Vox populi, vox dei

This is a favorite Latin expression of mine: the voice of the people is the voice of God. Poetic but hogwash. We like to think that democracy is based on this lofty-sounding principle, but it seems to me, the voice of the people says a lot of stupid stuff, like:

• "women are fragile and need to be protected from manly activities like voting and controlling their own money"
• "Manifest Destiny, and those pesky Native Americans will just have to get out of the way"
• "people with dark-colored skin are innately inferior to people with light-colored skin, therefore light-skinned people can enslave and exploit dark-skinned people, and did we mention that the Bible says we can do this?"

We can think of lots more clever things that "the people" said with their God-like voice (like, "George Bush was a great president, we should give him the job for another four years").