To the editor:

Charles Krauthammer’s opinion piece (Journal-World, Aug. 27) proposes a sinister form of democracy buttressed by claims of race-baiting by strawman liberals on four political hot buttons. Based on this he bellows with early senility that voters should determine policy.

This extreme view of democracy was repudiated by James Madison, who wanted a democracy where no faction, including the majority, could deprive the minority of their rights. Our Founding Fathers knew that passionate political activity without the protection of minority rights could lead to democracy’s collapse. (The philosopher Rousseau questioned government by referendum, “The sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs.”) They knew, and Krauthammer argues otherwise, that citizens have to work together to achieve the conditions of representative government. Krauthammer can only crow about comeuppance for his opponents.

Liberals (Mill and Dewey as examples) have argued that the state should encourage the highest possible intellectual, practical and moral excellence to produce a skilled democracy. They didn’t badmouth opponents and their policies with patent dishonesty (that there is a vast expansion of government power, for one) and moral violence (characterizing the Obamas as viewing Americans as pitchfork-wielding mobs).

John Dewey said the cure for democracy was more democracy. Krauthammer’s dishonest stirring of conflict consumes public energy and resources that would otherwise be directed to peaceful resolution and encourages civil strife instead.

Stu Nowlin,

Lawrence