What we need is not “more” democracy, but better democracy—developing the arts of self-government closer to home.
Members of the meritocracy are well-aware of who they have left behind, and rather than assuming the personal obligation of old to those less fortunate, they elect instead to pay an impersonal middleman — government — to deal with the aftereffects of what Wendell Berry has called the “strip-mining” of talent from every town and hamlet in the world…