Just Not Smart Enough

There was an opinion article published last month in well-known newspaper that irked me no end (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez18-2009may18,0,5064800.column). The article complained about too much “direct” democracy. It chided a system that allows an incompetent populous to vote on important political matters.
The real answer, according to the author, was for the dopes that vote to, instead, “find a way to make our representatives do their jobs.”

Although the article didn’t spell it out, the implication was that the public should vote only to elect representatives. The representatives take it completely from there. If we don’t like what they’re doing, we vote them out of office but we don’t otherwise interfere because, after all, we’re just idiots.

That whole line of what passes for thinking trips and falls over several basic obstacles. For instance, if we’re too stupid to understand their jobs, we can’t possibly assess their job performance. So, voting them in or out of office would be based only on uninformed, knee-jerk reactions. After all, stupid is as stupid does and a stupid bunch of voters will always vote stupidly.

So, maybe what the guy was getting at is that we shouldn’t vote at all. Instead, we could maybe become a nation of sheep, being lead by the self-anointed who know what’s best for us. After all, we don’t want to stress our pretty, little, empty heads. Baa, baa.

Or, maybe we could do something else all together. How about if only smart people are allowed to vote and only smart people are allowed to run for office? That would fix everything the guy complains about in his article. No more stupid decisions by stupid people because there are no stupid people in the mix. We would develop “smart tests” that people have to pass before they can vote or are allowed to become candidates. Stupid people need not apply.

And as long as we are fixing things, lets go all the way. No more lazy, greedy voters or candidates. No more self-serving, power-seeking parasites in the voting booth or on the ballot. Smart, honest, altruistic voters and representatives are all we need. Together, they will run the lobbyists out of town, fix the unfairness in our system and put everything on the right track. Those of us living in Stupidville will be eternally grateful.

Fabulous idea. Why hasn’t someone thought of it before?

Until we get that going we can use the new GPS technology Riley described in his last blog. Maybe with it, our current representatives can find their brains so the stupid populous isn’t forced to intervene. Or maybe the problem is, they don’t have any.

See you on the left side.