The demagoguery of democratic theory

Abstract For all of its blessings, democracy in America displays weaknesses. Democratic theorists both disguise and exacerbate these weaknesses by urging us, as imperatives of democratic justice, to extend the claims of equality to all practices and throughout all spheres of life; and to discount what people actually want in favor of what democratic theorists think that reason tells us people ought to want. Such theorizing encourages the evisceration of virtue, the trivialization of truth, the subjugation of chance, the fear of freedom, and the routinization of romantic love. To combat the dogmatism and despotism to which democracy is prone, it is necessary to preserve the distinction between democracy and justice