[CamperBob2]

I don't really buy the education argument. How do you "educate" somebody who lived through the first Trump administration and voted for more of the same? Let's get specific: what exactly did they miss in school that would have driven them towards a different decision?

At some point it's necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth: stupid people are easy for smart, ill-intentioned people to herd, which gives the latter a leg up in any democratic election.

This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.

[tshaddox]

> At some point it's necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth

Sometimes the truth is even more uncomfortable than “lots of people are stupid.” A much more insidious scenario is when there’s two groups with no major differences in education or access to facts, but one has a cultural which is actively and explicitly hostile to truth. In such scenarios, ever-escalating hostilities between the two groups is inevitable.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.

Not sure where the 2500 number came from. The US is about 250 years old, and the founders were extremely wary of democracy based on its history prior to the US. The US constitution was designed to mitigate issues with democracy, e.g. that is the purpose of "checks and balances". By democracy standards, the US has been very successful; the average constitution only lasts 17 years: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/lifespan-written-constitut...

This article estimates that the US is the #2 longest-lasting republic after the Roman Republic: https://www.broadstreet.blog/p/the-democratic-institutions-o...

Nonetheless, you would think that the "technology" for writing constitutions would've evolved more in the past 250 years. And in fact, in the Federalist Papers, it is predicted that political technology will evolve, just like any other field of technology. Yet results there have been quite disappointing, if you ask me. There aren't that many interesting and innovative ideas in this area. Most people, even programmers, tend to get lost in the object level us-vs-them conflict instead of going meta with their creative algorithmic brain.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

My comment is too old to edit, but I would like to issue a correction. I should not have written "This article estimates that the US is the #2 longest-lasting republic after the Roman Republic", since the caption for the figure in the article states something different ("Duration of Long-Lived Democracies", i.e. the word "democracy" is used rather than "republic", and also there wasn't a claim to "longest-lived")

Never trust internet comments!

[alimw]

> Not sure where the 2500 number came from.

Athens probably? From what I remember of school, this was the world's first democracy. (I've heard that Americans are taught something else!)

[0xDEAFBEAD]

I didn't get the impression that Athenian democracy was particularly successful. So it seemed weird to say that the flaws in democracy are only now becoming apparent.

In fact, I understand that CamperBob2's critique of democracy is quite similar to that of Socrates. So I'm puzzled by the claim that it's "only now" that the critique is being proven correct, given that US democracy is notably more stable and long-lived than Athenian democracy.

In general, I think times of turmoil are always much more salient when you yourself are living through them. We lack the historical perspective to understand how bad turmoil has been in the past.

[CamperBob2]

The flaws in democracy were always apparent, and they've always been exploited by parties willing to do the dirty work. But they couldn't be exploited consistently and decisively. Now they can be.

Think of it this way: you can't reach people who don't read much by starting a newspaper, but you can reach them with Fox News and Twitter. Mix in a bit of that old-time religion -- Billy Graham with a side of sauce Bernays -- and the left-hand side of the bell curve is yours to do with as you please.

[ringeryless]

umm Switzerland disagrees with the assessment of the USA being the oldest democratic republic. If we are only speaking of republic, Portugal has been one since the 12th century, albeit there's been 10 or 11 iterations on the constitution, including Salazars so-called New State.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

Correction here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223617

[Propelloni]

They missed that liberty and freedom is not a god-given right, but hard-earned privilege. They missed that liberty is not a personal property but a shared practice of pluralism. They missed that liberty is not absolute, but requires compromise and limitations so that we all can be free.

To be fair, those are not things that are taught in school. If they come up at all it is in some historical context, a battle someone else fought--and won. There is no mention that maintaining a liberal democracy requires effort and vigilance. Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen. The USA mostly does not even have such mechanisms and it shows.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen.

Eh, "internal enemies of democracy" is way too vague. E.g. Trump supporters claim that "unelected bureaucrats" in the "deep state" are enemies of democracy. Anyone can call anyone an "enemy of democracy".

[Propelloni]

Those fighting democracies are very specific about what is and what is not irreconcilable. For example, in Germany you can murder the president--that's just homicide--but you cannot abolish the protection of minorities. That's a violation of the constitution. Germany's far-right party Alternative für Deutschland has been under suspicion of violating a few of those provisions for quite some time now.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka. Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) completed a report a few weeks ago but is required by law to withhold it from the public due to due process. Of course it leaked, you can read the report here [1] (it's in German, obviously).

Now there is a discussion ongoing, if the Alternative für Deutschland has to been dissolved. That's a fighting democracy at work, following the rule of law.

[1] https://assets.cicero.de/2025-05/Geheimgutachten_Teil%20A.pd...

[0xDEAFBEAD]

I'm not sure Germany's approach is a good one, based on the historical record:

https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...

[Propelloni]

Me neither, but as the discussers point out, the Weimar Republic totally failed to apply serious consquences, e.g. Hitler's very short arrest after the Munich coup. Besides, the safeguards include more than limiting free speech.

Of course, those safeguards were designed in the late 1940s, so it's interesting, to say the least, how they cope with modern demagoguery. In any case it is worth a try.

Tangentially, that's a great site! I hadn't heard of FIRE before, but I'm glad they exist. I hope they don't get suborned by one side or the other.