They Either Don't Know What It Is, Or They're Against It

From the yr. 1984. How do they know?
Not sure what to make of the LDS reference.

I s'pose the sheep have always been this way. They're apparently worse in 2026.

The evidence for this startling conclusion comes from the most significant opinion study you’ve never read or read about. Published in May, the Johns Hopkins Agora Institute and ReD Associates conducted an in-depth research of conservatives in three red counties in Michigan, South Carolina and Wyoming. The authors describe the content of “Faith, Freedom, Family, Place: An Ethnographic Study of Conservative Americans’ Relationships to Democracy” as follows:

This study relies on ethnographic research: sustained immersion in people’s homes, lives, and communities through extensive interviews, observations, participation, and relationship-building. Where much democracy research documents what people say they believe, ethnography examines how and why political worldviews take shape within the full context of daily experiences, relationships, and social environments.

The most fundamental issue the researchers attempted to resolve is the relationship their subjects had with what is commonly thought of as the American secular faith in democracy. What the study found is that the respondents either had a notion of what constituted democracy that greatly differed from what is taught in Civics 101 — when such a course is even offered — or rejected outright the very concept of democracy. In fact, the latter view was the majority opinion:

14 out of 21 participants in this study had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy . . . Sarah (mid 30s, WY), a homeschooling mother, put it plainly: “I don’t like the word democracy.”

Spotted at Hullabaloo. As noted, worth reading. No reforms or promises will give these people functioning minds that can be changed. Members of the "godless and wicked majority" who they think are "besieging" them had better get to work on actual besiegement, before it's too damn late.