<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><header id="header" class="persistent" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: absolute; height: 45px; width: 1024px; z-index: 800; text-align: center; -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;"><div style="text-align: start;"><font size="3"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><h2 style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 5px 40px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px; display: inline-block; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 99%; width: 1013.75px;">BOOKS</h2> </span></font></div><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/2500_crit_crain_161107/2500_crit_crain_161107_h.html#" class="icon-resize white right" style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; width: 40px; height: 40px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; cursor: pointer; position: absolute; display: inline-block; transform: translateZ(0px); overflow: visible; top: 2px; z-index: 900; right: 5px;"></a></header><div id="page-wrapper" class="overthrow" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-y: auto; overflow-x: hidden; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; height: 768px; -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; box-sizing: border-box;"><div id="stack-content" class="feature" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 45px 0px 60px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; min-height: 101%;"><header id="opener" class="vertical-header-first" style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; min-height: 726px;"><div class="inner" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 1024px; display: table; box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="header-group" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle; display: table-cell; height: 726px; width: 494px;"><div class="hed-container" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><h1 style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px 30px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 48px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px;"><font size="3"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">NONE OF THE ABOVE</span></font></h1><h3 style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 22px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px;"><font size="3"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The case against democracy.</span></font></h3><h2 style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 30px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-margin-before: 0px; -webkit-margin-after: 0px;"><font size="3"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">BY CALEB CRAIN</span></font></h2></div></div><div class="image-wrapper" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; float: right; height: 726px;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; text-align: start; margin-bottom: -50px; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img src="cid:/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/media/crit_crain_161107/161107_r28960.jpg" class="tablet" style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px -50px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: none; height: 726px; display: block;"></span><div style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; height: 50px; text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 40px; height: 40px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; cursor: pointer; position: relative; display: inline-block; transform: translateZ(0px); overflow: visible;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/media/crit_crain_161107/crit_crain_161107_gallery.html" class="icon-plus red" style="outline: none; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 40px; height: 40px; text-align: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; cursor: pointer; position: relative; display: inline-block; transform: translateZ(0px); overflow: visible; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></a></div></div></div></div></header><section style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 44px 0px 275px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="descender" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Roughly a third of American voters think that the Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability to each according to his need” appears in the Constitution. About as many are incapable of naming even one of the three branches of the United States government. Fewer than a quarter know who their senators are, and only half are aware that their state has two of them.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Democracy is other people, and the ignorance of the many has long galled the few, especially the few who consider themselves intellectuals. Plato, one of the earliest to see democracy as a problem, saw its typical citizen as shiftless and flighty:</span></p><blockquote style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 20px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.22222em; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; overflow: hidden;"><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.22222em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other times, he’s idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy.</span></p></blockquote><p class="noindent" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn’t have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea “useless.”</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A more practical suggestion came from J. S. Mill, in the nineteenth century: give extra votes to citizens with university degrees or intellectually demanding jobs. (In fact, in Mill’s day, select universities had had their own constituencies for centuries, allowing someone with a degree from, say, Oxford to vote both in his university constituency and wherever he lived. The system wasn’t abolished until 1950.) Mill’s larger project—at a time when no more than nine per cent of British adults could vote—was for the franchise to expand and to include women. But he worried that new voters would lack knowledge and judgment, and fixed on supplementary votes as a defense against ignorance.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the United States, élites who feared the ignorance of poor immigrants tried to restrict ballots. In 1855, Connecticut introduced the first literacy test for American voters. Although a New York Democrat protested, in 1868, that “if a man is ignorant, he needs the ballot for his protection all the more,” in the next half century the tests spread to almost all parts of the country. They helped racists in the South circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment and disenfranchise blacks, and even in immigrant-rich New York a 1921 law required new voters to take a test if they couldn’t prove that they had an eighth-grade education. About fifteen per cent flunked. Voter literacy tests weren’t permanently outlawed by Congress until 1975, years after the civil-rights movement had discredited them.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Worry about voters’ intelligence lingers, however. Mill’s proposal, in particular, remains “actually fairly formidable,” according to David Estlund, a political philosopher at Brown. His 2008 book, “Democratic Authority,” tried to construct a philosophical justification for democracy, a feat that he thought could be achieved only by balancing two propositions: democratic procedures tend to make correct policy decisions, and democratic procedures are fair in the eyes of reasonable observers. Fairness alone didn’t seem to be enough. If it were, Estlund wrote, “why not flip a coin?” It must be that we value democracy for tending to get things right more often than not, which democracy seems to do by making use of the information in our votes. Indeed, although this year we seem to be living through a rough patch, democracy does have a fairly good track record. The economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has made the case that democracies never have famines, and other scholars believe that they almost never go to war with one another, rarely murder their own populations, nearly always have peaceful transitions of government, and respect human rights more consistently than other regimes do.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Still, democracy is far from perfect—“the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time,” as Churchill famously said. So, if we value its power to make good decisions, why not try a system that’s a little less fair but makes good decisions even more often? Jamming the stub of the Greek word for “knowledge” into the Greek word for “rule,” Estlund coined the word “epistocracy,” meaning “government by the knowledgeable.” It’s an idea that “advocates of democracy, and other enemies of despotism, will want to resist,” he wrote, and he counted himself among the resisters. As a purely philosophical matter, however, he saw only three valid objections.</span></p><img src="cid:/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/media/crit_crain_161107/161107_r28972h.jpg" class="spot h" style="outline: none; margin: 20px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 282px; height: auto; display: block;"><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">First, one could deny that truth was a suitable standard for measuring political judgment. This sounds extreme, but it’s a fairly common move in political philosophy. After all, in debates over contentious issues, such as when human life begins or whether human activity is warming the planet, appeals to the truth tend to be incendiary. Truth “peremptorily claims to be acknowledged and precludes debate,” Hannah Arendt pointed out in this magazine, in 1967, “and debate constitutes the very essence of political life.” Estlund wasn’t a relativist, however; he agreed that politicians should refrain from appealing to absolute truth, but he didn’t think a political theorist could avoid doing so.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The second argument against epistocracy would be to deny that some citizens know more about good government than others. Estlund simply didn’t find this plausible (maybe a political philosopher is professionally disinclined to). The third and final option: deny that knowing more imparts political authority. As Estlund put it, “You might be right, but who made you boss?”</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s a very good question, and Estlund rested his defense of democracy on it, but he felt obliged to look for holes in his argument. He had a sneaking suspicion that a polity ruled by educated voters probably <em style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">would </em>perform better than a democracy, and he thought that some of the resulting inequities could be remedied. If historically disadvantaged groups, such as African-Americans or women, turned out to be underrepresented in an epistocratic system, those who made the grade could be given additional votes, in compensation.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By the end of Estlund’s analysis, there were only two practical arguments against epistocracy left standing. The first was the possibility that an epistocracy’s method of screening voters might be biased in a way that couldn’t readily be identified and therefore couldn’t be corrected for. The second was that universal suffrage is so established in our minds as a default that giving the knowledgeable power over the ignorant will always feel more unjust than giving those in the majority power over those in the minority. As defenses of democracy go, these are even less rousing than Churchill’s shruggie.</span></p><p class="descender" style="outline: none; margin: 1.5rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a new book, “Against Democracy” (Princeton), Jason Brennan, a political philosopher at Georgetown, has turned Estlund’s hedging inside out to create an uninhibited argument <em style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">for </em>epistocracy. Against Estlund’s claim that universal suffrage is the default, Brennan argues that it’s entirely justifiable to limit the political power that the irrational, the ignorant, and the incompetent have over others. To counter Estlund’s concern for fairness, Brennan asserts that the public’s welfare is more important than anyone’s hurt feelings; after all, he writes, few would consider it unfair to disqualify jurors who are morally or cognitively incompetent. As for Estlund’s worry about demographic bias, Brennan waves it off. Empirical research shows that people rarely vote for their narrow self-interest; seniors favor Social Security no more strongly than the young do. Brennan suggests that since voters in an epistocracy would be more enlightened about crime and policing, “excluding the bottom 80 percent of white voters from voting might be just what poor blacks need.”</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Brennan has a bright, pugilistic style, and he takes a sportsman’s pleasure in upsetting pieties and demolishing weak logic. Voting rights may happen to signify human dignity to us, he writes, but corpse-eating once signified respect for the dead among the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. To him, our faith in the ennobling power of political debate is no more well grounded than the supposition that college fraternities build character.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Brennan draws ample evidence of the average American voter’s cluelessness from the legal scholar Ilya Somin’s “Democracy and Political Ignorance” (2013), which shows that American voters have remained ignorant despite decades of rising education levels. Some economists have argued that ill-informed voters, far from being lazy or self-sabotaging, should be seen as rational actors. If the odds that your vote will be decisive are minuscule—Brennan writes that “you are more likely to win Powerball a few times in a row”—then learning about politics isn’t worth even a few minutes of your time. In “The Myth of the Rational Voter” (2007), the economist Bryan Caplan suggested that ignorance may even be gratifying to voters. “Some beliefs are more emotionally appealing,” Caplan observed, so if your vote isn’t likely to do anything why not indulge yourself in what you want to believe, whether or not it’s true? Caplan argues that it’s only because of the worthlessness of an individual vote that so many voters look beyond their narrow self-interest: in the polling booth, the warm, fuzzy feeling of altruism can be had cheap.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Viewed that way, voting might seem like a form of pure self-expression. Not even, says Brennan: it’s multiple choice, so hardly expressive. “If you’re upset, write a poem,” Brennan counselled in an earlier book, “The Ethics of Voting” (2011). He was equally unimpressed by the argument that it’s one’s duty to vote. “It would be bad if no one farmed,” he wrote, “but that does not imply that everyone should farm.” In fact, he suspected, the imperative to vote might be even weaker than the imperative to farm. After all, by not voting you do your neighbor a good turn. “If I do not vote, your vote counts more,” Brennan wrote.</span></p><aside class="cartoon" style="outline: none; margin: 35px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 634.5px; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><div style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px -50px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; text-align: left; height: 40px;"><span class="icon-plus red" style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 40px; height: 40px; text-align: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; cursor: pointer; position: relative; display: inline-block; transform: translateZ(0px); overflow: visible;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/cartoon-carousel/cartoon-carousel.html#a20336" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: start;"></div></a></span></div><font style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: start;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/cartoon-carousel/cartoon-carousel.html#a20336" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%;"><span style="margin-bottom: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; max-height: 540px;"><img src="cid:/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/media/cartoons/161107_a20336.jpg" alt="" style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 100%; height: auto; width: auto; max-height: 540px;"></span></a></div></font></span><span style="text-align: start; outline: none; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: block; max-width: 100%; width: 634.5px;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/cartoon-carousel/cartoon-carousel.html#a20336" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">“Yours was the blue Prius with the two stoners passed out in back, right?”</font></a></span></aside><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Brennan calls people who don’t bother to learn about politics hobbits, and he thinks it for the best if they stay home on Election Day. A second group of people enjoy political news as a recreation, following it with the partisan devotion of sports fans, and Brennan calls them hooligans. Third in his bestiary are vulcans, who investigate politics with scientific objectivity, respect opposing points of view, and carefully adjust their opinions to the facts, which they seek out diligently. It’s vulcans, presumably, who Brennan hopes will someday rule over us, but he doesn’t present compelling evidence that they really exist. In fact, one study he cites shows that even people with excellent math skills tend not to draw on them if doing so risks undermining a cherished political belief. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In recent memory, sophisticated experts have been confident about many proposals that turned out to be disastrous—invading Iraq, having a single European currency, grinding subprime mortgages into the sausage known as collateralized debt obligations, and so on.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How would an epistocracy actually work? Brennan is reluctant to get specific, which is understandable. It was the details of utopia that gave Plato so much trouble, and by not going into them Brennan avoids stepping on the rake that thwacked Plato between the eyes. He sketches some options—extra votes for degree holders, a council of epistocrats with veto power, a qualifying exam for voters—but he doesn’t spend much time considering what could go wrong. The idea of a voter exam, for example, was dismissed by Brennan himself in “The Ethics of Voting” as “ripe for abuse and institutional capture.” There’s no mention in his new book of any measures that he would put in place to prevent such dangers.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Without more details, it’s difficult to assess Brennan’s proposal. Suppose I claim that pixies always make selfless, enlightened political decisions and that therefore we should entrust our government to pixies. If I can’t really say how we’ll identify the pixies or harness their sagacity, and if I also disclose evidence that pixies may be just as error-prone as hobbits and hooligans, you’d be justified in having doubts.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">While we’re on the subject of vulcans and pixies, we might as well mention that there’s an elephant in the room. Knowledge about politics, Brennan reports, is higher in people who have more education and higher income, live in the West, belong to the Republican Party, and are middle-aged; it’s lower among blacks and women. “Most poor black women, as of right now at least, would fail even a mild voter qualification exam,” he admits, but he’s undeterred, insisting that their disenfranchisement would be merely <em style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">incidental </em>to his epistocratic plan—a completely different matter, he maintains, from the literacy tests of America’s past, which were administered with the <em style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">intention</em> of disenfranchising blacks and ethnic whites.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That’s an awfully fine distinction. Bear in mind that, during the current Presidential race, it looks as though the votes of blacks and women will serve as a bulwark against the most reckless demagogue in living memory, whom white men with a college degree have been favoring by a margin of forty-seven per cent to thirty-five per cent. Moreover, though political scientists mostly agree that voters are altruistic, something doesn’t tally: Brennan concedes that historically disadvantaged groups such as blacks and women seem to gain political leverage once they get the franchise.</span></p><p class="descender" style="outline: none; margin: 1.5rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Like many people I know, I’ve spent recent months staying up late, reading polls in terror. The flawed and faulty nature of democracy has become a vivid companion. But is democracy really failing, or is it just trying to say something?</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Political scientists have long hoped to find an “invisible hand” in politics comparable to the one that Adam Smith described in economics. Voter ignorance wouldn’t matter much if a democracy were able to weave individual votes into collective political wisdom, the way a market weaves the self-interested buy-and-sell decisions of individual actors into a prudent collective allocation of resources. But, as Brennan reports, the mathematical models that have been proposed work only if voter ignorance has no shape of its own—if, for example, voters err on the side of liberalism as often as they err on the side of conservatism, leaving decisions in the hands of a politically knowledgeable minority in the center. Unfortunately, voter ignorance <em style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">does</em> seem to have a shape. The political scientist Scott Althaus has calculated that a voter with more knowledge of politics will, on balance, be less eager to go to war, less punitive about crime, more tolerant on social issues, less accepting of government control of the economy, and more willing to accept taxes in order to reduce the federal deficit. And Caplan calculates that a voter ignorant of economics will tend to be more pessimistic, more suspicious of market competition and of rises in productivity, and more wary of foreign trade and immigration.</span></p><aside class="cartoon" style="outline: none; margin: 35px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 634.5px; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><div style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px -50px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; text-align: left; height: 40px;"><span class="icon-plus red" style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 40px; height: 40px; text-align: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; cursor: pointer; position: relative; display: inline-block; transform: translateZ(0px); overflow: visible;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/cartoon-carousel/cartoon-carousel.html#a20264" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: start;"></div></a></span></div><font style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%;"><div style="text-align: start;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/cartoon-carousel/cartoon-carousel.html#a20264" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%;"><span style="margin-bottom: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; max-height: 540px;"><img src="cid:/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/media/cartoons/161107_a20264.jpg" alt="" style="outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 100%; height: auto; width: auto; max-height: 540px;"></span></a></div></font><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/HTMLResources/cartoon-carousel/cartoon-carousel.html#a20264"><span style="outline: none; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; display: block; max-width: 100%; width: 634.5px;"></span></a></span></aside><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s possible, though, that democracy works even though political scientists have failed to find a tidy equation to explain it. It could be that voters take a cognitive shortcut, letting broad-brush markers like party affiliation stand in for a close study of candidates’ qualifications and policy stances. Brennan doubts that voters understand party stereotypes well enough to do even this, but surely a shortcut needn’t be perfect to be helpful. Voters may also rely on the simple heuristic of throwing out incumbents who have made them unhappy, a technique that in political science goes by the polite name of “retrospective voting.” Brennan argues that voters don’t know enough to do this, either. To impose full accountability, he writes, voters would need to know “who the incumbent bastards are, what they did, what they could have done, what happened when the bastards did what they did, and whether the challengers are likely to be any better than the incumbent bastards.” Most don’t know all this, of course. Somin points out that voters have punished incumbents for droughts and shark attacks and rewarded them for recent sports victories. Caplan dismisses retrospective voting, quoting a pair of scholars who call it “no more rational than killing the pharaoh when the Nile does not flood.”</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But even if retrospective voting is sloppy, and works to the chagrin of the occasional pharaoh, that doesn’t necessarily make it valueless. It might, for instance, tend to improve elected officials’ policy decisions. Maybe all it takes is for a politician to worry that she could be the unlucky chump who gets punished for something she actually did. Caplan notes that a politician clever enough to worry about his constituents’ future happiness as well as their present gratification might be motivated to give them better policies than they know to ask for. In such a case, he predicts, voters will feel a perennial dissatisfaction, stemming from the tendency of their canniest and most long-lasting politicians to be cavalier about campaign promises. Sound familiar?</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When the Founding Fathers designed the federal system, not paying too much attention to voters was a feature, not a bug. “There are particular moments in public affairs,” Madison warned, “when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.” Brennan, for all his cleverness, sometimes seems to be struggling to reinvent the “representative” part of “representative democracy,” writing as if voters need to know enough about policy to be able to make intelligent decisions themselves, when, in most modern democracies, voters usually delegate that task. It’s when they don’t, as in California’s ballot initiatives or the recent British referendum on whether to leave the European Union, that disaster is especially likely to strike. The economist Joseph Schumpeter didn’t think democracy could even function if voters paid too much attention to what their representatives did between elections. “Electorates normally do not control their political leaders in any way except by refusing to reelect them,” he wrote, in “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” (1942). The rest of the time, he thought, they should refrain from “political back-seat driving.”</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why do we vote, and is there a reason to do it or a duty to do it well? It’s been said that voting enables one to take an equal part in the building of one’s political habitat. Brennan thinks that such participation is worthless if what you value about participation is the chance to influence an election’s outcome; odds are, you won’t. Yet he has previously written that participation can be meaningful even when its practical effect is nil, as when a parent whose spouse willingly handles all child care still feels compelled to help out. Brennan claims that no comparable duty to take part exists with voting, because other kinds of good actions can take voting’s place. He believes, in other words, that voting is part of a larger market in civic virtue, the way that farming is part of a larger market in food, and he goes so far as to suggest that a businessman who sells food and clothing to Martin Luther King, Jr., is making a genuine contribution to civic virtue, even though he makes it indirectly. This doesn’t seem persuasive, in part because it dilutes the meaning of civic virtue too much, and in part because it implies that a businessman who sells a cheeseburger to J. Edgar Hoover is committing civic evil.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">More than once, Brennan compares uninformed voting to air pollution. It’s a compelling analogy: in both cases, the conscientiousness of the enlightened few is no match for the negligence of the many, and the cost of shirking duty is spread too widely to keep any one malefactor in line. Your commute by bicycle probably isn’t going to make the city’s air any cleaner, and even if you read up on candidates for civil-court judge on <a href="http://patch.com">Patch.com</a>, it may still be the crook who gets elected. But though the incentive for duty may be weakened, it’s not clear that the duty itself is lightened. The whole point of democracy is that the number of people who participate in an election is proportional to the number of people who will have to live intimately with an election’s outcome. It’s worth noting, too, that if judicious voting is like clean air then it can’t also be like farming. Clean air is a commons, an instance of market failure, dependent on government protection for its existence; farming is part of a market.</span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But maybe voting is neither commons nor market. Perhaps, instead, it’s combat. Relatively gentle, of course. Rather than rifles and bayonets, essentially there’s just a show of hands. But the nature of the duty may be similar, because what Brennan’s model omits is that sometimes, in an election, democracy itself is in danger. If a soldier were to calculate his personal value to the campaign that his army is engaged in, he could easily conclude that the cost of showing up at the front isn’t worth it, even if he factors in the chance of being caught and punished for desertion. The trouble is that it’s impossible to know in advance of a battle which side will prevail, let alone by how great a margin, especially if morale itself is a variable. The lack of certainty about the future makes a hash of merely prudential calculation. It’s said that most soldiers worry more about letting down the fellow-soldiers in their unit than about allegiance to an entity as abstract as the nation, and maybe voters, too, feel their duty most acutely toward friends and family who share their idea of where the country needs to go. <span class="dingbat" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">♦</span></span></p></section><footer style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 44px; border: 0px; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; height: 40px; clear: both;"><a href="file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/44B0D08F-0B54-44D7-8FFA-82B8F016E340/Library/Caches/Newsstand/35B97E64-5EE2-40B9-B8DD-FDF629509D18/cc759f49-821a-4360-9d7f-ae5a83d19189/2500_crit_crain_161107/2500_crit_crain_161107_h.html#" class="icon-top red" style="text-align: start; outline: none; 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background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">or</span><span style="font-size: 13pt; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span><a href="tel:011-623-363-3277" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2/0" style="font-size: 13pt;">011-623-363-3277</a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:marilyn.oyler@gmail.com" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">jfwiegel@yahoo.com</font></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.partnersinparticipation.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">www.partnersinparticipation.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div>"<span style="font-size: 13pt;">We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." 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font-size: 16px;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Dharmalingam Vinasithamby via OE <<a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Len Hockley <<a href="mailto:LCHockley@gmail.com">LCHockley@gmail.com</a>>; "<a href="mailto:laurelcg@aol.com">laurelcg@aol.com</a>" <<a href="mailto:laurelcg@aol.com">laurelcg@aol.com</a>>; Order Ecumenical Community <<a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>; Order Ecumenical Community <<a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Tuesday, November 1, 2016 6:16 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Clinton's relationship to E.I. - Dear Susan<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br><div id="yiv7320072636"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:24px;"><div id="yiv7320072636yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478044925007_35734">As an outsider, being in the Order/ICA gave me a close-up view
of the US and how its citizens related to it. In all those years, beginning
with Nixon all the way up to Obama, I’ve seen it invade and destroy nations
around the world, releasing waves of refugees and other miseries. But
within the US, people lived in a cocoon that
helped them avert their eyes. I remember the Vietnam war protesters and the many
young people who fled the US in order not to be driven to kill “gooks”
overseas. I noticed that at best, we were silent on this and at worst,
disapproving. When I look back, I see that the protesters were the “sensitive
and responsive” part that Niebuhr wrote about. I also noticed the hunger among
us to cite links to famous figures while pointing out that to live in the “no
longer and the not-yet” was to be “nobodies”.
Perhaps this was the effect of consuming the stories meant for our
framing and fund-raising strategies.</div><div id="yiv7320072636yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478044925007_35734"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yiv7320072636yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478044925007_35698">
</div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv7320072636yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478044925007_35736">I see that same hunger now reflected in recalling some
distant crossing of trails with Hillary Clinton. Americans have been set up by
the political elite to adopt positions around two equally ugly candidates put
before them for the exercise of their “democratic rights”. For all the emotions
the Republican-Democrat tension evokes in our emails, election after election, that
rivalry is a sham. This is a nation ruled by a “single party with two factions”.
Whichever you praise or denigrate, the real owners of the land always win. And
for the rest of us around the world, we can only wait for the light from this “beacon
on the hill” to eventually fade. Then, perhaps, the US will take its place as an ordinary member in the
community of nations.</div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv7320072636yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478044925007_35736"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv7320072636yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478044925007_35736">Dharma</div> <div class="yiv7320072636qtdSeparateBR"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"></div><div class="yiv7320072636yahoo_quoted" style="display:block;"> <div style="font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:24px;"> <div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, Sans-Serif;font-size:16px;"> <div class="yiv7320072636yqt9215998749" id="yiv7320072636yqtfd28717"><div dir="ltr"><font size="2" face="Arial"> On Wednesday, 2 November 2016, 7:33, Len Hockley via OE <<a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>> wrote:<br clear="none"></font></div> <br clear="none"><br clear="none"> <div class="yiv7320072636y_msg_container"><div id="yiv7320072636"><div>
<div class="yiv7320072636moz-cite-prefix">Dido Jon, <b>The Naked Now</b> by
Richard Rohr is required reading!<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Len Hockley<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
On 11/1/2016 2:58 PM, via OE wrote:<br clear="none">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div class="yiv7320072636yqt6904438583" id="yiv7320072636yqt09289"><div style="font-size:10pt;font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;color:black;">
<div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:black;">Love
this, Jon. Thanks.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:black;"><br clear="none">
</div>
<div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:black;">Jann<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
-----Original Message-----<br clear="none">
From: <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv7320072636moz-txt-link-abbreviated" ymailto="mailto:jonzondo@juno.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:jonzondo@juno.com">jonzondo@juno.com</a> via OE <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv7320072636moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net"><oe@lists.wedgeblade.net></a><br clear="none">
To: isobeljimbish <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv7320072636moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" ymailto="mailto:isobeljimbish@optusnet.com.au" target="_blank" href="mailto:isobeljimbish@optusnet.com.au"><isobeljimbish@optusnet.com.au></a>; oe
<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv7320072636moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net"><oe@lists.wedgeblade.net></a><br clear="none">
Cc: oe <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" class="yiv7320072636moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net"><oe@lists.wedgeblade.net></a><br clear="none">
Sent: Tue, Nov 1, 2016 1:37 pm<br clear="none">
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Clinton's relationship to
E.I. - Dear Susan<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
</div>
<div id="yiv7320072636AOLMsgPart_1.2_f76c6b39-b797-4ea8-b769-016dc8a38f90">
<div class="yiv7320072636aolReplacedBody">
<div>Dear Group.<br clear="none">
Jon Elizondo here. Son of Tony and Ellery.<br clear="none">
Long time "Order kid" and short time Order adult.<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
This conversation is very important, especially with all
the perspectives.<br clear="none">
I will try to hone in now on one of my key points.<br clear="none">
The change needed in the system is huge. Our current
system is incredible broken in so many ways. We are a
first world country "purposefully" going backwards by not
investing in our infrastructure nor in our people. </div>
<div>In my observation and opinion, much of the national
frustration shows itself in the desire to elect Trump, or
Bernie, or any alternative. The "Cry" for change is
massive, and will not let up. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>One of the traps is either/or thinking.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>one of the ways forward is both/and/plus-more thinking.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>One of the traps is "personal attacks".</div>
<div> </div>
<div>one of the ways forward is "come join us at the table".</div>
<div> </div>
<div>What I know in my bones is that we are all connected.
That mysterious truth, combined with my passion &
respect, is my key to intentionally moving forward.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Walk in Beauty,</div>
<div>Jon</div>
<div> </div>
<div><br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
---------- Original Message ----------<br clear="none">
From: Isobel Bishop via OE <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>><br clear="none">
To: Wilson Priscilla H <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:pris@teamtechpress.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:pris@teamtechpress.com">pris@teamtechpress.com</a>>,
Order Ecumenical Community <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>><br clear="none">
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Clinton's relationship
to E.I. - Dear Susan<br clear="none">
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2016 07:23:32 +1100<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
<div>Thankyou for this conversation, colleagues. I
appreciate the </div>
<div>Honesty, pain and fear expressed in</div>
<div>depth,to give us outsiders some real hope.<br clear="none">
Thankyou all.</div>
<div>In peace and love,</div>
<div>Isobel <br clear="none">
Sent from my iPhone</div>
<div><br clear="none">
On 2 Nov 2016, at 7:02 am, Wilson Priscilla H via OE
<<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
</div>
<blockquote>
<div>No one has said that better, Randy. You should put
that on Facebook…so we can all copy your words.
<div>Priscilla Wilson</div>
<div><br clear="none">
<div>
<blockquote>
<div>On Nov 1, 2016, at 2:35 PM, Joyce Sloan via
OE <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:</div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Well said, Randy!!</div>
<div class="yiv7320072636aolmail_gmail_extra"><br clear="none">
<div class="yiv7320072636aolmail_gmail_quote">On Nov 1,
2016 2:20 PM, "Randy Williams via OE" <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<blockquote class="yiv7320072636aolmail_gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>
<div>I keep asking, but still have not
seen, one shred of verifiable
evidence to substantiate the charge
that Hillary has committed a
criminal act of any sort. She's made
serious mistakes like with the
private server, she has not been as
transparent as she could and perhaps
should have been, she got paid a lot
of money for some speeches (but less
than some men), she's flip-flopped
on some positions she's taken like
on TPP, she has a super-healthy ego
(an asset for a man but a huge
liability for a woman in our
culture), she didn't play nice when
she was First Lady trying to get
health care passed, as Secretary of
State she traveled the world and
spoke truth to power like the
Premier of China, and after much
gut-wrenching deliberation and
prayer she chose to stay true to her
vow to her husband of "for better or
worse" through "worse." And to add
insult to injury, she decided to run
to be the first woman in the Office
of President of the United States.
How dare she. Despise her for all
those things and hate all her
positions on the issues, but don't
accuse her of being a criminal
unless you have some rock solid
proof that hours and years and
millions of dollars worth of
hearings, investigations and witch
hunts by scores of government
agencies, news media and nondescript
malcontents have been unable to
produce. I've heard the rumors,
innuendos, exaggerations,
conjecture, gross distortions and
outright lies, everything but
verifiable truth. Got any? Then
let's have it. But double check your
sources before you put it out there
because there really are some
malingering, deplorable liars afoot
in the land and a lot of fools are
believing them and then repeating
what they heard them say and calling
it truth, and it just isn't. </div>
<div id="yiv7320072636aolmail_m_-2242911035825110804AppleMailSignature">Randy<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Sent from my iPad</div>
<div><br clear="none">
On Nov 1, 2016, at 12:15 PM, Susan
Fertig via OE <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
</div>
<blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<div>Trump was never my choice,
and Hillary is a criminal--her
vision for the country is my
first nightmare. And Trump is
just as flawed. Both of them
scare me to death. But neither
if the other candidates is
really an option either. I
fear we're about to see this
great American experiment in
democracy become something no
less evil than the many
kleptocracies around the
world.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Susan</div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="color:#333333;"><em>Sent from my
Verizon 4G LTE Droid</em></span></div>
</div>
<div class="yiv7320072636aolmail_m_-2242911035825110804elided-text">On
Nov 1, 2016 11:55 AM, Judi White
<<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:sophiacircle@gmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:sophiacircle@gmail.com">sophiacircle@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<blockquote class="yiv7320072636aolmail_m_-2242911035825110804quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Well, what you
wrote is what Frumper
repeats over and over.
Mist who parrot him do
support him. <br clear="none">
I Personally prefer to
read responses to a
candidates vision for this
nation. <br clear="none">
Also I stand firm in ny
admiration which never
ceases, of this woman who
has continued in spite of
the unbelievable
accusations which are so
blown up out of the real
world of truth and honesty
that it is cause for
seriously asking "Why?". <br clear="none">
Why the hell bent mission
to destroy a solid vision
for this nation and this
planet? There is no other
candidate who shines so
brightly and qualified to
be an example for our
children and grandchildren
at this time. Rightly so.</div>
<div><br clear="none">
<div class="yiv7320072636aolmail_m_-2242911035825110804elided-text">On
Nov 1, 2016 12:20 PM,
"Susan Fertig via OE"
<<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>
<div>
<div>How in the
world did you
infer that I
must be a Trump
supporter from
my message?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Susan</div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="color:#333333;"><em>Sent
from my
Verizon 4G LTE
Droid</em></span></div>
</div>
<div>On Nov 1, 2016
7:56 AM, Ken
Fisher <<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:kenfisher1942@gmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:kenfisher1942@gmail.com">kenfisher1942@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word;">
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Dear
Susan,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Writing
to you as a
Canadian
Christian and
16-year Order
member, I am
awed by your
commitment to
American
Republicanism
and
conservative
Christianity.
How in the
world did you
spend so much
time with the
EI/OE/ICA
community and
have your
world view
remain
unaffected?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>From the
perspective of
Canada, we are
87% supporters
of HRC and the
image of
America she
represents.
Probably
Russia is 87%
in favour of
Donald.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Each and
every ‘crime’
that I have
read about
that is
attributed to
Hillary has
been most
grandly
committed by
Republicans in
previous Bush
administrations.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Surely
you would
agree that
Donald Trump
is an out and
out racist,
sexist,
homophobe,
parochial
narcissist and
most of all a
climate change
denier? HRC is
none of the
above.
Thankfully,
she is
responsive to
both Bernie
and to
Elizabeth. We
may get out of
this mess
yet. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Your
phrase: "only
values I see
are abject
greed, a
pathological
allegiance to
lies, and
arrogant
flaunting of
her ability to
circumvent the
law. She has
done
absolutely
nothing to
improve the
lives of the
poor and
disadvantaged
yet claims she
has in the
face of all
evidence to
the contrary.”
is really the
truth that the
world sees
about Trump.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I would
invite you to
see all that
as a
projection.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Should
Trump take
ownership of
any of the
above, that
would be a
fine moment of
grace. Would
you not agree?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Margaret
Atwood, (a <span style="background-color:#ffffff;">Canadian poet, novelist, literary
critic,
essayist, and
environmental
activist)
describes
America in the
midst of a
Salem type </span>witch
hunt. I agree.
It is, at the
bottom a war
against women.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>While
there are
indeed my
contradictions
in American
society that
both the
Republican and
Democratic
administrations
must answer
for, the
attached
article came
closest - for
me - in
describing how
the Republican
voice has
committed
itself to an
‘end game’ and
it would seem
that indeed,
the GOP will
‘end’.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Love and
best wishes to
you, Susan and
to all Trump
supporters who
have been left
without any
vision other
than rebellion
or
depression. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>We are
all
responsible.
Everyone.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Ken in
Canada.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<h1 style="text-decoration:inherit;vertical-align:inherit;line-height:1.2;margin:0px 0px;padding:0px 0px;color:#4c4e4d;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;"><span style="font-size:14px;">A
Republican
intellectual
explains why
the Republican
Party is going
to die</span></span></h1>
</div>
<div><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12256510/republican-party-trump-avik-roy">http://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/1 2256510/republican-party-trump -avik-roy</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<br clear="none">
<div>
<div>On Nov 1,
2016, at 12:03
AM, Susan
Fertig via OE
<<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br clear="none">
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>Values???
The only
values I see
are abject
greed, a
pathological
allegiance to
lies, and
arrogant
flaunting of
her ability to
circumvent the
law. She has
done
absolutely
nothing to
improve the
lives of the
poor and
disadvantaged
yet claims she
has in the
face of all
evidence to
the contrary.
I've heard for
years about
this possible
connection to
EI/ICA, and I
truly hope
it's not true.
It would be a
horrible
embarrassment
to the
movement.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Susan</div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="color:#333333;"><em>Sent
from my
Verizon 4G LTE
Droid</em></span></div>
</div>
<div>On Oct
31, 2016 11:22
PM, William
Salmon via OE
<<a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>>
wrote:<br clear="none">
<blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>
<div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">Colleagues--</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;"> So
many raise the
question
concerning
Hillary
Clinton's
relationship
to E.I. I
decided to
cast this
bread upon the
waters. The
first sign is
that while I
addressed it
to Hillary
Clinton, an
alternate
address popped
up.
Consequently,
it may really
get to her
attention, to
that of some
aid. May it be
a Kool-Aid. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
Inner Peace, </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
Bill </span></div>
<div> </div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">Mrs.
Hillary
Clinton:</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;"> It
is my prayer
that this
reaches you
concerning
your
experience in
5th City,
Chicago, or it
could have
been in
Evanston. Your
Youth
Director, Don
Jones, must
have been at a
training event
to become
known as RS-I.
About the same
time, a large
number of us
dedicated
ourselves to
this renewal
movement that
grew from our
experience in
Chicago Ghetto
to literally
embrace the
world. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;"> It
makes me
wonder if your
experience
under his
leadership
influenced the
values you
hold dear, and
now wish to
step onto the
platform of
the Presidency
to do for our
United States
and for the
world what was
embraced by
the courageous
citizens in
5th City. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
You carry my
prayers during
this last
turbulent
week. You have
my vote. </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
Grace and
Peace, </span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
Pastor William
E. Salmon</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
744 So. 10th</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;">
Salina, KS
67401</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:small;"> <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:wsalmon@cox.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:wsalmon@cox.net">wsalmon@cox.net</a></span></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
</div>
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</blockquote>
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<div>Wilson Priscilla H</div>
<div><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:pris@teamtechpress.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:pris@teamtechpress.com">pris@teamtechpress.com</a></div>
<div><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" target="_blank" href="http://www.teamtechpress.com/">www.teamtechpress.com</a></div>
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