The Rachel Maddow Show October 20, 2016 ·

[elleng]

Here is that amazing clip of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter being frighteningly prescient about the decline of civic knowledge in America and the effect of that decline on the state of our democracy.

Watch the full segment that contained the clip: http://on.msnbc.com/2dEJrrz

[Bluepinky]

1. Ignorance will be the demise of our democracy.

If people don’t know how the government is supposed to work, they don’t know when it is being dismantled. Erosion of civic knowledge is dangerous for a free society.

I don’t know if civics is taught in public school anymore, but Republicans want to destroy public education. Ignorant people are more easily fooled and controlled than informed, educated people.

This was an interesting concept verbalized by a former Supreme Court Justice. It helps explain for me why people living in countries led by a dictator accept their form of government. And it especially explains why so many Americans have accepted Trump as President. They don’t know any better. They know so little about how our democracy works that they think what is happening is normal.

I have to say that this whole erosion of our system of government didn’t start with Trump, it started when Reagan told the country that the government wasn’t the solution to the country’s problems, the government was the problem.