Left2Right

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Posted by: Andrew

This is a very clever and apt analogy! But I'm left wondering what your reasons are for saying that parents are still good for their children despite being somewhat ignorant. It seems to me that you've just put out your intuitive reaction to the idea that parents might be unfit to raise their own children. ("is the case for free parenting badly damaged by the kinds of parental ignorance I have conjectured or documented? Not to my mind.")

If you could articulate some specific arguments why a large but not overwhelming degree of ignorance is still okay for parents, that would be a big help for understanding why, analogously, a large but not overwhelming degree of ignorance among voters is not a fatal problem for democracy. For example, one might say that parents are at least well-intentioned. Then one might analogously argue that a precondition for democracy is some vague form of patriotism (i.e., voters like their country and want to make it better).

On the other hand, if the real reason is just pure intuition, perhaps that tells us something about the basis for democracy as well.

Posted by: Andrew | Dec 15, 2004 5:18:17 PM

Posted by: Bill

It's an interesting analogy, but the kinds of knowledge involved and (more importantly) the relations between the knowing-thats and knowing-hows are strikingly different in the case of parenting.

Casting a vote is a much more limited expression of what (political) knowledge one has than is one's parenting style (of one's parenting knowledge). And there is hardly any know-how involved in voting.

More to the point, care and devotion can in some ways make up for ignorance in parenting. But however much we might like to take the same stance toward the polity of which we are a part, it just is not remotely possible... even conceivable really (at least to me).

Posted by: Bill | Dec 15, 2004 5:28:01 PM

Posted by: DNL

You're still begging the question: Are these people really ignorant? Throw-away quips like Saddam had no 9/11 connection are exactly that -- show why that knowledge _matters_. To most voters, it doesn't. There's a reality now: We're in Iraq. I can rationally vote on that issue without having any knowledge or care about Saddam's connection (or lack thereof) to the events of 9/11.

So, again, why does it matter? That you think it _should_ matter is a different issue, not one of ignorance of the listener, but of ineffective campaigning of the speaker.

Posted by: DNL | Dec 15, 2004 5:48:09 PM

Posted by: Mark

DNL:
The point isn't simply that it does or should matter to the vote, but that the truth is so glaringly obvious that if people are not abreast of such a simple factoid, how could we be certain that they are basing any of their relevant decisions on information that would require much more digging? Someone might not think Saddam's connection matters, but they might think certain things about the nature and ethics of war. However, Saddam's connection is a well-documented, well-publicized, and simple bit of news. Sound decisions on viable and moral decisions to be made with our situation in Iraq require FAR more rumination and research. Also, I think it's possible that those stats might have pointed out that people felt it was just to attack Iraq, and that Bush's decision was right, BASED ON Saddam's fallacious connection to 9/11. Can anyone confirm that that was true? If so, then the case for a need for improved voter education is only stronger. Most important, however, is that Mr. Estlund is not making the point that you specify. He feels that the perceived gap in voter education does not significantly undermine the strength of the democratic process, and, to that extent, I think you agree.

Posted by: Mark | Dec 15, 2004 6:08:10 PM

Posted by: Bob Talisse

David:

Thanks for the thought-provoking post. Here's a thought re the limits of the analogy. The version of the public ignorance objection that I'm most familiar with is directed explicitly against *deliberative* versions of democracy (Posner, for example, objects to dd on these grounds). As you know, many versions of dd involve the claim that public deliberation enhances the epistemic value (truth, rationality, justifiability, what have you) of democratic outcomes. I wonder whether the parenting case works as an analogy when we're thinking explicitly of deliberative democracy? In dd, we're not thinking only of citizens' ability to make good decisions, but of their ability to reason collectively, and it would seem that the widespread public ignorance is a hinderance to that.

Posted by: Bob Talisse | Dec 15, 2004 6:58:49 PM

Posted by: bakho

People are misinformed because we are bombarded with messages that are not correct. A lot of it has to do with a Republican Party that has to lie about its policies and agenda because opinion polls show that people routinely reject Republican policies. For instance, the Bush plan to destroy Social Security is being sold as a plan to fix Social Security. Social Security was fixed back when Reagan was president and has a trust fund of several Trillion dollars. It is the rest of the budget that is in debt over $7 Trillion.

Part of it has to do with a media that is content to publish and broadcast the lies of politicians uncritically. The politicians are gaming the media. They know the media will not challenge their lies so they tell bolder lies. Journalistic standards have slipped to new lows in the US.

Posted by: bakho | Dec 15, 2004 7:15:45 PM

Posted by: novakant

Sorry, but I think the analogy is fundamentally flawed and highly misleading. There are no standardized test, education savings schemes, guidance counselors, books about developmental psychology and whathaveyou available in large parts of the world, nor have there been for thousands of years. Yet by and large parents have apparently been able to raise children just fine.

OTOH politicians misleading their citizens has caused and does cause an inordinate amount of suffering and slaughter, lead and leads to unnecessary wars, genocides and economic hardship.

Posted by: novakant | Dec 15, 2004 9:06:30 PM

Posted by: Dallas

I doubt that there is such a right in either case; it depends in certain ways on how well free parenting and democracy tend to perform.

The interesting question is how would be go about measuring performance. Unless you are able to demonstrate underperformance, your comments concerning ignorance have no bearing on anything of significance.

Posted by: Dallas | Dec 15, 2004 9:25:32 PM

Posted by: Chris C.

Horace Mann was motivated to create the common school partly because he thought an educated citizenry was necessary to sustain a true democracy.

He thought an uninformed puclic would lead to tyranny.

"Surely nothing but universal education can counterwork this tendency to the domination of capital and the servility of labor. If one class possesses all the wealth and the education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be called: the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the former."

-Horace Mann, 1848 Report

Posted by: Chris C. | Dec 15, 2004 9:26:04 PM

Posted by: BigMaAttack

A rocky start. But what a great site. I really liked Andrew's comment and so I am seconding the request.

Posted by: BigMaAttack | Dec 15, 2004 9:46:19 PM

Posted by: the prof

Whoa, wait one second there, pardner. Where exactly did you come up with this:

I hear some on the left saying that democracy itself is in question if voters are so badly informed that they don't even know, for just one example, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

There is no left or right on this point: mass apathy and ignorance has been an issue for at least a few centuries. I haven't done a count, but I suspect you'd find far more suspicion of mass politics coming from the right than from the left, but I really don't think this is a liberal/conservative issue at all.

Posted by: the prof | Dec 15, 2004 10:02:26 PM

Posted by: AVoiceForAllChildren

Since when have parents done anything else BUT screw up their children's upbringing?

Posted by: AVoiceForAllChildren | Dec 15, 2004 10:11:29 PM

Posted by: Iconic Midwesterner

In discussing the democratic aspects of a poltical system you cannot assume there is a set priority or ranking of issues. Some people are ignorant of the facts about Iraq because they really don't care about it, or they care about it much less than they care about many other factors. And that alright, in fact it is exactly what democracy is supposed to be all about, i.e. a system that allows for competition between peoples with varying ideas of the what constitutes the "good", public and private.

The fantasies of "ideal direct democracy" or maybe "deliberative democacy" (the same thing?), have very little to do with how people live their lives. If someone is ignorant of basic facts about Iraq, but is really more concerned about the status of their overtime pay at work, I don't see the problem for democracy.

I'm sure the same percentage of people were generally ignorant in 1996 as they were in 2004. And I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of largely ignorant voters wasn't higher in 1940. So what? People still showed the ability to identify their own interests and make those interests felt at the ballot box. The fact that the average voter in 1940's Oklahoma City might have been ignorant about the war in Europe when compared to the average voter in New Haven is simply irrelevant.

There is a hubris that emerges that cuts across the left/right spectrum, and it can be seen in things such as the infamous exit poll question that resulted in more people claiming "moral values" as their most important issue over every other. The survey listed 6 possible answers. The entire complexity of american life was reduced to 6 possible answers. The country has 300+ million people, with 300+ million different ways of looking at the world, and that was reduced to 6 possible answers on a questionaire. The belief that people prioritize their value systems with such a degree of uniformity that only 6 possible answers need be given, or even that they could or should prioritize in such a lock-step fashion, underscores the hubris of those that "do political stuff" for a living.

I apologize for prattling on.

Posted by: Iconic Midwesterner | Dec 15, 2004 10:12:59 PM

Posted by: Aaron S.

I actually like the analogy very well. My conclusions are 180 degrees opposite, however. I think the long list rattled off about how parents are generally ignorant about certain information that is important to their child's upbringing is a pretty good indicator as to whether those people should be having children or at least ungovernment-aided parenting. I also think democracy is pretty well useless if a majority of the public is ignorant about certain important facts (foreign affairs foremost among them). Because then politics becomes a game of who can better manipulate the masses, which is a game that must be played whether in a dictatorship or in a democracy.
Nevertheless, this should not be any cause for alarm, just cause to improve the education system for parents and children alike.

Posted by: Aaron S. | Dec 16, 2004 12:24:17 AM

Posted by: Doug H.

Be careful basing conclusions about people on what they choose to tell pollsters, or on answers to specific and deliberately worded poll questions.

If you ask, "Did Saddam give the direct marching orders that sent Atta et al on their terror-spree?" I bet even most Bush voters would say "no."

If you ask, was there some connection between, on the one hand, the 1991 Gulf War, the U.N. sanctions against Iraq, Saddam's exploitation of Arab/Muslim sympathy, the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden on Iraq, the encouragement of Palestinian suicide bombers by Saddam, and, on the other, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, perhaps even many Kerry voters, if they didn't think it would help Bush to say it, might admit it was in the mix.

In the minds of many Americans, Sept. 11 was the problem, and what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is the solution. If they hear your question in those terms, there is a "connection." If that is thinking with the heart, not the head, so be it. Parenthood often works that way, too.

Also, the statement in question, as you've framed it, and as, I believe, it often is asked, is a negative one. People, even skeptical ones, can legitimately refuse to sign on to that. I believe the supposed connection between the Unocal oil pipeline and the Afghanistan war, as hyped in "Fahrenheit 9/11," is bunk. But can I be positive to the core of my being that there was "no connection," on any level, whatsoever?

When Condi Rice was grilled about a Saddam-9/11 connection, she answered, "Yes, but ...." Michael Moore cut that to "Yes." That was a deception. People, even Republicans, may be more subtle than pollsters' questions reveal.

Great blog, by the way. Keep it up. And it's refreshing to see voters and the government discussed in terms of the people as parents to the system, not the other way around, as is dismally common these days.

Posted by: Doug H. | Dec 16, 2004 12:30:18 AM

Posted by: Patrick

It seems to me that all but the first item of knowledge mentioned in relation to the parents case are far less important to parenting than belief about Iraq is to being a good citizen.
(Most of the time in high school I didn't know who my guidance counselor was, and I don't think this ignorance hurt me)

The belief that Iraq was involved in 9/11 (And Doug H. that second question is a question about whether certain events were relevant to what produced 9/11 and the poll questions are about Saddam or Iraq. I think you need a better example of how a question that gets reported as 70% beleive Saddam behind 9/11 could be asked such that it doesn't actually reflect such a belief. I doubt there is a polling organization in the country that would ask your question) is extremely important in explaining why it is we went to war. And it seems to me that going to war mistakenly (whether intentional or not) can be very detrimental to democracy. War climates in general don't seem too good for the kind of dialogue that a good democracy should have, and so if we are ignorant enough to allow ourselves to get into an unnecessary war, then I think we do have a problem.

Someone made the point, and I thought it a good one, that what is important is the attitude towards educating yourself that the Iraq-9/11 beliefs express. If a person is not willing to do the small amount of work (for several months all you had to do was listen to the news for an hour and you would hear the 9/11 commission's finding mentioned somehow) it takes to disabuse themselves of this belief, are they going to reflect critically about the TV ads they see in an election cycle? Are they going to question what the people on their side of the political divide say at all? This sounds to me like the absence of vigilance, and I think Jefferson was right about what happens when the citizens of a democracy lack that trait.

Posted by: Patrick | Dec 16, 2004 2:06:52 AM

Posted by: Chris

I'm not an American but I do follow American politics given the influence your internal decisions have upon the world. As an outsider to that extent it seems to me that both Republicans and Democrats are eager to denounce each other on hysterical exaggerations that contort and twiste the truth. Given that whatever facts are available are deployed for purely partisan purposes after a while it likely becomes hard to discern any "objective" truth and people simply line up and pick sides on what the "true" facts are based on their partisan loyalties.

Consider the lefts delusions that the Iraq war is some sort of massive scheme to gain control of oil. Consider the massive amount of money your government has poured into the war on terror, its pretty much bet the farm on it. If all Bush really cared about was oil he'd just have dropped the sanctions and cut a deal with Saddam. Then there is always Dan Rather producing entirely fake news stories.

On the other hand prior to the invasion of Iraq from what I can decern senior government officials didn't come out and say "Saddam was directly linked to 9/11" but they certainly alluded and implied a connection, talking up Saddam's connection to terror. Which is true to some extent as he has a connection to funding suicide bombers in the West Bank. But given that Iraq was merged with the War on Terror it implied a connection between Iraq and Al Quaeda which was murky. Not that knocking off opressive dictators is a bad thing on strictly humanitarian grounds, I tend to think a world with more democracy is a better place.

However, the point is that both sides are partisan and decietful and you could likely poll both sides and find they hold believes which are absolutely ludicrous. Hence its simply expressing political prejudgice to label one side as ignorant.

Posted by: Chris | Dec 16, 2004 3:07:49 AM

Posted by: Linus Unbound

The whole "misinformed voter" issue is a red herring.

Saddam had close ties to Al Qaeda, at least some high-ranking AQ operatives also held jobs in Saddam's government, and members of AQ were not only welcomed into Iraq but given free health care in state-run Iraqi hospitals. But Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 itself.

Ties to Al Qaeda: yes. Ties to 9/11: no.

Ask your average Republican the first question, you'll get the correct answer. Ask the second, and you'll get a technically incorrect answer due to a failure to accurately parse the question.

Inadvertently answering the wrong question is more a sign of an incompetent pollster than a misinformed voter. (I suspect the "incompetence" of the question is calculated to produce precisely the political grist we are now discussing.)

"Republicans believe Iraq had WMD's" is an even sillier issue. Republicans believe nerve gas is a WMD. Democrats do not. This isn't a matter of one side being ignorant, but simply a difference of opinion on the perceived lethality of nerve gas. In all fairness I suspect were the roles reversed (a Democrat President and Republican opposition) the classification of "nerve gas" as "WMD" would be similarly reversed.

Nuclear weapons: No. Nerve gas: Yes. WMD's? Depends on what you think of nerve gas.

So the entire "Republicans believe falsehoods" debate is itself a fabrication: both sides know the issues, and they are not as black-and-white as either side would like to pretend. If you really want to debate honestly, debate whether the threat of nerve gas in the hands of Al Qaeda justified war.

That's a tough call, in all honesty: just a little nerve gas in Times Square on New Year's Eve would be a disaster, but the nuclear threats would seem to be in North Korea and Iran, and everyone agrees that the threat of multiple nerve gassings pales in comparison to just one nuclear detonation.

Did we prevent a Tokyo-style nerve gassing but open ourselves up to a nuclear suitcase from Iran at some future date? Neither side has the moxie to ask that question: for the left it would be an admission of what the Iraq war accomplished, for the right, an admission of what it did not.

Posted by: Linus Unbound | Dec 16, 2004 3:27:53 AM

Posted by: JennyD

I agree with Chris C. and would have hauled out Horace Mann myself if he hadn't.

The government has decided that leaving education of children as the responsibility of parents is not satisfactory for the building and maintenance of a nation. There are many writings about it. Jonathan Zimmerman, for example, has written about the state's interest in creating autonomous, educated adults to participate in a democracy, and has also documented the struggles by various groups to control parts of the school curriculum in an effort to shape future citizens.

There are other mediating government structure to monitor the lives of children, like social workers.

But adults are allowed to be uninformed and stupid. No law against it. And they can still vote.

I think it's might be wise to think about how to explain to children that it's important to be an informed adult. Right now, though, being a good student is not desirable in many communities. You want change, start there. Regardless of the color state the community is in.

Posted by: JennyD | Dec 16, 2004 3:27:54 AM

Posted by: Glen Raphael

I have to defend the voters' perogative to be apathetic and uninformed if they so desire.

In the last election, given that both presidential candidates who were allowed to debate and considered contenders had essentially the same position on Iraq, why does it matter what voters thought about it? It's not like knowing there's "no link" would make them more likely to vote for Kerry. Is it? What's the significance of knowing something that has no impact on how you are going to vote?

I know one big thing, which is that I prefer "free trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none". Other voters have other big things they know that similarly trump most of the trivia and obviate the need to pay close attention to foreign affairs. Unless, like us, they are interested in politics as a hobby. Most people find it rather dull and prefer to learn trivia about sports teams rather than trivia about why the US is claiming THIS week that it needs to intervene in some new backwater or other.

Although the stuff parents don't know is similarly trivial, individual parents at least have some power to /do/ something about their child's education. Individual voters don't have the power to make foreign policy. All they can do is cast their one hundred-millionth or so of a vote in favor of some candidate, and you can't even trust the candidate to do anything he says he'll do during the campaign, so there's no real basis on which to make the decision. (Bush, you'll recall, was opposed to "nation-building" when he ran against Gore.) So, heck, you might just as well base it on whether he seems like a nice guy or looks good in a suit. I'm pretty sure that's why Bush won - he just seems like a nicer, friendlier guy than Kerry.

Posted by: Glen Raphael | Dec 16, 2004 3:57:35 AM

Posted by: Rob Perelli-Minetti

The government has decided that leaving education of children as the responsibility of parents is not satisfactory for the building and maintenance of a nation.

Interesting notion. It sounds very continental; French, perhaps, or Prussian.

If I recall correctly, the United States was founded primarily by people who were either privately educated or the product of common schools established by local communities more or less as the community saw fit.

It also has sort of deus et machina quality to it: "the government" being some sort of objective external reality or force with the power to control our lives, itself the source of legitimacy.

Posted by: Rob Perelli-Minetti | Dec 16, 2004 8:21:16 AM

Posted by: Nekretaal

Several years ago, I got to look at the academic research on polling. I'd direct David Estlund to that research, as it's fascinating.

There's no way that any voter can know all of the facts on all of the major issues, but it turns out that (even uneducated) voters are amazingly good at finding out the facts on the issues that matter most to themselves.

On the other important issues, voters tend to either use heuristics (stereotypes) to economize their time and shortcut the clutter of facts or tend to pick leaders to follow when the issues are so new that heuristics haven't even been formed. It's not at all clear that shoving additional facts at voters actually changes minds once the heuristics are set, or leaders are chosen, expecially if the new information comes from a distrusted source.

Anyways the academic research in polling is a great start for the answer to how the Democratic Party should solve this problem. And, the long term policy prescriptions for the Democrats has to be to (1) regain credibility with voters, and (2) fight to keep its credibility.

Posted by: Nekretaal | Dec 16, 2004 8:51:54 AM

Posted by: Daniel M.

I second Bob Talisse’s comments on the limitation of analogy, but cannot say I find the post very thought provoking as the analogy oversteps its limits and therefore causes the entire discussion to become unreal. Voter apathy and ignorance, as the prof said, have been with us for quite a while – but it is only recently that “some on the left” have claimed “democracy itself is [to be] in question (as) voters are so badly informed.” I say, how incredibly and patently far-fetched! It’s incredible that a conversation of such partisanship would show up on a “blog of philosophers” that seeks a dialogue between the left and right.

What I want to know is, What is the cause of the democratic party’s waning in the eyes of the democrats? Voter fraud? Voter misinformation? Voter ignorance? Voter stupidity? This conversation has only gained credence on the Left since they’ve lost elections. You’re not looking inward on this issue but lashing out. The question is “why do people believe the way they do,” not “why are people who don’t think like us probably ignorant and misinformed?” The first step you take in understanding is not an empirically twisted step of assuming someone’s ignorance in the face of your obvious intelligence, but it is listening. Matthew 13:13

Posted by: Daniel M. | Dec 16, 2004 9:28:47 AM

Posted by: Neal

Parenting: Natural act: even animals do it without liberal guidance.
Voting: Man made un-natural act that requires much liberal guidance.

Now, with regards to the ignorance issue. The problem is people don't care nor have the time to follow the ludicrous mind twisting liberal arguments. Like, "Oh, do people know that standardized tests aren't the only measure of a school." Like what else is, the number of murders per school year?

By and large the whole system is very easy to understand. The conservative approach (outside of the religious right) tends to be organic (test it in the real world, if it fails, it fails), whereas liberals, as the super-intelligensia uber human, believe they can actually control and hypothesize on things and that they are right in their smug opinions. I think all liberals should be required to examine and understand the failure of the "look-say, whole language" approach to reading, and evaluate the devastating effect this had on CA children. Check out Jill Stewart on this: http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/whole.1.html

The fate of children is presumably as important as the direction of a political system.

Uh, children are the reason for the political system. Now, close your liberal eyes, and think "what would happen if there were no children for 60 years", and imagine the political system 30 years after that.

Posted by: Neal | Dec 16, 2004 11:42:46 AM

Posted by: jen

DNL:

Why does it matter that people don't realize that Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11? Because it matters to proper decision making that the decision maker herself be well informed. I can't decide whether to buy eggs or milk unless I know what is in my refridgerator; I can't decide whether to go to college or take my chances on my own unless I have a good sense of my own talents and opportunities; and I certainly can't choose a president or other legislator if I don't know basic facts about his own decisions and policies, and how these affect my life and the lives of my fellow citizens. There's an important difference between making a decision and just guessing. Presumably we want voters to be doing the former, if we care about promoting democracy at all.

It matters for a well functioning and healthy democracy that people be minimally informed. It matters for the health of our country that people who are "patriotic" believe that it is important to be an engaged citizen. It is a necessary (but certainly not sufficient) condition of being engaged that one be informed. I would think that this would be one issue that all patriotic Americans could agree upon. It is decidedly UNAMERICAN not to avail oneself of the free flow of information that we are so priveleged to enjoy in this country. How anyone on EITHER side could endorse ignorance and apathy is simply beyond me.

Posted by: jen | Dec 16, 2004 11:58:43 AM

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