DEMOCRACY AND THE GUARDIAN STATE
My last immigration link was courtesy of "Nato", who has also posted some remarks about democracy provoked by a reader e-mail of mine:

How is it that scientific truths that most laymen do not accept get taught in schools? It's because we live in the original democratic technocracy - the republic. Almost all our laws are made by lawmakers. That's pretty much the entire job - making laws. Now, most of them are politicians (as opposed to statesmen) as well, but it's a de facto not de jure requirement.

Why don't we just vote on things ourselves? Well, the truth, is, we're not very informed. I consider myself very well informed compared to the average person, but you can guarantee that lawmakers know lawmaking a whole lot better than I ever will. I might be able to bend a certain portion of my free time to studying the crafting, arguing, and negotiation of laws, but it's their whole profession (at least ostensibly).

"Nato" eventually admits that "technocracy is no panacea." I'm not satisfied with that disclaimer. There's a confusion here between representative government, on the one hand-- by which expertise enjoys power only to the extent that it is, and only by virtue of being, accepted by the people and supported by the will of the majority-- and, on the other hand, cases where courts or other unelected institutions enjoy power regardless of the popular will. In the latter case, who guards the guardians?

I do not think it's a good thing that "scientific truths that most laymen do not accept are taught in schools." Even if evolution is true (and I think the theory is full of holes) to override the popular will on this issue is not a price worth paying: millions of people whom the elite considers barbarians and ignores are marginalized and alienated by such undemocratic norms. (If the Founders were alive today, they would be more distrustful of state-run public education than they ever were of standing armies.)

In other news, the protest I attended yesterday is in the news. Call it genocide, we said, and it seems Congress just did. Not much of a triumph though, the newly-christened genocide is still going on. It will probably play itself out like the ones before it.