The book and its argument
Bob Zadek devoted an hour of his program to Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, described at the time as about to be published. Zadek closed the interview by naming the book and thanking Somin for the hour Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013).
The discussion treated political ignorance as a structural feature of democratic decision-making rather than a failure of individual effort. Somin argued that education is not a remedy: average education levels rose enormously over the last 50 or 60 years, yet political knowledge showed little or no increase over the same period. He added that when governments run schools, they often lack an incentive to raise political information, and may prefer to indoctrinate students in the views of whichever groups influence education policy. Because the public is ignorant, Somin said, it is poorly placed to monitor whether schools are actually increasing knowledge rather than wasting students’ time.
Testing voters
Zadek raised the question of a minimal knowledge test as a qualification to vote, comparing it to the test administered to naturalized citizens, and acknowledging the Jim Crow past. Somin answered that the argument exists and is discussed in Chapter 7 of the book: just as drivers are tested because bad driving threatens others, bad voting threatens others. His objection was institutional rather than theoretical. Whoever holds power when a test is established has a strong incentive to skew it toward their party’s supporters, even setting aside racial and other biases. Somin said he is skeptical that such a test would be unbiased in practice, and that the history of these tests strongly suggests it would not be.
Somin also described an idea he said was not in the book but planned for a future article: allowing children to vote if they could pass a test of political knowledge. Children are currently excluded because they are thought ignorant, but a knowledgeable minority could improve the quality of the electorate without taking the vote from anyone who already has it. Zadek joked about a system in which he and Somin were the only two voters; Somin observed that in private life people are often the only voter for their own decisions, and that greater control over one’s life is available to anyone willing to extend the same privilege to others.
Knowledge shortcuts
Responding to a caller from Sonoma who asked about democracy in ancient Greece, Zadek said Somin discusses Greek political society in the book, and that the demise of Greek society is partly attributable to voter ignorance: the population voted to launch a campaign against Syracuse while grossly misinformed about its strength, lost the campaign, and was substantially weakened. Zadek extended the point to contemporary economics, saying voters in the 2010 election were effectively asked to choose between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and other laissez-faire economists, or between Paul Krugman and Arthur Laffer, without the knowledge to do so.
Zadek described the “knowledge shortcuts” Somin discusses in the book. His own example was George Will, whose column he reads and whose advice he takes because he lacks the time to do the work himself. He called shortcuts acceptable if selective, and identified party labels as a bad shortcut: many people vote the label on the assumption that one party seems to know what it is doing.
Free speech at Modesto Junior College
Zadek opened the second hour with an account of Constitution Day, September 17th, which he said Congress declared in 1994, marking the day in 1787 when the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution after roughly four months of work beginning about May 25th, 1787, before sending it to thirteen conventions for ratification. He noted that the Constitution as passed had no Bill of Rights, and that Virginia and other states agreed to ratify on the understanding that one would be added.
On September 17th, Zadek said, a student at Modesto Junior College named Robert Van Tuinen began handing out pocket-sized Constitutions on campus and was approached by campus police. He was told he could distribute literature only in a designated “free speech area,” a cement area about three yards square in front of the student center, under a Time, Place, and Manner rule. Zadek played a recording of the exchange between Van Tuinen and administrator Christine Serrano, in which Serrano explained that use of the free speech area comes through her office and requires an application and a photo ID. Van Tuinen asked whether he could engage in free speech with fellow students on his own; Serrano said she was not telling him he could not, only that he needed to follow the procedure.
Zadek cited the congressional requirement that publicly funded educational institutions provide educational programming on the history of the American Constitution on Constitution Day, applying to any school receiving federal funds of any kind. He said FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote a letter complaining about the abridgment of the student’s First Amendment rights, and that the college had backed off to some degree, explaining weakly that it wanted to assure free speech rights and that the student was being disruptive.
Richmond’s eminent domain mortgage plan
Zadek described Richmond, California as a city under profound economic pressure with a large number of underwater mortgages, where homeowners have no equity and may leave, leaving vacant and boarded-up houses that drag down neighboring values. He said a company called Mortgage Resolution Partners proposed using eminent domain to take the mortgages themselves from banks including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, paying just compensation equal to the house’s value — $160,000 on a $200,000 mortgage — and then rewriting the homeowner’s mortgage at a lower amount so the homeowner gains equity and stays.
Zadek framed the constitutional background: eminent domain predates the founding, is embodied in the Fifth Amendment, and requires a public use and just compensation. He recalled the Kelo decision from New London, Connecticut, in which property was taken from Mrs. Kelo and given to a private corporation for a casino and high-income housing; the Supreme Court upheld the taking, and there was a backlash. He said the Richmond plan raises the question whether this is a proper public use or an increase in moral hazard, since a homeowner who got into a jam would receive a gift from the city. He noted the approach had been offered to San Bernardino, which turned it down, that Wells Fargo publicly threatened to stop making loans in Richmond, and that the Occupy movement encouraged the plan. He placed the matter on a “let’s watch it” list.
Across episodes
The excerpts come from a single broadcast, so they show no development of the topic across episodes; the political ignorance discussion, the Modesto Junior College free speech segment, and the Richmond eminent domain segment all appear within the same program.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not report the outcome of the Richmond eminent domain proposal, whether any city adopted it, or how the banks’ threatened lending boycott resolved. They do not state the disposition of the Modesto Junior College matter beyond the college’s partial retreat, nor whether FIRE’s letter produced a formal policy change. The excerpts also do not give the publication date of Somin’s book beyond its being about to be published, or the contents of the future article on children’s voting beyond what Somin described.