GOP officials go on record: Democracy is dumb

You may have been taught in middle school that a fundamental tenet of democracy is that every citizen has the right to vote. That right is the foundation of every Westernized democratic state.

You may have learned that the Founding Fathers didn’t believe in universal suffrage but that the United States has slowly expanded its democratic ideals to include women, people of color, the poor, the marginalized. You may even believe that America’s expanding democratic ideals are the reason that we can claim to be a model for the rest of the world -- that “shining city on a hill.”

Would you be surprised to learn that a vocal minority of conservative intellectuals don’t believe any of that? Would you be surprised that they don’t actually believe in democracy?

They don’t, and it is a bracing bit of progress to have them state their beliefs clearly and publicly. Instead of gaslighting the rest of us -- pretending that voter suppression is intended to insure “election integrity” -- some conservatives are stating it explicitly: They don’t believe that every citizen should vote.

The latest to put his views into plain terms is the National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson, who wrote, “One argument for encouraging bigger turnout is that if more eligible voters go to the polls then the outcome will more closely reflect what the average American voter wants. That sounds like a wonderful thing ... if you haven’t met the average American voter.”

After a litany of policies and practices he believes have set the republic on the wrong course, Williamson concludes, “The fact is that voters got us into this mess. Maybe the answer isn’t more voters.”

I’m delighted that Williamson, among others, has set his reactionary,