What The Hell Is Democracy, Anyway?

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Winston Churchill, British House of Commons, November 11, 1947.

I try to remember these famous words whenever I feel on the brink of incurable despair over the future of our global democratic institutions.  Here in Canada we have the first past the post electoral system that often turns into a dictatorship of the minority, as we suffered through for almost ten years of the Harper nightmare, and now, without a doubt, there are tonnes of Canadian Tories grumbling and gnashing their teeth about Junior Trudeau's majority government with minority support (thirty-nine percent, or exactly the proportion of voters that gave Harper his coveted majority government.)

Then we have south of the border Donald Trump as a serious threat to the White House.  How did he get to where he is?  Why, through the democratic process, of course.  There just happens to be in that country quite a big enough demographic bulge of poorly educated old white men who vote to make a difference.  Well, he didn't get there through his personal charm or his lovely personality.

I don't often find myself in agreement with the police state also called China but I certainly haven't blamed them for citing the rise of Trump as a convincing argument against democracy.  We do remember Adolf Hitler don't we?  How did he get voted German chancellor in 1932?  Why, people voted for him.  And it took a war resulting in the systematic slaughter of up to one hundred million people to convince him to step down.  He actually resigned, as we all know, by putting a bullet in his head.

I sometimes wish that ignorant, uneducated people were prohibited from voting. and that making post secondary education with an emphasis in the humanities and social sciences should be made a prerequisite for the polling both.  This is of course problematic and it would, never nor ever should,  be considered.

I do have two little ideas that might at least help enhance and improve our experience of democracy.  One idea is to make post-secondary education universally available, that's right, free, and mandatory.  Even those students who would prefer to work with their hands and spend their spare time stuffing their pie holes with chips and beer while watching the game would be required to attend and learn the humanities and social sciences.  They would be compelled to engage and to acquire the knowledge and intellectual skills that are so essential to living in a participatory (not just representational) democracy.

My other idea? Create a university program, equivalent to a master's (for provincial politics) and a PhD (for federal) for anyone considering entering public service as a political representative of the electorate.  You have to spend up to ten years studying law or medicine in order to qualify as a lawyer or a doctor.  Running a country properly should require every bit as much training, preparation and knowledge.  If anyone running for elected public office was first required to be vetted through ten years of meticulous university training in the full range of the social sciences and humanities with a balanced and centrist perspective incorporating ideas and disciplines from both the left and the right then maybe we would find ourselves, as a much better educated electorate, better governed and much better at governing ourselves.

Raise the bar, but make good and sure that we can all get raised up with it.