Dahlia Lithwick considers one of the modern oddities of democracy: when no one wants to show up and take part in person.
Exhibit A: conservatives and their endless referenda on denying gay Americans various marriage-related rights. They're all over demonizing gays, calling them all kinds of names, and making them into a big scary Other- they just want to do it in secret. They don't want you to know who they are, and are willing to overturn campaign finance disclosure laws to prevent it.
All that angst over a bunch of hairdressers who get noisy and bitchy, eh?
Justice Scalia rebuked them:
"The fact is," he warned in oral argument in the Washington ballot-initiative case, "running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage."
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