Your suggestion would have us choose an arbitrary measure of achievement to say who is allowed full participation in a society. That seems extremely fraught, to say the least. Why is education any better than amount of land owned? Or tax paid? Or holiness? Or age/experience?

From a certain perspective, each of those groups has a more vested interest in successful governance than other groups. And each has an agenda to promote their own interests.

You think education is important because presumably you are educated. I’m not, in the traditional sense. Everything I know is self-taught through reading and hard work. And I work in a field where almost every single person I encounter is better educated than me, down to the interns. And I am more capable than 90% of them.

Education alone doesn’t make one more capable of clear reasoning or logical thinking and its lack is no preclusion. It’s just another arbitrary distinction. You are suggesting a meritocracy based on education rather than wealth or status, but it’s still a meritocracy with all the flaws that entails.

Sometimes, I feel like you do. It’s hard to see so many stupid people harming society for stupid reasons. But then I remind myself they need representation, too. They are part of society. And importantly they think they are the smart ones and I’m the stupid one, and judging based on intelligence depends greatly on who is doing the judging. You and I might not both make the cut depending on what knowledge is valued, how it’s measured, and where the line is drawn.