121 | Cornel West on What Democracy Is and Should Be

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll | Wondery

Society & Culture, Physics, Philosophy, Science, Ideas, Society

4.8 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2020

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is published on November 2, 2020, the day before an historic election in the United States. An election that comes amidst growing worries about the future of democratic governance, as well as explicit claims that democracy is intrinsically unfair, inefficient, or ill-suited to the modern world. What better time to take a step back and think about the foundations of democracy? Cornel West is a well-known philosopher and public intellectual who has written extensively about race and class in America. He is also deeply interested in democracy, both in theory and in practice. We talk about what makes democracy worth fighting for, the different traditions that inform it, and the kinds of engagement it demands of its citizens.

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Cornel West received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. He is currently Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University as well as Professor Emeritus at Princeton. He is the author of numerous books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters. He is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now, appeared in the Matrix trilogy, and has produced three spoken-word albums. He is the co-host, with Tricia Rose, of the Tight Rope podcast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll.
0:04.1	A few months ago, I put up a poll on Twitter. I just simply said,
0:08.4	how would you prefer to be ruled? And the two choices were according to popular will,
0:14.0	and by one wise and good person. The results came in, they were a little bit surprising to me.
0:19.6	It was almost two thirds of the respondents said, by one wise and good person, as opposed to
0:26.1	the popular will. I pointed out that basically you're voting for dictatorship over democracy,
0:31.3	and when I pointed that out, people were outraged. They said, well, you worded your poll very badly.
0:37.2	You didn't say dictatorship versus democracy. You said, by a wise and good person, you made the
0:41.5	dictatorship sound attractive. That's the point. The point is that when dictatorship comes, it will
0:48.2	sound attractive. People do not just campaign on a pro-dictatorship platform. They say,
0:53.4	I'm the one person who is wise and good who will fix everything. This kind of attitude is extremely
0:59.3	attractive. There are reasons why democracies fail. I know plenty of people who I consider very,
1:05.6	very smart, people whose judgment I would generally trust, and they seem to think that it would be good,
1:11.8	if one really good person was in charge of everything. Depends on who the person is, of course,
1:17.1	for some it's Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Warren Buffett or Barack Obama or Donald Trump or
1:23.6	Bernie Sanders or Oprah Winfrey. People can disagree who the person is, but the idea that,
1:28.3	oh, we're in such a mess, if just one person could come in and clean everything up. That's the
1:34.3	temptation that leads to democracy's failing. Democracy sounds good when you first hear about it,
1:41.1	and you say, oh, yes, I get a voice in how the country is run. That sounds great. I'm in favor
1:47.2	of democracy, but at some point you realize, wait a minute, you mean all those other chuckleheads
1:53.2	also get a voice in how the country is run? Those people are idiots. I don't want those people
1:58.6	to be in charge. I want someone who I actually trust to be in charge. But that's the bargain you
	...

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