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Zonie63 -> RE: Why Are Americans Anti-Intellectual? (10/15/2012 1:12:57 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
quote:
ORIGINAL: GotSteel
quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
By what mechanism would the Intellectual(s) gain assent and compliance for the long term social good?
Perhaps by talking about it on the internet. We can try and raise awareness that electing people who dislike learning and thinking to jobs which require a lot of learning and thinking is a recipe for poor job performance.
And hey if we don't run into too many people that are so determined to pretend that we're talking about doing away with democracy and installing philosopher-kings we might even get somewhere.
Yes agreed, GotSteel.
The whole point of this post is to point out that democracy only works as well as possible if people approach politics and leadership as something requiring some "smarts". I certainly was not advocating getting rid of democracy. If anything, the thread has pointed out how democracy works very well in some countries because the political culture is different.
So I agree with all of those on this thread who have pointed to certain issues (education, media, etc.) that can possibly be addressed in order to raise people's awareness.
Again, I return to the idea that no one wants a surgeon who hasn't been properly trained to do her job. No one would think it was acceptable to make an uneducated person their child's grade school teacher. So why do want leaders who don't know what they are doing? Again, this is a cultural approach to politics that isn't even reflected in how people make other choices in their lives.
But then we're still left with the question as to what the qualifications should be for "leader." Each state has licensing and certification requirements for surgeons and school teachers, but qualifications for public office seem to be more open-ended, other than a minimum age requirement, citizenship, residency requirements - but nothing about education or any actual qualifications for the job.
So, how do we know if our leaders know what they are doing? What qualifications should we, as voters, look for when making our choices at the polls?
Should there be more stringent qualifications to hold public office, and if so, what should they be? Should a college degree be required?
Are qualifications even enough? Does character also count? There's a widely held view in U.S. culture in that the individual (and this especially applies to political candidates, not to mention salesmen) is "selling himself" more than his product or idea. So, with politicians, they're selling themselves more than their resume or even their ideas.
But on the subject of ideas and ideology, that may go back to party and factional loyalty I mentioned upthread. If a person is ideologically aligned with either the Democratic or Republican parties, they might not care so much that this candidate or that candidate is "unqualified" (or even a bumbling fool), because they may be voting more for the party and their ideological platform than any individual candidate. They're also looking at the lesser of two evils. I think people might be more inclined to vote for the airhead who agrees with them over the genius who disagrees with them.
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