politicophile

Uneducated was perhaps the incorrect wordchoice: what I mean was more along the lines of uninformed, or at least uneducated about the specific policy consequences under discussion. I will provide examples based on the broad categories I provided above:

Federal Reserve: This agency is, of course, insulated from public pressure already, as it should be. The President is able to obfuscate the process of fiscal decisions by pointing innocently at the opaque Reserve: everyone knows when the Fed raises the interest rate, for example, but nobody can be held accountable for it. If an elected official was in charge of making this sort of decision, how long do you think it would be before an interest-nullifying populist was elected?

Committee hearings in Congress: The most efficient way to make deals in a two-party legislative body is in secret committee hearings. By exposing the committees to the oversight of the public, politicians become unable to swap votes and engage in the minute give-and-take excercises through which deals are made. Instead, the Congressmen must bribe votes through pork-barrel spending. Why do the people allow this bribery to take place? Because everyone loves pork. Go back and look at how much pork was in the budget when committee hearings were closed to the public: the results are shocking.

Advice received by the President: Sometimes, an advisor to the President might come to the conclusion that an extremely unpopular means is the best one for the given situation. Think along the lines of assassination of a democratically elected politician. Now, if the advisor were concerned that the public would find out about the request at some later date, she might be afraid to give the advice, ev of the nation. It is thus the case that secrecy in advice received by the President preserves the independence of his advisors and allows him to receive the very best advice under all circumstances.

I hope that clarifies my position.

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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty