The Patriot Post — Voice of Essential Liberty

Jon Roland in Austin, Texas
Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 1:04 PM

As I have often said, a political system may be characterized by the kinds of people it elevates to positions of authority.

Unfortunately, we have erected a system that tends to elevate narcissists and sociopaths. The problem is not that "leftists" tend to mental pathology, because so can "rightists". The problem is the system that promotes such people, and, also unfortunately, that is any system that uses popular elections. It was to avoid elevating such persons to the position of president that the Framers adopted the electoral college system, but that has been subverted by using popular election to select slates of anonymous electors pledged to a candidate. We need to move to a different method, and that method is called "sortition", which involves random selection at various phases. Do a web search on the term. The Venetians used it for 529 years to select their chief executive officer, called a Doge. A similar system could be used to select members of Congress and judges.

Sometimes the best reforms are not something new but something old that has been proved to work.

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