Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek lived to see his relatively liberal homeland, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, split into several democracies — all of which voted in either fascist or communist governments. The Bourbon monarchy in the 1700s was among the most enlightened in Europe, before it was overthrown by a rabble demanding bread and getting tyranny. Europe (especially Germany, England, and the Scandinavian states) as a whole voted itself out of prosperity and prestige, and into welfare states and piddling, peripheral meaninglessness. Germany and Italy were arguably the most democratic states out of all the belligerents in WWII during the interwar period, when one considers the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South and the voting system in the other allied countries. Japan was not terribly far off from either country before the Showa Incident. Democratic input is good and valuable at some level with appropriate guardrails and restraints, but it is at its heart a tool that should be used to help establish a system which preserves freedom, prosperity and social order, NOT an end unto itself.

“Dummy” was a poor word choice, you are correct. “Ignorant” or “highly self-interested” would be better.

For the most part, what is wrong with representative democracy with universal suffrage can be boiled down to one phrase: “rational ignorance”. People who are smart, hard-working, etc and who have an area of competence that they are very good in will nonetheless dedicate almost no time to educating themselves on politics because 1) the value of their vote is very small (and approaches zero in large polities; see Presidential elections), and 2) the cost of keeping oneself up to date on current legislation is quite high. On average, Congress passes ~800-1000 pages of legislation a month (and rising). Not even the best of us can keep up with that deluge. Realizing this, many people, especially those who discount the civic arguments in favor of voting, simply don’t bother to vote at all. Most of the rest of those who do vote are woefully uninformed — they don’t know what’s going on and make no effort to inform themselves. Politics (particularly in two-party systems like the US) then tend to group according to type; i.e., the Republican party “branding” is that of a pro-religious, pro-business, pro-South and Midwest (“flyover country”) and bourgeois party, and the Democrat party “branding” is that of a pro-secular, pro-public, proletariat party. Nevermind that most of these labels have little to do with how either party governs in practice; people will vote on branding because it is much easier to do than the nigh-impossible task of finding out what an unconstrained government is up to. People organize tribally (just go to a sports bar for a few examples), and this is fine so long as it’s voluntary. It’s not so great when it comes to organizing governing principles.

This is complemented by a second problem in democracy: that self-interested voters will oftimes vote themselves various perks and goodies at the expense of others in society, and that they can do so while socializing the costs of their actions, especially onto people who don’t fit into their “tribe”. This is particularly the case when there is a large group of potential voters who, through their own decisions, have placed themselves in a position where they are less successful than they would like. While this is most often pointed out by conservatives in the context of progressive taxation, it can also be seen in other lines of demarcation, such as urban vs rural, religion, culture, “flyover country” versus coastals, various industries pitted against each other, and so on. As a result of an obviously undemocratic civil war, we in the US rightly decided that race as one of those dividing lines was a big no-no, but democracy is a system which effectively runs on the principle that “to the victor go the spoils”.

All of this is coming to a head, with both parties seeking new votes primarily from the most ignorant group of voters — take attempts to turn out the “youth vote”; quite possibly our most un/misinformed group of potential voters — or from the existing pool of undecideds, the so-called “swing voter”. People are not getting dumber or more ignorant, but the ability to get votes from those who are marginally less ignorant is diminished as compared to voters who are very ignorant. Assuming that by “conservative” one broadly means a country which guarantees certain negative liberties to dispose of one’s property and destiny as one sees fit, and where equality of opportunity is a goal, there need to be certain guardrails placed on the franchise and on the actions of elected officials. The First Amendment wasn’t ratified as decoration; it was ratified so that self-interested parties would not be able to impose censorship on other parties, and so that voters would not through ignorance vote for elected officials who would do or allow such a thing without their notice.

To me, voting should be a privilege — instead of asking, “what has that person done to deserve having the right to vote taken away”, the formulation should be, “should that person vote, and why?” Voting is not a right, it is a process by which one determines the course of our government (at least to some extent). People who have power over me in other contexts have some means by which they are to be held accountable if they wrong me — why should we not expect the same in the case of voting?

Again, I am not arguing for limiting the franchise per se (in most ways the damage is already done), but I would like to see less of the same flawed thinking encumbering steps we take in the future. Certainly, I would like to see less mindless democracy worship of the sort which places mere voting on a higher order than right to life, liberty and property. There are many areas of public and private life which should be off-limits to voters and their elected representatives. There are some voters who cannot exercise the franchise responsibly at all, and who should not be determining the course of our government.