These days, my wife the professor has observed that rigorous tests in education are fewer and less rigorous than ever before – and the majority of students are less prepared and more fragile when they don’t perform well on tests or in class, and too many administrators worry far more about feelings than facts or competence. Unfortunately, this trend isn’t limited to students.
Yet tests are a necessity in a technological society. We require people to pass tests to obtain drivers’ licenses, pilot licenses, medical licenses, legal licenses (even if it is called a bar exam), and the like.
The one area where native-born Americans don’t have to pass a test is to vote. All that’s needed is citizenship, registration (no test required these days, unlike for African Americans in the past, particularly in the South) and being a local resident of legal age.
Benjamin Franklin said that the Founding Fathers had created a “Republic, if you can keep it.” At that time, the United States was the first large, self-governing nation in the world. But the test Americans face is, as Franklin put it, whether we can maintain that heritage.
Unlike authoritarian regimes, democracy is messy, and it requires citizens to make choices that are often complex and far from ideal.
Most people, however, want simpler choices. They don’t want to look at an array of facts, or look deeply into much of anything, particularly the background of political candidates who strongly appeal to their beliefs and prejudices.
When a candidate lies, and admits that he created a false story to dramatize an issue, as J.D. Vance has with his tale of immigrants eating pets, doesn’t that suggest both oversimplification and a willingness to say anything in pursuit of power?
Americans have always been leery of politicians who change their mind about issues, calling them flip-floppers. The senior President Bush declared at one point, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Then several years later, faced with a fiscal crisis, he changed his mind and increased taxes. He lost the next election because he changed his mind, but his judgement was correct, and his taxes balanced the federal budget for years. No president since then has shown that kind of courage.
Trump has remained steadfast in wanting lower taxes, especially for billionaires. He’s also been steadfast on other issues, including stricter abortion laws and punishing tariffs, and in denigrating any woman in a position of power who opposes him, while praising dictators, and promising to be one. He’s been steadfast in declaring he won an election he lost, one declared fair even by the vast majority of local Republican election officials.
Kamala Harris has moderated her positions on a number of issues, mainly in the environmental area and immigration, and she’s been attacked for changing her stance on those issues, while remaining steadfast in terms of personal rights and freedoms.
But is changing positions to reflect reality bad? Is remaining steadfast or lying about bad policies and election results good?
This coming election is in fact a test, like it or not.
The test of democracy is whether voters will look beyond the obvious, beyond their confirmation biases, to pick the better candidate based on the facts or to stick blindly to what they find comfortable.
And, always, the certainty of autocracy can seem so much more comfortable than allowing people greater personal freedom.
What we choose is a test, and we’ll have to live with the results for at least four more years, possibly far longer if too many voters choose unwisely.
