The document in question is merely a set of discussion topics. "We anticipate that different participants in the roundtables at which this document will be discussed will criticize some or all proposals, improve others, and add ideas of their own. The purpose of this document is precisely to encourage such additional analyses and brainstorming."
The core problem is the "Eat Your Broccoli" Problem. In-depth and globe-spanning reporting is essential for a running democracy, but everyone would rather spend their money on American Idol than American Morning and would rather read about celebrity domestic scandals than domestic policy. The cross-subsidy system worked well in the 20th century to avert this, but that's out the window. We need to either create a new cross-subsidy system or we need to find a way to charge people for news directly.
And let's not forget Craigslist if we're casting blame on why the Internet killed newspapers. The classifieds section got decimated by it.
"Here, they confuse journalism with newspapers, and an informed public with newspaper jobs. In fact, Americans have never been better informed or more engaged."
This is not new or unique to newspapers. It's a fallacy common to pretty much every sinking industry.
"but the FTC is an 'independent' agency run by people appointed by the Obama Administration, which has been antagonistic to an Internet it cannot control"
When has the Obama Administration been antagonistic towards the Internet? Aside from ISP-promoted wackaloon conspiracy theories about how Net Neutrality is actually censorship, where is the argument (much less evidence) for this? I mean, I realize this is The Heritage Foundation, but come on. Way to trash a great article with a nonsensical partisan jab.
Part of the problem is that "American Morning" is not that much better than "American Idol". In fact, I think I'd rather watch the latter; at least it's somewhat entertaining.
" The cross-subsidy system worked well in the 20th century to avert this..."
I dispute this notion. My reading of 20th century tele-journalism is that if anything it was a step backward even from the standards of the 19th century. Granted, it gave many people the perception of being informed about the world, but in practice I believe it fell far short of the mark.
More to the point, I don't think today's standards of journalism are particularly lower than those 50 years ago, for example. However, the difference in cultural perspective and in the available alternate channels of data make the low quality of modern journalism much more obvious.
Quality may have gone down during the 1980s and later, but that's unrelated to the fact that we had advertising and classifieds and entertainment shows to offset the cost of journalism.
The article includes two quotes from President Obama. The first from a commencement address:
You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations . . . information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.
The second is from an interview with CBS News:
There’s one last point I gotta make, Bob, and that is that I do think part of what’s different today is the 24-hour news cycle and cable TV and blogs and all this. They focus on the most extreme elements in both sides. They can’t get enough of conflict. It’s catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult to solve the problems the American people sent us here to solve.
Constructing an 'antagonistic to the Internet' argument on the basis of those two quotes seems somewhat, well, challenging - but those seem to be the primary sources.
I'm no fan of the Obama administration but if you watch any of the "analysis" shows on cable news channels it is clear that "stirring the hornet's nest" is a big part of how they operate. And I don't think it's a bad message to say "just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true" but I would say the same goes for any other media these days, including White House press releases.
Right, which is why I said constructing an argument based on such sources would be challenging.
A commenter asked what the writer's justification was for calling the Obama administration antagonistic to the internet, and I found it for him. Doesn't mean that the writer's justification has merit.
In-depth and globe-spanning reporting is essential for a running democracy, but everyone would rather spend their money on American Idol than American Morning and would rather read about celebrity domestic scandals than domestic policy
Instead of fighting the uphill battle of making ordinary people care about global affairs, why not just restrict the franchise to those who can bother themselves to be an informed citizen? Give everyone a test in order to vote.
What exactly would we be testing? There's a fair bit of research showing that exposure to information doesn't really cause people to discard incorrect beliefs they already hold. It seems like any testing regime would lead to a state where people with time and money could afford to take test prep so they'd know what answers to write on the test without actually having to change make their voting consistent with knowledge. Seems pointless. But I never did get people who were eager to disenfranchise lots of their fellow citizens at the drop of a hat.
It seems like any testing regime would lead to a state where people with time and money could afford to take test prep so they'd know what answers to write on the test without actually having to change make their voting consistent with knowledge.
That would actually be ideal. That way you'd get smart, driven people voting who in reality thought for themselves. My real worry is that the tests would end up being designed to filter out people of the wrong ideology, thus giving power to the test-creators. The way to avoid this is to test for basic factual questions - who is the prime minister of Israel, who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, etc. This information is freely available. If you can't be bothered
Seems pointless. But I never did get people who were eager to disenfranchise lots of their fellow citizens at the drop of a hat.
I never get people who assume universal suffrage is a great thing. People who vote have great power over your life. You wouldn't want to give a pilot who wasn't qualified control of a plane. Why give voters who aren't qualified power to steer the ship of state? Have you ever listened to talk radio before? Does it scare you that those people have so much power over your life?
Or to put it more succinctly, would you rather be ruled by the commenters at Hacker News, or the commenters at Digg?
The way to avoid this is to test for basic factual questions
I don't see any reason to believe that the ability to recite pointless facts correlates significantly with good decision making. I know many smart people who make very poor decisions, including in the voting booth.
Why give voters who aren't qualified power to steer the ship of state?
I think we disagree about what the purpose of voting is. If you think voting is about selecting optimal leadership, then maybe dramatically restricting the franchise is a good idea. But I think voting is about preventing violent conflict and maintaining social stability. People who get to express themselves in the voting booth are (hopefully) less likely to express their frustration by grabbing the nearest minority or outcast and stringing them up from a tree.
Or to put it more succinctly, would you rather be ruled by the commenters at Hacker News, or the commenters at Digg?
Digg. No question. Societies with representative governments are more stable than societies where a tiny elite make decisions on behalf of everyone. Have you seen the commenters at Digg? Those people are insane! They'd resort to violence in a heartbeat. I believe that suboptimal governments are better than optimal governments engaged in civil wars. Wars tend to kill people (like me) and destroy our stuff.
To put it another way: can you point to any model societies that are really great and are governed by a small ruling elite? Because Saudi Arabia and North Korea aren't really blowing me away.
I don't see any reason to believe that the ability to recite pointless facts correlates significantly with good decision making. I know many smart people who make very poor decisions, including in the voting booth.
On average, all mental tests tend to correlate with job performance skills.
But I think voting is about preventing violent conflict and maintaining social stability. People who get to express themselves in the voting booth are (hopefully) less likely to express their frustration by grabbing the nearest minority or outcast and stringing them up from a tree.
If that's the intent, the results have been the exact opposite.
Lynching was unheard of in America before the American revolution. All of Africa has been a violent mess since the introduction of universal suffrage. Demagogue politicians exacerbate and fan the flames of ethnic tension. Virulent anti-semitism was rare in Germany before 1870, but decades of politicians vying for power by blaming an outcast group turned anti-semitism into a terrible disease. Democracy universally makes ethnic conflict worse. Read Amy Chua World on Fire.
To put it another way: can you point to any model societies that are really great and are governed by a small ruling elite?
America before the era of Jacksonian democracy ( 1620 to 1820's). Victorian Britain. Bourbon Naples. Pre-civil war Liberia. Belgian Congo (not to be confused with the Congo Free State, which was a disaster). Rhodesia. Singapore. Post-war Japan (basically ruled by MacArthur as dictator). Egypt under Evelyn Baring. Mexico under Porfirio Díaz.
The fallacy that too many people make is that they look at the world and say, "hey, countries that are democracy have a better polity and quality life than non-democracies. Ergo, democracy is good." But this does not tell us if democracy is good, or if democracy is actually a poison. If I give twenty people a poison, only the strongest will be able to withstand it and keep drinking it. The weak fall to the ground sick, and therefore stop drinking the poison. A doctor who arrives on the scene late might see the healthy people drinking the poison, and think the poison is actually good. But that is not the case.
If you look at historical transitions from aristocracy/monarchy to democracy, you'll see that in the vast majority of cases introducing universal suffrage elections has inflamed ethnic tensions and lead to corruption, jingoism, and violence.
On average, all mental tests tend to correlate with job performance skills.
This seems obviously false. A mental test that requires you to list top performing baseball players will not correlate well with job performance for most jobs.
If that's the intent, the results have been the exact opposite.
Can you point to any papers published in reputable journals that make that point? Its not that I don't trust you, being some random guy on the internet, but there are people who study history and government structure for a living and I'd think they might have more experience with this sort of thing.
Lynching was unheard of in America before the American revolution.
Wow. I don't even know what to do with a historical argument this absurd.
Virulent anti-semitism was rare in Germany before 1870
This will come as a great surprise to Martin Luther.
Demagogue politicians exacerbate and fan the flames of ethnic tension.
But leaders in autocracies do the exact same thing as well. So it seems like how widespread the franchise was might not be the relevant variable.
Egypt under Evelyn Baring. Mexico under Porfirio Díaz.
Aren't these autocrats? Do you have any model societies where a small fraction of the population votes instead?
Read Amy Chua World on Fire.
Actually, I have read that book and I think you're misrepresenting Chua's thesis. Her claim was not the idea that democracy lead to political demagogues which lead to mass violence. Rather it was the combination of demagogues and the presence of market dominant ethnic minorities combined that lead to mass violence. I mean, one of her main examples is Rwanda, which was a dictatorship at the time. Not exactly a haven for democracy, eh?
If you look at historical transitions from aristocracy/monarchy to democracy, you'll see that in the vast majority of cases introducing universal suffrage elections has inflamed ethnic tensions and lead to corruption, jingoism, and violence.
Um, I might believe that if you could point me to an academic citation. I will agree with you on this: rapid introduction of voting into previously autocratic societies often ends poorly. I think the takeaway there is that democracy involves a lot more than just voting: you need to build the rule of law and emplace a whole set of norms about how power is shared amongst dissenting groups. If you ignore all that and just impose elections immediately, then yeah, things can go very badly.
Can you point to any papers published in reputable journals that make that point? Its not that I don't trust you, being some random guy on the internet, but there are people who study history and government structure for a living and I'd think they might have more experience with this sort of thing.
If you want your truth from authority, join a church. Universities have the same selection method (existing clergy/academics choose the next generation based on whether the existing clery/academics agree with the views of the rising class), and same history (Harvard, Yale, etc were founded seminaries).
I studied political-science at Yale, and the professors are in their own world. Their studies had little to relation to the real world of politics, which I had learned about from actually working in Congress. The university in many subjects has devolved into the modern equivalent of scholasticism. Peer-review can be a tool for eliminating falsehood. But it can also be a tool for filtering out truth, and perpetuating falsehood. This applies 10X for politically sensitive subjects. Universities receive greats amount funding from nominally democratic governments.
That said, even a politically correct institutions can't always avoid the truth. Check out this NYTimes article, it cites a bunch of professors who have studied the link between democracy and violence: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30patterson.html?a...
I haven't read any of the works cited in the article, so I can't vouch for them. I came to my conclusions by studying for myself the history of dozens of democratic transitions. I suggest doing the same yourself, if you are really interested. Pick five or ten countries randomly. Trace their history, starting as far back as you can. Read both progressive, reactionary, and primary sources. And then examine whether the democratic transitions they underwent increased or decreased the quality of governance.
Wow. I don't even know what to do with a historical argument this absurd.
From Sydney George Fisher's History of the American Revolution: "When we consider that this mob rule was steadily practised for a period of more than ten years, it is not surprising that it left an almost indelible mark on our people. They seem to have acquired from it that fixed habit now called lynch law, which is still practised among us in many parts of the country in a most regular and systematic manner, and participated in by respectable people. The term lynch law originated in the method of handling the loyalists in the Revolution, and was named from the brother of the man who founded Lynchburgh in Virginia....If the loyalists could come back from the grave, they would probably say that their fears and prophecies had been fulfilled in the most extraordinary manner; sometimes literally; in most cases substantially. There is no question that the Revolution was followed by a great deal of bad government, political corruption, sectional strife, coarseness in manners, hostility to the arts and refinements of life, assassination, lynch law, and other things which horrified Englishmen and afforded the stock material for the ridicule of such writers as Dickens and Mrs. Montagu." (source: http://books.google.com/books?id=SZccAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA166-I... )
This will come as a great surprise to Martin Luther.
I misspoke. I should have said, the virulent anti-semitism of the 1930's did not exist in Germany in the era of Metternich (first half of the 19th century). Anti-semitism was prevalent centuries before. The situation had gotten much better by the mid-1800's. But with the introduction of universal suffrage in 1870 it got much worse again.
If you want your truth from authority, join a church. Universities have the same selection method (existing clergy/academics choose the next generation based on whether the existing clery/academics agree with the views of the rising class), and same history (Harvard, Yale, etc were founded seminaries).
Do you apply the same reasoning to the physical sciences? It would be awesome if you downgraded the germ theory of disease to a kooky religious superstition.
I studied political-science at Yale, and the professors are in their own world. Their studies had little to relation to the real world of politics, which I had learned about from actually working in Congress.
So, you chose poorly when it came to grad school. Then you inferred that all grad schools suffered the same problems at the institution you poorly selected. Is that right?
Your description of academia does not jive with the academic writings I read at Lawyers, Guns and Money or the Duck of Minerva or the Edge of the American West. Those academics seem pretty realistic. I have not been blown away by the knowledge, let alone the honesty of congressmen and their staff.
There is no question that the Revolution was followed by a great deal of bad government, political corruption, sectional strife, coarseness in manners, hostility to the arts and refinements of life, assassination, lynch law, and other things which horrified Englishmen and afforded the stock material for the ridicule of such writers as Dickens and Mrs. Montagu.
Um, are we to believe that before the revolution, there was no corruption in the entire British Empire? No bad government? No coarseness of manners? No assassination? I suppose the British Empire was a very polite place. Unless you were Irish. Or Indian. Or Chinese. Then you'd be exterminated by very very polite British monarchists. But that's OK, their manners were impeccable, and in the end, isn't that what really matters?
Honestly, do you have anything beyond royalist propaganda?
It happens most in autocracies that came to a power as a result of party politics, or a violent struggle between political parties.
Really? I think the number of autocracies that have their genesis in military coups shows otherwise.
Elections are the poison, tyranny and civil war are the disease. It's extremely rare in history to find a demagogue monarch.
So Emperor Hirohito is the one exception? As is Ghengis Kahn? And why are we limiting ourselves to monarchs? There are many demagogues who were also tyrants. Demagogy seems related to the availability of modern communications technology. The best tools to facilitate demagogy only arrived in an era where monarchism declined.
If you already have a government that provides rule of law, and a good set of norms about power sharing, why change things up?
Because an embryonic state that is developing the rule of law might not be as sustainable as a mature democracy. Certainly, states run exclusively by elites have to constantly worry about popular revolution.
Do you apply the same reasoning to the physical sciences? It would be awesome if you downgraded the germ theory of disease to a kooky religious superstition.
A church can have branches that do sound science. Copernicus worked for the Catholic church, after all. What makes the physical sciences generally more sound is that a) their results can be directly tested and observed and b) the topics are generally less politically charged.
But my point is not that the university is completely false. It's that it should not be treated as some sort of infallible source. You shouldn't be putting peer-reviewed articles on a pedestal above any other type of evidence.
So, you chose poorly when it came to grad school. Then you inferred that all grad schools suffered the same problems at the institution you poorly selected. Is that right?
It was undergrad actually. The problem is endemic to the field, it was based not just on the classes but browsing through the major journals.
Of course, there are interesting political scientists. Academics who blog tend to be quite a bit more grounded. Journal articles are primarily arcana and numerology.
Those academics seem pretty realistic. I have not been blown away by the knowledge, let alone the honesty of congressmen and their staff.
I'm saying that the academic study of politics is very far removed from what's actually going on.
Um, are we to believe that before the revolution, there was no corruption in the entire British Empire? No bad government?
We're talking relative quality of government. The quality of government in America pre-1776 was generally much better than 1783 to 1789.
George Washington himself agrees with me: 'Washington, black with depression, decided and bluntly said "that mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government" ... "Good God!" cried Washington, "Who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted" the things that were going on! "The disorders which have arisen in these States, the present prospect of our affairs . . . seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. My mind can scarcely realize it as a thing in actual existence. . . . There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to." Source: http://books.google.com/books?output=text&id=XtxBAAAAIAA...
From the same book: "During his early years in the Legislature, as has appeared, Marshall's opinions were changing. Washington, as we shall see, soon after peace was declared, lost much of his faith in the people; Madison arrived at the opinion that the majority were unequal to the weightier tasks of popular rule; and Marshall also finally came to entertain the melancholy fear that the people were not capable of selfgovernment. Indeed, almost all of the foremost men of the period now under review were brought to doubt the good sense or sound heart of the multitude ... This revolution in the views of men like Washington, Madison, and Marshall was caused largely by the conduct of the masses, which, to such men, seemed to be selfish, violent, capricious, vindictive, and dangerous."
These quotes of course, will not be found in your AP History Book, which consists entirely of Patriot propaganda. The constitutional convention is most accurately seen as an aristocratic counter revolution. Only 1/6 of the resulting government was designed to be popular elected, and even that election restricted suffrage to property owners. Unformulated, the system soon degenerated into democracy and the quality of government got much worse.
Both the British aristocratic government and the American democratic government were pretty terrible for blacks and Indians, but democracy turned out to be much worse.
So Emperor Hirohito is the one exception? As is Ghengis Kahn?
Hirohito was a figurehead, he had no real power at that time. The Mongols were a warrior people.
Certainly, states run exclusively by elites have to co...
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 56.3 ms ] threadhttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/is_the_...
It's for an upcoming roundtable at the National Press Club. The actual document is here: http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-d...
The public can also contribute ideas here: http://public.commentworks.com/ftc/newsmediaworkshop/
And let's not forget Craigslist if we're casting blame on why the Internet killed newspapers. The classifieds section got decimated by it.
"Here, they confuse journalism with newspapers, and an informed public with newspaper jobs. In fact, Americans have never been better informed or more engaged."
This is not new or unique to newspapers. It's a fallacy common to pretty much every sinking industry.
"but the FTC is an 'independent' agency run by people appointed by the Obama Administration, which has been antagonistic to an Internet it cannot control"
When has the Obama Administration been antagonistic towards the Internet? Aside from ISP-promoted wackaloon conspiracy theories about how Net Neutrality is actually censorship, where is the argument (much less evidence) for this? I mean, I realize this is The Heritage Foundation, but come on. Way to trash a great article with a nonsensical partisan jab.
I dispute this notion. My reading of 20th century tele-journalism is that if anything it was a step backward even from the standards of the 19th century. Granted, it gave many people the perception of being informed about the world, but in practice I believe it fell far short of the mark.
More to the point, I don't think today's standards of journalism are particularly lower than those 50 years ago, for example. However, the difference in cultural perspective and in the available alternate channels of data make the low quality of modern journalism much more obvious.
Quality may have gone down during the 1980s and later, but that's unrelated to the fact that we had advertising and classifieds and entertainment shows to offset the cost of journalism.
http://article.nationalreview.com/434022/obama-vs-the-ipad/m...
The article includes two quotes from President Obama. The first from a commencement address:
You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations . . . information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.
The second is from an interview with CBS News:
There’s one last point I gotta make, Bob, and that is that I do think part of what’s different today is the 24-hour news cycle and cable TV and blogs and all this. They focus on the most extreme elements in both sides. They can’t get enough of conflict. It’s catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult to solve the problems the American people sent us here to solve.
Constructing an 'antagonistic to the Internet' argument on the basis of those two quotes seems somewhat, well, challenging - but those seem to be the primary sources.
A commenter asked what the writer's justification was for calling the Obama administration antagonistic to the internet, and I found it for him. Doesn't mean that the writer's justification has merit.
Instead of fighting the uphill battle of making ordinary people care about global affairs, why not just restrict the franchise to those who can bother themselves to be an informed citizen? Give everyone a test in order to vote.
That would actually be ideal. That way you'd get smart, driven people voting who in reality thought for themselves. My real worry is that the tests would end up being designed to filter out people of the wrong ideology, thus giving power to the test-creators. The way to avoid this is to test for basic factual questions - who is the prime minister of Israel, who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, etc. This information is freely available. If you can't be bothered
Seems pointless. But I never did get people who were eager to disenfranchise lots of their fellow citizens at the drop of a hat.
I never get people who assume universal suffrage is a great thing. People who vote have great power over your life. You wouldn't want to give a pilot who wasn't qualified control of a plane. Why give voters who aren't qualified power to steer the ship of state? Have you ever listened to talk radio before? Does it scare you that those people have so much power over your life?
Or to put it more succinctly, would you rather be ruled by the commenters at Hacker News, or the commenters at Digg?
I don't see any reason to believe that the ability to recite pointless facts correlates significantly with good decision making. I know many smart people who make very poor decisions, including in the voting booth.
Why give voters who aren't qualified power to steer the ship of state?
I think we disagree about what the purpose of voting is. If you think voting is about selecting optimal leadership, then maybe dramatically restricting the franchise is a good idea. But I think voting is about preventing violent conflict and maintaining social stability. People who get to express themselves in the voting booth are (hopefully) less likely to express their frustration by grabbing the nearest minority or outcast and stringing them up from a tree.
Or to put it more succinctly, would you rather be ruled by the commenters at Hacker News, or the commenters at Digg?
Digg. No question. Societies with representative governments are more stable than societies where a tiny elite make decisions on behalf of everyone. Have you seen the commenters at Digg? Those people are insane! They'd resort to violence in a heartbeat. I believe that suboptimal governments are better than optimal governments engaged in civil wars. Wars tend to kill people (like me) and destroy our stuff.
To put it another way: can you point to any model societies that are really great and are governed by a small ruling elite? Because Saudi Arabia and North Korea aren't really blowing me away.
On average, all mental tests tend to correlate with job performance skills.
But I think voting is about preventing violent conflict and maintaining social stability. People who get to express themselves in the voting booth are (hopefully) less likely to express their frustration by grabbing the nearest minority or outcast and stringing them up from a tree.
If that's the intent, the results have been the exact opposite.
Lynching was unheard of in America before the American revolution. All of Africa has been a violent mess since the introduction of universal suffrage. Demagogue politicians exacerbate and fan the flames of ethnic tension. Virulent anti-semitism was rare in Germany before 1870, but decades of politicians vying for power by blaming an outcast group turned anti-semitism into a terrible disease. Democracy universally makes ethnic conflict worse. Read Amy Chua World on Fire.
To put it another way: can you point to any model societies that are really great and are governed by a small ruling elite?
America before the era of Jacksonian democracy ( 1620 to 1820's). Victorian Britain. Bourbon Naples. Pre-civil war Liberia. Belgian Congo (not to be confused with the Congo Free State, which was a disaster). Rhodesia. Singapore. Post-war Japan (basically ruled by MacArthur as dictator). Egypt under Evelyn Baring. Mexico under Porfirio Díaz.
The fallacy that too many people make is that they look at the world and say, "hey, countries that are democracy have a better polity and quality life than non-democracies. Ergo, democracy is good." But this does not tell us if democracy is good, or if democracy is actually a poison. If I give twenty people a poison, only the strongest will be able to withstand it and keep drinking it. The weak fall to the ground sick, and therefore stop drinking the poison. A doctor who arrives on the scene late might see the healthy people drinking the poison, and think the poison is actually good. But that is not the case.
If you look at historical transitions from aristocracy/monarchy to democracy, you'll see that in the vast majority of cases introducing universal suffrage elections has inflamed ethnic tensions and lead to corruption, jingoism, and violence.
This seems obviously false. A mental test that requires you to list top performing baseball players will not correlate well with job performance for most jobs.
If that's the intent, the results have been the exact opposite.
Can you point to any papers published in reputable journals that make that point? Its not that I don't trust you, being some random guy on the internet, but there are people who study history and government structure for a living and I'd think they might have more experience with this sort of thing.
Lynching was unheard of in America before the American revolution.
Wow. I don't even know what to do with a historical argument this absurd.
Virulent anti-semitism was rare in Germany before 1870
This will come as a great surprise to Martin Luther.
Demagogue politicians exacerbate and fan the flames of ethnic tension.
But leaders in autocracies do the exact same thing as well. So it seems like how widespread the franchise was might not be the relevant variable.
Egypt under Evelyn Baring. Mexico under Porfirio Díaz.
Aren't these autocrats? Do you have any model societies where a small fraction of the population votes instead?
Read Amy Chua World on Fire.
Actually, I have read that book and I think you're misrepresenting Chua's thesis. Her claim was not the idea that democracy lead to political demagogues which lead to mass violence. Rather it was the combination of demagogues and the presence of market dominant ethnic minorities combined that lead to mass violence. I mean, one of her main examples is Rwanda, which was a dictatorship at the time. Not exactly a haven for democracy, eh?
If you look at historical transitions from aristocracy/monarchy to democracy, you'll see that in the vast majority of cases introducing universal suffrage elections has inflamed ethnic tensions and lead to corruption, jingoism, and violence.
Um, I might believe that if you could point me to an academic citation. I will agree with you on this: rapid introduction of voting into previously autocratic societies often ends poorly. I think the takeaway there is that democracy involves a lot more than just voting: you need to build the rule of law and emplace a whole set of norms about how power is shared amongst dissenting groups. If you ignore all that and just impose elections immediately, then yeah, things can go very badly.
If you want your truth from authority, join a church. Universities have the same selection method (existing clergy/academics choose the next generation based on whether the existing clery/academics agree with the views of the rising class), and same history (Harvard, Yale, etc were founded seminaries).
I studied political-science at Yale, and the professors are in their own world. Their studies had little to relation to the real world of politics, which I had learned about from actually working in Congress. The university in many subjects has devolved into the modern equivalent of scholasticism. Peer-review can be a tool for eliminating falsehood. But it can also be a tool for filtering out truth, and perpetuating falsehood. This applies 10X for politically sensitive subjects. Universities receive greats amount funding from nominally democratic governments.
That said, even a politically correct institutions can't always avoid the truth. Check out this NYTimes article, it cites a bunch of professors who have studied the link between democracy and violence: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30patterson.html?a...
I haven't read any of the works cited in the article, so I can't vouch for them. I came to my conclusions by studying for myself the history of dozens of democratic transitions. I suggest doing the same yourself, if you are really interested. Pick five or ten countries randomly. Trace their history, starting as far back as you can. Read both progressive, reactionary, and primary sources. And then examine whether the democratic transitions they underwent increased or decreased the quality of governance.
Wow. I don't even know what to do with a historical argument this absurd.
From Sydney George Fisher's History of the American Revolution: "When we consider that this mob rule was steadily practised for a period of more than ten years, it is not surprising that it left an almost indelible mark on our people. They seem to have acquired from it that fixed habit now called lynch law, which is still practised among us in many parts of the country in a most regular and systematic manner, and participated in by respectable people. The term lynch law originated in the method of handling the loyalists in the Revolution, and was named from the brother of the man who founded Lynchburgh in Virginia....If the loyalists could come back from the grave, they would probably say that their fears and prophecies had been fulfilled in the most extraordinary manner; sometimes literally; in most cases substantially. There is no question that the Revolution was followed by a great deal of bad government, political corruption, sectional strife, coarseness in manners, hostility to the arts and refinements of life, assassination, lynch law, and other things which horrified Englishmen and afforded the stock material for the ridicule of such writers as Dickens and Mrs. Montagu." (source: http://books.google.com/books?id=SZccAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA166-I... )
This will come as a great surprise to Martin Luther.
I misspoke. I should have said, the virulent anti-semitism of the 1930's did not exist in Germany in the era of Metternich (first half of the 19th century). Anti-semitism was prevalent centuries before. The situation had gotten much better by the mid-1800's. But with the introduction of universal suffrage in 1870 it got much worse again.
But leade...
Do you apply the same reasoning to the physical sciences? It would be awesome if you downgraded the germ theory of disease to a kooky religious superstition.
I studied political-science at Yale, and the professors are in their own world. Their studies had little to relation to the real world of politics, which I had learned about from actually working in Congress.
So, you chose poorly when it came to grad school. Then you inferred that all grad schools suffered the same problems at the institution you poorly selected. Is that right?
Your description of academia does not jive with the academic writings I read at Lawyers, Guns and Money or the Duck of Minerva or the Edge of the American West. Those academics seem pretty realistic. I have not been blown away by the knowledge, let alone the honesty of congressmen and their staff.
There is no question that the Revolution was followed by a great deal of bad government, political corruption, sectional strife, coarseness in manners, hostility to the arts and refinements of life, assassination, lynch law, and other things which horrified Englishmen and afforded the stock material for the ridicule of such writers as Dickens and Mrs. Montagu.
Um, are we to believe that before the revolution, there was no corruption in the entire British Empire? No bad government? No coarseness of manners? No assassination? I suppose the British Empire was a very polite place. Unless you were Irish. Or Indian. Or Chinese. Then you'd be exterminated by very very polite British monarchists. But that's OK, their manners were impeccable, and in the end, isn't that what really matters?
Honestly, do you have anything beyond royalist propaganda?
It happens most in autocracies that came to a power as a result of party politics, or a violent struggle between political parties.
Really? I think the number of autocracies that have their genesis in military coups shows otherwise.
Elections are the poison, tyranny and civil war are the disease. It's extremely rare in history to find a demagogue monarch.
So Emperor Hirohito is the one exception? As is Ghengis Kahn? And why are we limiting ourselves to monarchs? There are many demagogues who were also tyrants. Demagogy seems related to the availability of modern communications technology. The best tools to facilitate demagogy only arrived in an era where monarchism declined.
If you already have a government that provides rule of law, and a good set of norms about power sharing, why change things up?
Because an embryonic state that is developing the rule of law might not be as sustainable as a mature democracy. Certainly, states run exclusively by elites have to constantly worry about popular revolution.
A church can have branches that do sound science. Copernicus worked for the Catholic church, after all. What makes the physical sciences generally more sound is that a) their results can be directly tested and observed and b) the topics are generally less politically charged.
But my point is not that the university is completely false. It's that it should not be treated as some sort of infallible source. You shouldn't be putting peer-reviewed articles on a pedestal above any other type of evidence.
So, you chose poorly when it came to grad school. Then you inferred that all grad schools suffered the same problems at the institution you poorly selected. Is that right?
It was undergrad actually. The problem is endemic to the field, it was based not just on the classes but browsing through the major journals.
Of course, there are interesting political scientists. Academics who blog tend to be quite a bit more grounded. Journal articles are primarily arcana and numerology.
Those academics seem pretty realistic. I have not been blown away by the knowledge, let alone the honesty of congressmen and their staff.
I'm saying that the academic study of politics is very far removed from what's actually going on.
Um, are we to believe that before the revolution, there was no corruption in the entire British Empire? No bad government?
We're talking relative quality of government. The quality of government in America pre-1776 was generally much better than 1783 to 1789.
George Washington himself agrees with me: 'Washington, black with depression, decided and bluntly said "that mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government" ... "Good God!" cried Washington, "Who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted" the things that were going on! "The disorders which have arisen in these States, the present prospect of our affairs . . . seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. My mind can scarcely realize it as a thing in actual existence. . . . There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to." Source: http://books.google.com/books?output=text&id=XtxBAAAAIAA...
From the same book: "During his early years in the Legislature, as has appeared, Marshall's opinions were changing. Washington, as we shall see, soon after peace was declared, lost much of his faith in the people; Madison arrived at the opinion that the majority were unequal to the weightier tasks of popular rule; and Marshall also finally came to entertain the melancholy fear that the people were not capable of selfgovernment. Indeed, almost all of the foremost men of the period now under review were brought to doubt the good sense or sound heart of the multitude ... This revolution in the views of men like Washington, Madison, and Marshall was caused largely by the conduct of the masses, which, to such men, seemed to be selfish, violent, capricious, vindictive, and dangerous."
These quotes of course, will not be found in your AP History Book, which consists entirely of Patriot propaganda. The constitutional convention is most accurately seen as an aristocratic counter revolution. Only 1/6 of the resulting government was designed to be popular elected, and even that election restricted suffrage to property owners. Unformulated, the system soon degenerated into democracy and the quality of government got much worse.
Both the British aristocratic government and the American democratic government were pretty terrible for blacks and Indians, but democracy turned out to be much worse.
So Emperor Hirohito is the one exception? As is Ghengis Kahn?
Hirohito was a figurehead, he had no real power at that time. The Mongols were a warrior people.
Certainly, states run exclusively by elites have to co...