When a Rabbit is a Cat: A Requiem for Pure Reason

On many occasions, I have been staggered by the foresight of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. From Franklin's predictions in the court of King George III; to the Declaration's almost magical connection to the eyes, minds and hearts of the future; to the structuring of the Constitution, it is as if there is nothing that, in some way, shape or form, they didn't foresee.

One thing I realize, most vividly at this point, is that setting up a republic was the way to go. I'm no political science expert, but my understanding is that there is a distinct difference between a full-on democracy and a representative one. We often refer to ourselves as "a democracy" but we are really a variant on a direct democracy. In our republic, we vote for people to represent us and, while we can voice our opinions whenever we want, we have indicated our trust in them to make the final decisions.

This used to annoy me. If 80% of the people polled believed a decision should go one way, I thought it was absurd for representatives to decide in the other direction. But I don't, anymore.

Maybe is was the vestiges of elitism still ringing in the heads of those very literally revolutionary men, but something told them that it was a bad idea to go to a full-on democracy. (It could also be that it was, in terms of practicality, impossible to gather public opinion in such a large country with nothing even remotely like phones or the Internet -- if so, a happy accident of fate.) However it happened, it all worked out to the people voting for others who would represent them in national and state issues.

Jimmy Kimmel likes to go out and ask people on the street questions about history and politics. The results are usually horrifying. The other day, I watched about ten people struggle to come up with the answer to: "Who is Joe Biden?" This was in New York City. He was visiting there that day.

In terms of purely democratically based ethics, these people should be allowed to vote, but do we really want them to have a say in final decisions?