Back in 2010 at the New Criterion, the late Kenneth Minogue warned:
My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.
Stein’s Law posits that “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” As Mark Steyn writes today, “The Base Gets Itself a New Elite:”
As I’ve been saying for four years in a Trump context, it’s easier for the base to get itself a new elite than for the elite to get itself a new base. Three years ago the Brexit referendum revealed that Parliament and the people had become misaligned: If over half the people support a policy that no “mainstream” party supports, then in what sense are those parties mainstream?
Speaking of which:
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
h/t ED