Fred saves the country...

From Fred on Everything:

To begin, we have much too much democracy. We need to discourage people from voting. In fact, the gravest obstacle to the restoration of civilization in North America is universal suffrage. Letting everybody vote makes no sense. Obviously they are no good at it. The whole idea smacks of the fumble-witted idealism of a high-school Marxist society.

At least eighty percent of the electorate lives in blank medieval darkness regarding any matter of public policy or history. They might as well vote on the incisions needed in cardiac surgery as try to govern themselves. Poll after poll shows that even graduates of America’s pathetic Halloween universities (where the young disguised as students are hornswoggled by mountebanks disguised as professors), which means most of the universities, do not know who fought in WWI, or within a century when the Civil War took place, or who Galileo was. These are the better informed. The rest barely know what century they live in.

Unalloyed ignorance is not an obvious qualification for governing, despite all appearances.

Fred goes on to opine that only foreign correspondants should be allowed to run for the presidency, due to their more complete view of the world. He had me until then. There are about two foreign correspondants that are qualified: Fred himself, and P.J. O'Rourke. (Is Mr. O'Rourke still alive?) America needs to keep itself to home a bit more, perhaps fixing the leaky roof and oiling that front door hinge that always squeaks, before jaunting off to save the world.

Maybe he was kidding...