I don't see it being workable unless it was a short, federally-administered test, based simply on an understanding of the Constitution. What's to prevent abuses of anything? Oh my God, stop the world because ABUSES are happening! Meanwhile, I would argue that the current system is a total failure that leads to the abuse of informed people at the hands of fucking dopes and morons.

Also, to those who claim that "autocracy doesn't work" and "democracy may be flawed, but it's the best system we have" - are you sure about that? Seriously. Sometimes I wonder if that's just not patriotic cant that we're all raised to believe. Who says that autocracy doesn't work? Russians and Chinese seem to embrace it and it seems to work alot better than democracy for them.

Meanwhile we Americans have let our "market-based" values dumb us so far down past the lowest common denomonator that we elect an incompetent liar like Bush and let him fool us into a costly, unecessary, unwinnible war in Iraq while questioning the need to rebuild a major American city.

To tell you the truth, I think we stupid ass Americans give Democracy a bad name.

Which people, exactly, are ignorant? Claiming that Americans ipso facto are stupid is a bit like believing all Greeks dance zorba, that white men can't jump, that women are bad drivers, and that blondes are dumb. These are stereotypes; cookie cutter types; pigeon holes; convenient labels we stick onto others so we don't have to think about them in any complex way.

What I object to, in particular, is the notion that the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, the plebs, 'the common man' (note the elision of the 'common' woman in our vocabulary)--which is to say, 'the people'--is equivalent to being an ignorant oaf (the patronizing belief of conservatives). Yes, it's often been because of thinkers that anything of great worth has been achieved. But the ones who really mattered weren't those serving the powerful. Nor would they have been able to fire the powerless, the underdogs of the world, if they hadn't touched upon something that folk out there hadn't already been mulling about in their heads or hadn't themselves knowledge of the injustices meted out to them. Workers didn't really need Karl Marx to tell them they were exploited. What Marx did is codify those injustices and validate them. The people then fought for them. Jesus wouldn't have had the meek and poor behind him if they didn't think as he did about things. What Jesus did is openly express what they were suffering and in the process more and more joined in the battle.

Our history is full of miners who protested--and rail-workers and weavers and spinners. Women protested too and chained themselves to fences for suffrage. Christians martyred themselves. Good grief, the name protest itself derives from Protestants. They protested too and a mighty lot they became for doing so. The Russians did, fed up with the czar and made the Russian Revolution (perhaps, if they kept on doing so they might have had the free society they argued for). African Americans marched for their civil rights and would still be facing Jim Crow laws if they hadn't.

Nothing comes from sitting on one's bum and being thick as a brick. If we have Democracy today (and it is amazing, given the forms of government that came before it, this aberration came into being) it's because people made a darn big fuss. They dared to dream and fight for it. Some died to get the eight hour work day. Did you think all those protesters, demonstrators, revolutionaries, rebels, were like today's Ivy League graduates? Or all from the wealthy (that is, the class who had their foot on their necks)? They were thousands and thousands of anonymous people who have gone to their graves and we don't know them the way we do Voltaire or Martin Luther or Simone de Beauvoir or W.E Dubois.

Yes, there are many in the electorate who are stupid beyond words--none though quite as inane as the moron occupying the White House at the moment. Many who gossip about Britney Spears rather than discuss the state of Burma (such as, Camille Paglia, for instance). Some of these are very educated, and yet they are some of the most stupidest. Bill Cosby espouses many of the middle class prejudices about African Americans that White middle class people do. Is this because he was born stupid? Or is it because he associates with them and made his success in their world? We know Cosby isn't dumb and yet he pushes the same obtuse, unanalyzed dogma and bromides that they do: that poor 'blacks' need only to 'shape up' and work hard to get success. He sees racial inequality not as being rooted in unequal relationships of power and privilege, which would then require changing the social system, but as being a moral or psychological problem that can be overcome by having the individual pull himself or herself from their boot straps! Imagine if abolitionists believed that all slaves had to do to be emancipated is learn manners and curtsy. What tosh! The man obviously has a very cushy existence that he can so casually propose such tripe.

Do I think the American people then are dumb? Some are, yes. But they are deliberately made that way. They are indoctrinated to believe the nonsense that they do. The media is monopolized by the wealthy. Your schools never teach about how labour rights were fought for. In Universities only the Chicago school of Economics and classical Economics is taught. Yet, others are not dumb. They protested against the Iraq war. They know that plutocrats have been plundering America. They are becoming increasingly vocal. The problem is that they're not organized--not like the French are. You do really have to protest and engage in civil disobedience and mount a fight if you want to get a fair deal. Yet Americans seems to think only by voting for the right president will that come about. Poor deluded fools! It's time you became knowledgeable about history. Not just stupidity but complacency is what some Americans suffer from. The rich can afford to be stupid and unaware. You can't. Not if you want an equal and fair America.