Quoted for truth. Reading the Federalist papers is one of the most enlightening things any resident of the United States can do to understand why America operates the way it operates.
I'm reading Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist right now to get a twenty-first century take on some of the same issues. It's plain enough that human beings in general have very limited rationality, but that doesn't make it plain that human beings should be generally constrained in their freedom by an elite few.
I disagreed. In my opinion, the argument of the paper suggests nothing of the kind. While your idea is interesting, I believe it delves too far between the lines and looks for some deeper meaning. The Boston Globe is not challenging our form of government. They're merely commenting on the research that suggests people are hard headed, generally speaking.
While your paragraphs about the US Constitution and system of Checks and Balances are spot on, they have nothing to do with the article in question.
This is simply my humble opinion.
And if you harbor the notion...that the solution is more education
and a higher level of political sophistication in voters overall,
well, that’s a start, but not the solution. A 2006 study...showed
that politically sophisticated thinkers were even less open to new
information than less sophisticated types. These people may be factually
right about 90 percent of things, but their confidence makes it nearly
impossible to correct the 10 percent on which they’re totally wrong.American Democracy is about the consent of the governed. It always has been. If you read both the Federalist Papers and the people who were arguing the other side, it's quite clear that the anti-Federalists had some really good points. Many of the predictions they made about the future course of the country were proven correct. Their arguments caused so much concern that a Bill of Rights was a precondition to adoption of the Constitution.
There has always been two strains of thought in America. Strain 1 says that people should be led by their betters. Heck, even Jefferson privately acknowledged that there is a natural aristocracy among men. These people feel that with the right people in charge, working the right system, the sky is the limit. If things are wrong, it's a problem of not having the right person. Government consists of doing whatever it takes to make the quality of people's lives better.
Strain 2 feels that all systems of government are broken, mainly because it's impossible to have a government that doesn't involve men, and men are fallible. I agree that this has some religious roots, but it also has roots in a study of history. As Thomas Paine pointed out -- not the religious person by any means! -- a man who has a king for a tyrant knows who oppresses him. But a man who is a serf to a complex system of bureaucrats is just as oppressed, only he has nobody to point a finger at. Strain 2 believes that every time structure is added, the system becomes more and more broken. That even if you had a super smart person, they'd more as likely be a dictator than a savior. Government consists of doing as little as possible to prevent people from harming each other.
This fight continues today. The constitution was a compromise between these two strains of thought. That's why it's worked for so long. Good government consists of a balance between these two schools of thought, with some kind of reset option every now and then when the system gets too much cruft in it(in my opinion)
So Joe Sixpack who knows nothing votes, but he votes instead of marching in the street with guns. Clyde Wineglass (Joe's cousin who went to Harvard) votes, and by voting he also blows off steam. The major parties exist solely for giving the illusion that things are changing every few years, which makes Joe and Clyde feel better about voting. Over time, each of them builds up a long narrative about how their party almost did this or that, but the other party stopped them. By having a "good" party and a "bad" party in their mind, each of them is able to deal with their frustrations about government without actually becoming angry with the government. This allows our civilization to continue.
It's interesting to observe how different the idea of parties (or "factions" as I think Madison called them) turned out to be compared to what the founders thought would happen. Sometimes you get it right even when you screw up :)
Sorry if that was a little cynical, but that's the way I currently understand it. And I agree with grellas, these guys are off-base. This entire line of science-of-irrationality, as it applies to politics, is a threat to this system of consent, because it threatens to put people in boxes. In addition, it continues to politicization of science. Either of these would be bad by themselves. Combining the two? Ugh.
Except, the USA government does not obtain consent before governing a person.
As far as how it started, here's a great introduction to the Great Debate. It's a description, in the Framer's words, of the issues they saw at the time the Constitution was created. Note that during the Constitutional Debate Jefferson was mostly neutral. Once he started serving in Washington's cabinet, however, it became obvious that these two strains of thought were always going to oppose each other. Jefferson noted that each day he girded himself to prepare for battle. Washington as well tried to stay above it all, and managed to do so during his presidency. Afterwards it became obvious that he was more of a smart-guy-and-structure person, but he managed to keep that mostly under wraps.
I think all this misses the point of the U.S. system of politics. That system is based on a constitution adopted over two centuries ago and premised on the idea that good government consists of a government of limited powers with proper checks and balances in place to make sure it remains limited. The idea back then was to move away from the old systems of rule by royalty and to adopt a form of government that philosophically was based on the idea that all legitimate forms of power ultimately derived from the popular will but only as checked by systems that were designed to curtail the effects of mob rule, prejudice, and passions. Thus, the federal government was set up as a tripartite government, with a legislature, an executive, and a judicial branch. The legislature was to have a popularly elected component (the House of Representatives) but also one in the Senate that served to check the popular (Senators were not even elected by popular vote until the 20th century). The executive power was to be sharply curtailed by the specific grants given to it in the constitution and was not allowed to enact new laws but only to enforce those enacted by the legislature, with its tie to the popular will. The judicial branch, in turn, was to enforce the rule of law in a way that was far removed from popular sovereignty, with federal judges appointed for lifetime tenures (subject to approval by the Senate) and capable of being removed only on the narrow ground of committing an impeachable offense. Finally, with the federal power having been so defined and circumscribed, the constitution provided that all powers not expressly granted to the federal government were to be reserved to the states and to the people. A bill of rights was superimposed on top of all this, making clear that certain supervening rights of the individual could not be impaired by federal governmental authority (this eventually being broadened to encompass action by the states).
If you read the Federalist Papers, which were in essence arguments propounded at the time in support of adopting the U.S. Constitution, there is no naive assumption in these documents that pure popular rule would somehow become a pristine way of running a government. Indeed, it was just the opposite. In one after another of these documents, it is assumed that rule by pure popular will is basically evil and dangerous because people will be driven by baser motives to accomplish their ends. Thus, there is all sorts of concern about not allowing unswayed prejudices to run unchecked through the course of government. The point of the arguments was to recognize that this is the reality of how people think and act and to set up a system that deals with it while preserving freedom and holding public officials ultimately accountable to the people.
I think this system ultimately had a theistic base in a Judeo-Christian tradition that saw man as a fallen and fallible creature who was prone to all sorts of mischief when given a chance. This may be open to debate but it certainly was one important component of that era. In any case, the founders appeared to have no assumptions about the ability of people to rule themselves based on becoming progressively enlightened. Their approach was realistic and pragmatic and dealt with how to contain power so that it does not corrupt those given the authority to rule.
This piece has interesting elements in it about how people resist changing their minds based on new information but I think it is off in its implications of what this means for good government.