As late as the spring of 2004 a clear majority remained unaware that experts such as Hans Blix (head of the UN weapons inspectors), David Kay (the former head of the Iraq Survey Group), and Richard Clarke (the national coordinator for counterterrorism) had firmly concluded that Iraq lacked WMD at the time of our invasion, even though their findings had received wide publicity.

And news to many others I would wager. If you didn't dig around the internet and read press originating outside of the U.S. I contend you would have been hard pressed to find this in the so called MSM. It may have been covered but it was fleeting compared to the pro war drum beat.

In Weimar Germany, the most erudite sophisticated, educated country of their age, they elected some pretty nasty types in 32.

The Iraqis were, we were told, are or were the most egalitarian and educated of all Arabs. Their voter turnout was typically 100% or slightly higher. It didn't work out fantastically well for them under the Saddam regime.

The Iranians we're told are also the most wonderfully tolerant and broadminded of all west Asians. Their elections received the stamp of approval of non other than St Jimmy al ibn Carter. The Ayatollahs just love that as they're rounding up women, dissidents and gays to execute.

The Palestinians were we were told, the most educated of all Arabs in that reason, especially the Palestinians of Gaza, who elected theocratic nutcases in the Hamas.

I'd say believing your agitprop is a recipe for disaster.

Anyone under the impression that we are still living in a democracy is D-U-M dumb.

From universal health care and our failed drug policy to global warming and the war in Iraq, there's no shortage of issues that have fallen deaf ears again and again and again.

Those people wringing their hands over the fact a lot of people voted for Bush in 2004 conveniently forget the half-assed campaign of John Kerry. Call me a Deaniac but Kerry was not the best candidate.

Michael Moore's 9/20/04 rant about John Kerry demonstrates the confusion that reigned during the 2004 campaign. Here's a copy-and-paste link or you can click on my screen name below.

We began by discussing and debating whether or not all of us or any of us are qualified by our intelligence and cumulative knowlege to vote for national political officials. The natural outcome was going to be the argument that this here country is a Republic, dammit! And of course, it is, at least if any of our foremost founders' words are anything to go by. For instance, Thomas Jefferson stated in his inaugural speech (following probably the most divisive campaign in our history, having been elected by the Congress on something like the 37th vote) that:

"We are all republicans:

we are all federalists"

No one should take this to mean that we are all de facto members of the Republican party, but that we are (or at least were, til the paradigm was arbitrarily changed by semantic gamers over the years) participants in a federal republic, one which utilizes certain democratic mechanisms to choose its officials and to conduct its ritual business in session.

To waste so much time splitting hairs over whether or not the United States is a democracy (which it is, in part) or a republic (which it is, overarchingly) is to divert a great deal of time and energy away from the more urgent question being asked by the article and the subject book. You can call it what you please, but the issue at hand is actually more serious, and the fact that we are a federal republic which utilizes democratic processes, however blunted by republican devices intended to slow, baffle and even filter out some of the power of the people (thus not a direct democracy for sure), remains -- mechanistically so.

Dissolution of the Electoral College would bring us more near the status of a direct democracy, but good luck with that. It is possible but not probable that will happen in either of our lifetimes. Meanwhile, we do have the opportunity to insure that the voting public is better informed, more involved, and basically educated as to how this rather unique and ongoing revolution in manners and mores functions by law. Once they understand their ownership of it and the fact that the people they elect are serving at their leisure and not because there exists an actual ruling class, the sooner we can begin to streamline the thing as well as agree on the proper terms to use to describe the way it is organized.

Meanwhile, I continue to agree with Jefferson's assessment that we are, indeed, all republicans and federalists. Please note the lack of capital letters on those terms. I, myself, am a registered Republican, and I recognize all too painfully how far from "republicans" the Republican party has strayed. Why I remain a member of that benighted party is a long story accounted in many other threads here on Salon. Suffice it to say I know the difference between my so-called party and the Jeffersonion terms used to describe what sort of system we were calling ourselves back in the day.

That may make me a conservative. It sure doesn't make me a Repupblican. I can tear up that card any time and still be an American.

That's the really cool part.

I started by calling attention to the danger of such beliefs. This letters column has convinced me that not only are we too stupid to vote, we're too dangerously insane to be given any power at all.

in all the lower and traditional working classes in this country ... or that for the lower and working classes "having politics" of any kind is disadvantageous... particularly of the labor organizing variety. Talking politics on the job may well be hazardous to your ambitions. I think it's legacy of cold war McCarthyism.

But, even 30 years ago, high school graduation was a luxury many couldn't afford and many didn't want to ... they wanted that paycheck ... and they didn't need a high school diploma (and many still don't)... College was for the wealthy and the exceptionally bright.

So, imho, it's more than laziness ... there are genuine "disincentives" to knowing more ... aside from the sleepless nights and the dyspepsia that comes from actually caring about any of this. But, ignorance, for whatever reason, should never be confused with stupidity ... and it should be recognized that in many cultures "too much learning" is seen as dangerous ... particularly in women, but generally across the board ... it destabilizes the "natural" or traditional hierarchies of respect and power.