[mrangle]

>A democracy is only as effective as its people are educated

I missed that part of the Western Constitutions. It is likely missing because it is a false and self-serving axiom, as well as flirting with being the opposite of democracy. Mostly, it is totalitarian regimes that invoke education as being necessary for their citizens.

Is it only democracy and not a downward spiral when democracy moves in the direction that you prefer?

You might have to accept that democracy works, and that if nothing else democracy is the individual freedom to decide on what is true.

The second that you start restricting that freedom of information and individual decisions pertaining to it, impacting elections for example, you can no longer appeal to democracy.

Personally I think that more subjects are deceptive than either they or you likely know. But I'm not so debased as to call for restrictions on your information. You're free to believe in and seek out your deceptions, as a matter of democracy.

[csallen]

You are somehow confusing education with indoctrination.

The goal of education is to give people (ideally at a young age) valuable knowledge, critical thinking skills, and the ability to question and make independent judgments. There's nothing anti-democratic about that. Quite the opposite. And all evidence suggests this is far more common in democracies than it is in totalitarian regimes.

The goal of indoctrination is to instill a fixed set of beliefs or loyalties and to discourage doubt or alternative perspectives. Totalitarian regimes do this to create obedience and ideological conformity. And although many competing parties in democratic countries would like to do the same for their cause, that doesn't make it the definition of education.