Eric's Beijing Diary

Sitting here at the Bridge Cafe. I came here to watch the election returns. Nell has a live feed from CNN going upstairs. But it's packed up there, and I am not that interested. Besides, there isn't any critical information up there that I can't get from my laptop sitting right in front of me, and with a lot less noise.

Interesting. Just reading right now from Plato (The Story of Philosophy) page 27:

The more Plato thinks of it, the more astounded he is at the folly of leaving to mob caprice and gullibility the selection of public officials--not to speak of leaving it to those shady and wealth-serving strategists who pull the oligarchic wires behind the democratic stage.

Plato obviously did not have a very high opinion of democracy. Who can blame him--democracy killed Socrates, his beloved teacher. Democracy tends toward mediocrity. It doesn't have to, and there certainly have been great presidents in American history. But they tended to get elected in spite of democracy as much as because of it. Abraham Lincoln was elected in a four-way race. His victory was clearly a fluke. But if democracies produce mediocre leaders, this must be because the society that elected those leaders was afflicted with a mediocre populace. Ultimately, when the quality of a nations leaders begins to decline, this often indicates a decline and malaise on the part of its citizens. Righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34), not democracy.