Sounds like your main beef (pun intended) is with authoritarianism. I agree. I've read lots of opinions on how it got started and why it is now running rampant. Not sure how to put the demons back into Pandora's box at this point; humans being what they are. How on earth did the founding fathers do what they did???
I have a two-part theory about how the founding fathers wound their way to what we have. First, they were coming from an authoritarian situation that was disagreeable. They were living through the downsides, so they wanted to design a system that avoided it. Second, and perhaps more subtly, they had to communicate with each other through writing. Committing to writing meant that they had to organize their thoughts and make cogent, well-researched arguments. They had to write in such a way that their ideological opponents would read it, so no name-calling, and it had to demonstrate their own digestion of prior correspondence. The delivery system was days and weeks, so their process was slower, more deliberative, and perhaps more effective than what we do now. (In my view, what the political class does now is stake out a position quickly, submit it to the social media echo-chamber, and simply ignore counter-points until the votes are counted.)
I've been considering making this another essay topic. What do you think?
mmmmm, sausage...
Sounds like your main beef (pun intended) is with authoritarianism. I agree. I've read lots of opinions on how it got started and why it is now running rampant. Not sure how to put the demons back into Pandora's box at this point; humans being what they are. How on earth did the founding fathers do what they did???
Thanks for the pun, I guess...
I have a two-part theory about how the founding fathers wound their way to what we have. First, they were coming from an authoritarian situation that was disagreeable. They were living through the downsides, so they wanted to design a system that avoided it. Second, and perhaps more subtly, they had to communicate with each other through writing. Committing to writing meant that they had to organize their thoughts and make cogent, well-researched arguments. They had to write in such a way that their ideological opponents would read it, so no name-calling, and it had to demonstrate their own digestion of prior correspondence. The delivery system was days and weeks, so their process was slower, more deliberative, and perhaps more effective than what we do now. (In my view, what the political class does now is stake out a position quickly, submit it to the social media echo-chamber, and simply ignore counter-points until the votes are counted.)
I've been considering making this another essay topic. What do you think?
Yes, absolutely. I would love to read that article.