> "[Specialized expertise is] the antithesis of democracy."
> "Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state."
These are nice sentiments to have but it does not work in the real world. At a certain point certain problems are too complex for a regular person to understand.
It is impossible for every citizen to fully understand every scientific issue. Part of living in a society—in fact, one of the primary purposes of living in a society—is having different people specialize in different things, and trusting each other to actually be good at what they specialize in.
None of this implies that people don't know enough to vote.
Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, the available evidence suggests that a major part of the problem right now is people's votes being suppressed and people being poorly represented by their supposed representatives (both due to deliberate gerrymandering, and more simply due to the fact that the size of the House of Representatives was capped in the early 20th century, leading to one person representing hundreds of thousands or more, rather than the ~10k or so each they represented prior to the cap).
> "Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state."
These are nice sentiments to have but it does not work in the real world. At a certain point certain problems are too complex for a regular person to understand.