There is little evidence that elites on either side of the Atlantic understand the actual problem at hand.
When similar assertions of the popular will occurred in other countries-the protesters flooding Tiananmen Square in 1989, the crowds in Red Square that helped defeat the attempted putsch of August 1991, the 2011 uprising known as the Arab Spring-British and American elites cheered.
When the exercise of democracy at home yields outcomes likely to affect their interests adversely, they sing a different tune.
In a recent op-ed denouncing Brexit, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote, "A democracy that cannot change its mind is not a democracy." Let's unpack that.
What Cohen really means is this: w.hen a democracy comes to a decision of which I disapprove, there's always room for a do-over, yet when decisions win my approval, they become permanent and irreversible.
To be more precise, they are curated democracies, with members of an unelected elite policing the boundaries of acceptable opinion and excluding heretics.
What if the elites get things wrong? What if the policies they promulgate produce grotesque inequality or lead to permanent war? Who then has the authority to disregard the guardians, if not the people themselves? How else will the elites come to recognize their folly and change course?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-elites-selective-support-for-democracy/
When similar assertions of the popular will occurred in other countries-the protesters flooding Tiananmen Square in 1989, the crowds in Red Square that helped defeat the attempted putsch of August 1991, the 2011 uprising known as the Arab Spring-British and American elites cheered.
When the exercise of democracy at home yields outcomes likely to affect their interests adversely, they sing a different tune.
In a recent op-ed denouncing Brexit, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote, "A democracy that cannot change its mind is not a democracy." Let's unpack that.
What Cohen really means is this: w.hen a democracy comes to a decision of which I disapprove, there's always room for a do-over, yet when decisions win my approval, they become permanent and irreversible.
To be more precise, they are curated democracies, with members of an unelected elite policing the boundaries of acceptable opinion and excluding heretics.
What if the elites get things wrong? What if the policies they promulgate produce grotesque inequality or lead to permanent war? Who then has the authority to disregard the guardians, if not the people themselves? How else will the elites come to recognize their folly and change course?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-elites-selective-support-for-democracy/
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