The quotation is widely attributed to our third president:
The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.
Over the past month, I recall a number of writers invoking Jefferson and bemoaning the apparent lack of his “best defense” in the current debate over health care reform.
But Mark Slouka* suggests being “informed” or “educated” is not enough to defend democracy. He argues that the type of education matters and that the best, democracy-boosting education is one steeped in the humanities (history, literature, etc.) — because the humanities:
… complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance. Because out of all this work of self-building might emerge an individual capable of humility in the face of complexity; an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms.
The emphasis in bold is mine. I chose to highlight those words because I’m starting to believe we may not find, in this lifetime, a debate that is more demanding of humility and questioning, more complex but prone to demagoguery, than health care reform.
Even on the pages of this blog — although there are examples that rise above the fray — our failures remain: Rather than display humility, we have too often bragged about our convictions. Instead of asking questions, we have chained ourselves to iron-clad answers. Rather than resist “coercion, manipulation and demagoguery,” we have propagated them, “in all their forms,” on the right and left and all points in between.
I, too, am guilty of these sins. We should each commit to doing better. Kudos to those who have already begun.
————
* Slouka’s essay is in the September edition of Harper’s. To read it online, you may have to pay $17 for an annual subscription to the magazine. It’s well worth it.