Sublime

In 1919, Lippmann wrote a despairing essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled “The Basic Problem of Democracy.” Democracy’s founding ideal—that of a well-informed citizenry capable of making reasoned judgments about national problems and plans—had come into being in a much simpler time, he argued, when most concerns were local and people had direct

Human nature is hunted and has fled into sanctuary.

A middle standard is fixed in America for human knowledge. All approach as near to it as they can; some as they rise, others as they descend.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This

Just as deregulation and the stripping away of publicly funded alternatives represent “freedom” for those with a junk product to peddle, and the slashing of the Environmental Protectional Agency’s enforcement budget means an oilman’s freedom to jack up the global temperature, the autodidact is free to be mobbed by infotainers.

But I don’t see what a man can expect when he fights against arithmetic,

Also, lacking civil liberties and property rights, representative democracy is left with nothing to represent except the will of the mob or—as it’s called these days—“activism.”

useless staff rather than a useful tool. It might be suggested that American citizens do at least so far love freedom as to like to have their hands free.