My point is what methods do you use to "instil civic virtue"? How do you define it? And most importantly how do you prevent people from diverging from them?
Historically totalitarian societies were often quite good at instilling any kind of "virtue" you wanted. Free and democratic societies generally tend to struggle with the "instilling" part. (Of course to be fair there a few success stories (to an extent) like France)
I think you are leaning too hard into moral relativism. The differences between free- and authoritarian societies are plain to see.
The methods seem more concerning. First you have to give someone the right to define what these virtues mean in practice. Then you need to somehow impose them on the wider population. This is a rather dangerous tool and I think actual examples of such a top down approach working in democratic societies are quite rare.
It works if the consensus already exists in the society. Clearly these days that's not the case in quite a few places.
What do you then? Force children of people who have a radically different understanding of what these civil virtues are to attend schools which teach them against their will? Take them away if the parents refuse? Well that's what totalitarian states do...
Once you have a democracy, you are not supposed to dictate from the top but distribute political power, and decision-making. The US has seen the executive's usurpation of power from the other branches of government since the turn of the century. Such an unbalanced government is by definition inimical to democracy.
Yes, I certainly agree.
The problem (which IMHO outweighs all the benefits by quite a bit) is that when you allow drawing these artificial lines the ones in charge of them will inevitably design the system in such a way that benefits them (maybe even without ill intentions).
It's similar to geographical gerrymandering just openly based on social/education/etc. class.
Also... balancing interests of diverse social and economic groups is not exactly straightforward, its certainly not basic math.
Should someone unrelated and likely non-impacted by a thing have as strong a voice in that thing?
Should someone non-knowledgeable have an equal say to someone experienced? Is that fair?
If A knows 2+2=4 and B says it is five, we don't average votes and call it 4.5. And if a large debate happens and B convinces enough people that for very large values of 2, the answer is five, democracy says the answer is 5. How do you protect against this outcome in a pure democracy?