June 16, 2018
They Broke the Law
I keep seeing conservatives on Facebook justify the practice of separating refugee/illegal immigrant kids from their parents with the following argument: “They broke the law!” I guess the thought is…
Posts filed under against democracy
December 02, 2017
Tu Quoque: The Dictators Might Misuse You Objection to Against Democracy
A few times, political theorists—most recently Jeff Isaac at Indiana’s Ostrom Workshop—have raised a particular objection to Against Democracy. (I mention political theorists because I think it’s interesting that theorists,…
January 19, 2017
Hurting Low-Information Voters’ Wittle Feelings
Opinion-haver Claire Lehmann calls me out for calling low-information voters low-information: A pernicious term used for those who voted for Trump and Brexit is the “low information voter”. Most likely uneducated,…
August 17, 2016
The Page 99 Test: Against Democracy
“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” –Ford Madox Ford The Page 99 Test is a website that…
August 13, 2016
Situational Enemies
Mill hypothesized that political participation might have certain benefits, including making us more open-minded and more concerned with one another’s welfare. The empirical evidence shows that he was mostly wrong….
August 12, 2016
Deliberative Democracy: A “Neutral” Result is a Negative Result
Chapter 3 of Against Democracy looks at the empirical work on how political participation, and in particular, deliberative democracy, affects us. Mill hypothesized that deliberation would tend to educate and ennoble…