advising Romney and McCain that they couldn’t win w/o amnestying illegals.

    Yes, decentralization is great but a far quicker way to achieve it is for President Trump to cut off funds to sanctuary cities and abortion clinics. Bi-partisan interest in less centralized government power will increase exponentally.

    Nice of VDH to notice that the government education complex has been captured by the left who is predictably rendering it null and void. Let me know when him or some other conservatives come up with an actual way to force real civics to be taught. Perhaps cutting off government funds from Washington?

  9. All the whinging and crying from the left about how Trump and his minions are such haters is really too much. Looks to me like the riots, protests and threats to assassinate Trump are a good indicator of who the haters really are.

    SJW’s always project.

  10. “A large part of the problem is the public-education system (and academia), which is doing a terrible job of explaining civics (and history), because the Left finds an ignorant populace not only convenient, but essential.”

    I grew up in Missouri, a state which at the time (1970) had a law requiring every student to pass a standard test on the U.S. Constitution prior to graduating high school. I don’t know if they still have it, but they should.

      1. It really ruins the Democrat media’s narrative when the reporter is doing a live shot calling them peaceful and protesting hate and the Democrat operatives walk in the shot screaming F**K Trump and all the other crap.

        The media should be accurately portraying these DNC organized mobs.

        Also, totally retarded how when Trump makes a mild criticism of the organized violence and the media goes into full How Dare Yous! mode.

    1. And then she chose to run the most negative campaign in generations to depress turnout. But she depressed more of the Obama coalition than she did NeverTrumpers.

  12. “A large part of the problem is the public-education system (and academia), which is doing a terrible job of explaining civics (and history), because the Left finds an ignorant populace not only convenient, but essential.”

    This is an enormous part of the problem.

    It’s easy for people to give away their liberty because they have always lived with it and think it’s inviolable. They also don’t understand what power does to people.

    They do not know what it was like to live under tyranny because we haven’t for over 200 years. Nor did they understand what it was like to be a “prole” even prior to Georgian England – like, say, the middle ages.

    In short they do not understand how bad their lives could be if it wasn’t for the checks on government enshrined in the Constitution. So they think it’s ok to give them away.

    And that gets you the rotting corruption, malfeasance, arrogance and just plain criminal behavior of the Obama administration and what would have been even worse in a Clinton administration.

    They don’t understand the rachet.

    Those college snowflakes crying and begging for someone to “fix this” and such are so woefully ignorant.

    And it all started with the education system.

    And it is aided and abetted by 60+ years of fairly comfortable living.

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