At best 15% of Americans were permitted to vote. No black no Jews no Indians no women no renters no poor.

Was it Jefferson who said that?

Anyway, it's obvious Democracy sucks. That's why we don't live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic, which is based on the assumption that most people are pretty stupid but they are just smart enough to tell who the smart people are and get them to make the decisions. And on a small level where people actually know other people, a Republic works pretty well. Not very well - for example, an awful lot of people are stupid enough to send their money to televangelists who drive large cars and have bad haircuts - but better than the alternatives.

ANY government other than pure Democracy is based on the premise that most people suck and the best ones should be in charge. The trick is figuring out which ones those are.

It's not as if fascism is in and of itself a bad thing. After all when the far left supports it it must be for our own good. I think only 'quality' people should be allowed to vote, in fact let's scale the weight of people's votes to their 'quality' rankings.

Seriously though, if you eliminate all the less worthy people and apply simple social eugenics criteria for voting, I'm pretty sure you wind up with an aristocracy that serves its own ends and not everyone else's.

Reading the other letters, I note that most people here are buying into a liberal myth: that education will make people smarter. It won't. It will make them more educated, but they will still be just as stupid.

Jesus once said, "The poor you will always have with you." He could just as easily have said, "The stupid you will always have with you."

So what's the appropriate response to the stupid? Like my mother-in-law, a high powered executive who attends a church that doesn't allow women in financial meetings because they can't understand money? She learned all about Darwin in school, but she still chooses to believe that dinosaur bones were placed in the earth by God 6,000 years ago at the creation to test men's faith.

What about the friend I talked to who is convinced that Obama is secretly a Muslim AND at the same time a rabid member of a radical Christian church and supporter of Reverend Wright's "black agenda"? She has certainly been exposed to the truth; when I talk to her, she says, "Yes, I've read that but I don't choose to believe it." She simply choses to believe what she wants to believe, even if contains internal inconsistencies.

but I have seen my betters, and they are just as hamstrung by blinkered ideology and myopia as the general electorate. As for a civics test for voting, it's easy to sympathize with that but, pace Grumpus, knowing stuff doesn't make one wise enough to avoid a stupid war like this one. The architects of Iraq, and the proponents of a war against Iran, are disproportionately well educated and could pass any such test with flying colors. What they are is amoral and deeply committed to a vision of American power and control that trumps their intelligence at every turn. In other words, they are very smart but deeply irrational in their need to feel powerful, feared, and deferred to. And most Americans feel this way. They cannot abide the idea that all peoples are created equal. To them, America is not one among many. It is unique; it is exceptional. It is above law, above meaningful criticism. Our elite of policy-makers and investors and CEOs believe these things. No test of facts will weed these people out. Democracy, Republic, or Oligarchy, it makes no difference--these are the guiding ideas of most Americans, ignorant or informed, and I don't see it changing until America lacks the power to perpetuate the myth of its own unique and special greatness.

Buy In.

Allowing everyone to vote over 18 makes the government everyone's government. So the government can truly be the will of the people. It creates the feeling that if things go very badly you can vote to change things.

Remember you can fool some the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

We are seeing this now with the backlash against the war, the Bush administration, and the Republicans.

The battle was lost a long time ago. Once property qualificatins were eliminated for voting it was only a matter of time until a majority of the electorate would consist of the stupid and ill-informed. Democracy only works when aristocrats are the ones running for office, like Pericles. Perhaps we should have property and educational qualifications not for voters but for candidates.

I'm wondering if I believe the Churchill quote, "Democracy is a terrible form of government, but it's better than all the others we have tried". (Or something like that). As imperfect as we are, are we on a positive evolutinary path??? E.g. over 10,000 years our system of stability progressing from tribal warfare, to religion, Athens/Rome, back to Religion, to Kings/feudalism, to rise of Merchant class/science/capitalism with some soul, struggle between communism and capitalism (war again), back to capitalism now with no soul (Before WW2 at least rich old men who cared about their children and legacy were calling the shots, now it's greedy fund managers and the emerging Asian culture). Any history professors out there?

I always have to remind myself when politicians are saying stupid things, they're not talking to my friends and I. They're talking to "America". Ignorant TV and sports addicted animals. But of course, the "Wisdom of Crowds" theory says they are smarter than me anyway. WHich may be true. On the other hand it might not be true. Perhaps we're better off with the conspiracy theorists nemisis's such as the Bilderbergs then without them. Perhaps I can modify Churchill's statement that the Bilderbergs are a horrible form of controlling the world, but it's better than anything that we have tried. Bottom line, is I'm not smart enough, or really knowledable enough to know. Basically none of us really know, the system is just too complex.

But one thing is clear, this is NOT about the government. It's about people who control the government (i.e. big corporate money and the emerging Asian influence). That cat is out of the bag, and perhaps the answer is more pressure on them to be accountable, because this is where the individual has more power than our "elections". We have the power of choice every day. McDonalds was able to do in one week what the US government could not do in 5 years -- require inspection on meat for Mad Cow disease. But of course, how do we know that they are not lying to us too? The corporate world gives money to charities, but they measure their success on how much money they give, not wether it's being used effectively.

This whole thing is too complicated - a complex system, law of unintended consequences, etc... But we need to focus on systems that we can change quickly. We can't change the school system, but we can have our children augment their education with various online (or other) means. Can we make corporations more accountable? Maybe we are slowly doing this, and maybe in the long run the politicians will follow? It became clear to me when I travelled to Ukraine last year that "democracy", or whatever you want to call it, requires public interest groups, advocacy groups to work. I hope our youth are getting more involved, because this is the only way to keep us evolving in a positive way. But maybe they are too addicted to video'online games and such. If so, then maybe our tactic should defense. Let's put the CIA, or whatever is left of them to good use, and ensure our economic enemy's youth also get addicted to video/online games....