Richard Dawkins: No, Not All Opinions Are Equal—Elitism, Lies, and the Limits of Democracy

[Music] among the reasons that I heard for people wanting to vote for brexit were well it's nice to have a change and well I preferred the old blue Passport to the European purple Passport these are the kinds of reasons people were giving for voting for brexit the day after the referendum the most googled question in Britain was what is the European Union during the brexit campaign one of the leading politicians favouring brexit Michael Gove said to the British people you are the experts you don't trust experts you are the experts now so ordinary people who have absolutely no no knowledge of economics or politics or history decided on a 50% majority to vote Britain out of the European market which was a out of the European community which was a very very complicated detailed ramified structure that had been built up over decades and so at one stroke the the British people who had no knowledge no expertise were allowed well given the opportunity by a reckless David Cameron to vote us out and they did by a very narrow margin this count of everybody being an expert all opinions being equally valid is I think dangerous and most unfortunate of course I have been accused of being an elitist because of this and yes I mean when you're about to have an operation you want an elite surgeon to do the to cut you open you want an elite anesthetist to put you under when you're about to fly what an elite pilot to fly you when you're about to leave a Federation of states which has been built up over decades you want an elite economist or politician or historian to advise you on it you don't want to take the the view of just any old man in the street a woman in the street I have pronounced myself profoundly ill-equipped to vote on the referendum about brexit I was ill-equipped so were the vast majority of the British people I look ill-equipped in that sense I think that elitist should stop being a dirty word and we should start to respect elites in whatever field we're talking about we want elite musicians to play in our orchestras etc I think it's bad enough to ask non experts like me to vote and direct referendums whenever when we are also being fed false information moriss deliberately false information I mean in the the Trump administration is actually lying every day and more or less proud of it in Britain the brexit campaign had a bus you may read about this they had a bus which had a great big slogan on that on the side which said that every day every week I think it was some gigantic Sun was being paid to the into the European Union which would be if we left the if we left Europe would be available for the National Health now that was a admitted lie that was simply quite simply false and many people were probably swayed by that consideration to vote to leave the European Union so no I do I do think we need to stick to democracy as it is but I think it's a representative democracy that we have in Britain we have a parliamentary democracy where we don't actually vote normally we don't vote on actual issues we vote members of parliament members of parliament then go to the House of Commons and then they vote on our behalf and we have cabinet government where the cabinet gets advice from civil servants who are expert so no I'm not advocating that a you know people with PhDs should get to vote so in anything light like that I mean I don't want it to be elitist to quite that extent so let's go for representative democracy but not referendum democracy and I think it's worth adding that the the precedent for not everybody having the same vote same weighted vote is already well-established in the United States when you think about voting for the United States Senate where every state gets two senators what that means is that a citizen of Wyoming has I think equivalent of sixty votes compared to a citizen of California because if you look at the actual relative population sizes of Wyoming and California so in a way that pass has already been sold that we already see gross inequality 760 fold inequalities in the in the weight and the Senate of course is very important because the Senate does not only take hugely important decisions but also ratifies presidential nominees for the Supreme Court and that could be the most important single thing that a president ever does is appoint members to the Supreme Court because they go on and on for decades in say in some cases after the president has gone [Music]

Channel: Big Think

Views: 1,165,229

Keywords: Big Think, BigThink, BigThink.com, Education, Educational, Lifelong Learning, EDU, Richard Dawkins, Trump, Brexit, elitism, voting, opinions, experts, richard dawkins, dawkins, richard dawkins brexit, richard dawkins elitism, richard dawkins trump, dawkins brexit, richard dawkins big think, richard dawkins interview, richard dawkins democracy, democracy, elitism explained, richard dawkins opinions, elitism meaning, richard dawkins debate, richard dawkins documentary

Id: pe4feBH0ABk

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2017