"Democracy—rule by the people—can be justified only on the assumption that ordinary people are, in general, qualified to govern themselves. For it seems self-evident that people ought not to govern themselves if they are not qualified to do so. … Yet the assumption that people in general—ordinary people—are adequately qualified to govern themselves is, on the face of it, such an extravagant claim that critics of democracy have rejected it ever since the philosophical idea and practice of democracy appeared among the Greeks over two thousand years ago."
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Democracy and Its Critics
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