Thought For the Day: The Theory of Democratic Government Is Not That the Will of the People Is Always Right, but…Will…Learn the Right And Better Course

“The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.” – W.E.B. Du Bois, educator, civil rights activist, and writer (23 Feb 1868-1963)

This statement by one of the founding figures of Pan-Africanism and civil rights undermines the very premises of Critical Race Theory that an imperfect people should have known and acted on their better premises regarding past wrongful treatment of people. Yes right is always right. This is a sure as wrong is always wrong. People in different contexts had different ideas about these things. It seems almost bad faith to argue for cultural relativism on one hand while simultaneously being hateful about things past. And what of, as I often act against personally, contemporary slavery. I belong to several anti-slavery groups. Incidentally, were you aware there are historically more slaves today than existed in the era of America’s history leading up to our bloody civil war. Where is the outrage toward something we can actually do something about?

About alohapromisesforever

Writer, poet, musician, surfer, father of two princesses.
This entry was posted in Thought For the Day and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s