An Electorate Too Ignorant to Govern Itself
By Lisa Bennett
In the early years of the American republic, Noah Webster—lexicographer, educator, and fierce advocate for national identity—issued a blunt warning about democracy’s weakest link: an uninformed people. In his essay “On the Education of Youth in America” (1788), later included in A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings on Moral, Historical, Political and Literary Subjects (Boston: I. Thomas and E.T. Andrews, 1790), Webster wrote:
“I have known instructions from the inhabitants of a county, two thirds of whom could not write their names. How competent must such men be to decide an important point in legislation!”
