Will blames everybody

Posted on September 3, 2020 by Yoram Gat

George Will writes in the Washington Post about the troubles democracy is having. It seems everybody is to blame: the people and their unrealistic expectations of self-rule fed by careless descriptions of democracy, the French revolutionaries and their nationalistic “fraternité”, the former captive nations of the former Eastern Bloc that are illiberal, U.S. universities, new media, right-wing and left-wing extremists, protesters and their assertions that the U.S. was founded upon genocide and slavery, the infantile panic of liberal Democrats, elections themselves that produced a floundering elite.

Aristotle told us (or at least told Harvard political philosopher Harvey Mansfield) that elections are aristocratic and aim to produce the rule of the best. That seems hard to believe. Maybe selection by lot should be considered?

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »