Experience has shown that outspoken skepticism of political methods and means can improve one s personal relationships. Such skepticism can also have a wholesome influence on his peers to exercise the essential skepticism that is required to keep politics in check and, in the limit, eventually to supersede it with ordinary and normal volitional human activity. But it also shows that the political establishment is virtually impervious to criticism from individuals. To communicate one s disdain for politics to newspaper editors, columnists, academics and politicians is a highly challenging enterprise. This is true no matter the dignity or eloquence of the expression and regardless of the correspondent s voter registration status.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Democracy is also a form of worship. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds. A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency.