More Poli-sci

This post will be in two parts -- or maybe I ' ll just get to one part now and do the second part separately, we ' ll see how it goes. The first part is some empirical true facts about elections and electoral democracies, or republics if you prefer to use that term for representative systems such as ours. I don ' t want to get hung up on vocabulary. The second is philosophical -- how should we understand democracy, popular rule, We The People? How does that work and how can it work and how should it work?So, Part One. Many people assume that elections and the resulting legislative and executive (and in some states, judicial) representation are essentially machines for turning popular preferences into public policy. Alas, this is not so. Actually, it doesn ' t really make any sense. First of all, fundamentally, most people know and understand very little about public policy. Either they just don ' t invest much time and effort in learning about it, or they get information from unreliable sources, or they have strong preconceptions and confirmation bias such that they don ' t accurately process the information to which they are exposed, or likely all of the above.  For example, according to polls many people blamed Joe Biden for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the restrictive abortion laws that ensued in many states because he was president when it happened. Many people believe that a) the people flooding border towns and being bussed to northern cities are illegal immi...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs