| | Fred, ...so we live with the bias in our system of electing political leaders: that bias is, we select from a pool of people whose impetus was to seek power over others for some reason. True. And once elected, they move the political system towards a bigger government with more power for them.
And each generation has more graduates who see this as a good thing, and fewer that see it as bad. They take their 'shiny' new-to-them, even more Progressive notions and march into their adulthood, full of certainty, as the new teachers, the new journalists, the new talking heads, the new writers, the new politicians, and the new voters. And the old saw of a people getting the government they deserve is effected and reinforced.
We, being clever types, accustomed to designing systems and fixing problems, attempt to overturn the effects of this leftward generational shift by imagining changes we could make here or there to the system - like constitutional amendments, or a random drawing in place of popular elections. But as the chasm deepens between our grasp of a proper government and the views of the average voter, the less likely we are to direct that real engine of political change: the beliefs and the political intelligence of the voters as a whole. And that is a sad fact.
The good news is that human affairs don't progress in a linear fashion... not for long. I've made a few predictions over the years that turned out to be totally wrong because I didn't recognize the simple fact that at a certain point in the progression towards some extreme, a new idea pops up, takes hold, and begins the movement in a totally new direction. Humans choose. The Determinists are wrong. Ideas can catch on like a wild fire. That is the place to go for hope. (It is where I'd go, if I weren't going sailing :-)
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