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Democratic Discussion, Don Herzog, Donald R. Kinder

Book Chapters

"Democracy," remarked H. L. Mencken, "is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." Mencken found American politics a droll spectacle and showered contempt on the dullards he named "the booboisie." Plenty of other intelligent and perceptive observers have concluded that ordinary citizens are flatly incapable of shouldering the burdens of democracy. Uninformed and uninterested, absorbed in the pressing business of private life, unable to trace out the consequences of political action, citizens possess neither the skills nor the resources required for what Walter Bagehot pithily named "government by discussion." …