{"id":43679,"date":"2020-09-10T01:00:58","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T05:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43679"},"modified":"2020-09-09T09:05:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T13:05:10","slug":"qotd-the-power-and-wisdom-of-the-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/09\/10\/qotd-the-power-and-wisdom-of-the-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The power and wisdom of the voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>According to American theory, all power is in the hands of the plain people, and according to American legend they always exercise it wisely. The theory, of course, is almost as absurd as the legend. The plain people, in fact, can only exert their power through agents, and in the election of those agents they seldom face a clear choice between a good candidate and a bad one, or a wise idea and a foolish one. In the normal case both candidates are frauds and both ideas are idiotic.<\/p>\n<p>H.L. Mencken, <em>Minority Report<\/em>, 1956.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to American theory, all power is in the hands of the plain people, and according to American legend they always exercise it wisely. The theory, of course, is almost as absurd as the legend. The plain people, in fact, can only exert their power through agents, and in the election of those agents they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41,13],"tags":[188,591],"class_list":["post-43679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-electionwatch","tag-hlmencken"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bmv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60164,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43679\/revisions\/60164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}