The End

If we will listen to the judgment of those who should best know the nature of popular government, we shall find no reason for good men to desire or choose it. Xenophon, that brave scholar and soldier, disallowed the Athenian commonweal for that they followed that form of government wherein the wicked are always in greatest credit, and virtuous men kept under. They expelled Aristides the Just; Themistocles died in banishment; Miltiades in prison; Phocion, the most virtuous and just man of his age, though he had been chosen forty-five times to be their general, yet he was put to death with all his friends, kindred, and servants, by the fury of the people, without sentence, accusation, or any cause at all.

- Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha.

Memories from the campaign trail

Fuzzyfundy, rocking YOU like a hurricane!

Hillary Clinton being hit on by my tiny valet Señor Moreno.

John McCain gets a special pizza commemorating his 80th birthday.

Human-pig hybrid known as the Ghanaian abomination.

His speechify make white liberal lady cry

Inspired by Barry Hussein Obama’s vaporings, a “cynic” reminds us again that democracy is mistake:

It’s been twenty minutes and I still can’t quite breath and am still choking up. I have read the speeches of Nelson Mandella, Steve Biko, Julius Nyerere, and Patrice Lumumba– all powerful orators– but not one has ever brought me to tears.

Obama earned my vote today– me, the eternal cynic. He may not be the most experienced candidate but the man is engaged in a way that we need our next president to be engaged. So much the better if he helps a white woman like me able to have a conversation about race that will actually be productive, rather than stifled because of my own latent prejudices that I have spent my adult life trying to unlearn and fear of being misinterpreted.

Appoint don't elect

In the Sunday Seattle Times a fascinating editorial from former school board president Donald P. Neilson. Neilson, surely a liberal, concedes school boards should be appointed, not elected:

Moreover, the people who choose to run for office in our cities, particularly for school board, are often unqualified for the position. Running for public office has become so unattractive that qualified people tend not to run. This is particularly true of school boards where there is little or no status, no compensation and where board members are regularly assailed by irate citizens.

Neilson explains:

Today, there is hardly a single urban system, with an elected school board, that has put together a sustained, multiyear program of improvement in its schools. Going to an appointed school board — with prominent civic leaders providing competence and stability — gives us some chance that we can change that statistic.

Of course the same voters who can’t pick a school board are not only allowed, but encouraged to vote in Congressional and Presidential elections, and even though the democratic process fails at selecting the right people for something as mundane as a school board, it’s somehow beyond the pale to suggest the democratic process fails at selecting the right people for more important and more complex positions. And to think there those that still complain voter turnout is too low.

Political science

Democracy: rule by incompetents chosen by imbeciles.

Wisdom of crowds

Excting new research on how the average citizen decides whom to vote for:

Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov has demonstrated that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election returns. Todorov has taken some of his previous research that showed that people unconsciously judge the competence of an unfamiliar face within a tenth of a second, and he has moved it to the political arena. His lab tests show that a rapid appraisal of the relative competence of two candidates' faces was sufficient to predict the winner in about 70 percent of the races for U.S. senator and state governor in the 2006 elections.

"Political scientists have spent 50 years documenting only modest effects of the media on voting behavior, but Todorov's research suggests we may have been looking in the wrong place," said Chappell Lawson, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Most of these previous studies have relied on transcripts or printed records of what the media say, with much less attention to visual images."

This means Hillary Clinton is vulnerable not because she’s a corrupt, crypto-Marxist shrew, but because she’s dumpy looking. And while a few people will vote against Mitt Romney because he’s a Mormon, far more will vote for him because he looks a little bit like a cross between Bruce Wayne and Ward Cleaver. Interestingly:

Lawson, who called Todorov's work "pioneering," added that some of his own work corroborates the new findings, indicating that competence appears to be a universal quality, recognizable across cultures. His research shows that American observers could predict the outcome of elections in Mexico based on the same gut reactions.

"Both of these papers speak to the seminal quality of appearance in candidate success," Lawson said. "Our findings surprised us, because Mexican politicians often emphasize very different aspects of their appearance, such as facial hair, which American political figures avoid. But Americans could still pick out the Mexican winners. Our data show effects at least as strong as those Todorov found."

Democratic sentiments

Compressing the idea into one syllable, Hamilton at a New York dinner replied to some democratic sentiment by striking his hand sharply on the table and saying: “Your people, sir—your people is a great beast.”

– Henry Adams, History of the United States of America During the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson.