Sublime

to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of wh

Conservative social scientist Charles Murray’s 2006 book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State argues that a guaranteed income would be likely to make non-college-educated men more attractive marriage partners.

Mill held that truth emerges from an unfettered competition of ideas and that individual character is most improved when allowed to find its own way uncoerced. That vision was insufficient for 20th-century American liberalism.

However, he continues, over the last 50 years the need for people to be “legible” and fit into a standard model of work has merely become “industrially preferable.” This puts government and institutional leaders in a position where they are incentivized to convince people that following rigid paths in their institutions is the correct path for ever