printWrites Paul (read his archive on Barely A Blog) who is easily the most learned, ignored scholar dealing with the history of the European and American Right.
What amazes me is the naive belief that social questions are somehow resolved “democratically,” something that may happen in an alternative reality but not in the Western world during my lifetime.
Social and most political questions are resolved by powerful, well-placed elites, who control public administration, public education and the cultural industry. [The prevalent] view of how democracy functions may fit a nineteenth-century local government in Vermont, in which citizens could actually make existential decisions in a culture they themselves determined.
Of course that model would no longer be seen as “democratic” because it didn’t make room for feminists, homosexuals and racial minorities. Please excuse my irritation! But I get sick to my stomach when I hear house conservatives lavish praise on our functioning “democracy” and pretending that “we citizens” can actually settle divisive issues on the basis of our independent, non-coerced judgments.
~ Paul Gottfried