Against Democracy

Madison held that democratic bodies are prone to hotheadedness and fits of passion. This hotheadedness impedes their ability to make sound, rational decisions. Madison wanted the legislative process to be convoluted in order to prevent impulsive decisions.

Consider Stephen Nathanson’s famous paper “Should We Execute Those Who Deserve to Die?”12 Nathanson assumes for

A moderate position on democratic competence might hold that voters should do the following: •Voters should act on widely available, good information, if not always the best information available anywhere. •They should avoid mass superstition and systematic error. •They should evaluate information in a moderately rational, unbiased way—if not with the perfection of a vulcan, at least with the degree of rationality a first-year college student brings to thinking about introductory organic chemistry. •Voters should be aware of their limits, and thus always look for more and better information on any high-stakes decision. As we’ve seen, most

In fact, it does: the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea used to suffer from fatal prion infections as a result of its former practice of eating the dead (a practice that they regarded as showing respect for their dead). In that case, the culture would have excellent reasons to eliminate its practice and modify its semiotics. (That’s just what the Fore did; when they realized their code was destructive, the Fore changed it.)

Some recent authors, such as legal theorist Ilya Somin, claim that the best way to limit the harms caused by political ignorance is to implement more limited government.