<story><title>Neil deGrasse Tyson: If I Were President...</title><url>http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2011/08/21/if-i-were-president</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>liber8</author><text>I find it amusing that almost every OP in this thread has cited the same quote as proof of NDT&apos;s arrogance, and then every response debates whether NDT is arrogant or voters stupid.  All of this misses the actual ignorance of NDT&apos;s letter.  The last half of that sentence is key:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;NDT falls into the same trap as nearly everyone since the framers of the constitution.  You&apos;re never going to elect the &lt;i&gt;right leaders&lt;/i&gt;.  They don&apos;t exist.  The reason our government was set up the way it was, and not the way it exists now, was precisely because the greatest group of political scientists to ever congregate in one place and time realized that people are inherently flawed, weak, and susceptible to the intoxicating effects of power.  &lt;i&gt;Because&lt;/i&gt; you&apos;ll never have the &quot;right leaders&quot;, you must structure the system to prevent abuse by the inevitable &quot;wrong leaders&quot; that will be elected.&lt;p&gt;NDT, like so many others, misses this point completely, even though nearly the entire letter pays lip service to the idea that the leaders are not the problem to focus on.  While he&apos;s right, the solution won&apos;t appear even if he &quot;enlightened the electorate&quot; to Tysonian heights.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brabram</author><text>&quot;The greatest group of political scientists to ever congregate in one place and time&quot; were probably the Athenians that, out of the same conclusions on human nature, concluded that if you want political equality for all, your political system must only allow small, non-renewable and other controlled mandates taken by randomly chosen citizens (yes, they have considered elected but have rejected it). The key point being that those randomly chosen people don&apos;t have the power, it the assembly of all the citizens that have the power.&lt;p&gt;And it&apos;s based on that that they have created the first (and only, for some people) democratic system ever. Ironically, the person that have created our current democratic system knew exactly this Athenian system but explicitly rejected it because it was ... democracy, and that is was a system were the people really has the power. It&apos;s only since Tocqueville has started to call it democracy that we think about it has democratic, Tocqueville who explicitly said that he wasn&apos;t afraid of election because people would vote what we told them to vote, something impossible in the Athenian system.</text></comment>
<story><title>Neil deGrasse Tyson: If I Were President...</title><url>http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2011/08/21/if-i-were-president</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>liber8</author><text>I find it amusing that almost every OP in this thread has cited the same quote as proof of NDT&apos;s arrogance, and then every response debates whether NDT is arrogant or voters stupid.  All of this misses the actual ignorance of NDT&apos;s letter.  The last half of that sentence is key:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;NDT falls into the same trap as nearly everyone since the framers of the constitution.  You&apos;re never going to elect the &lt;i&gt;right leaders&lt;/i&gt;.  They don&apos;t exist.  The reason our government was set up the way it was, and not the way it exists now, was precisely because the greatest group of political scientists to ever congregate in one place and time realized that people are inherently flawed, weak, and susceptible to the intoxicating effects of power.  &lt;i&gt;Because&lt;/i&gt; you&apos;ll never have the &quot;right leaders&quot;, you must structure the system to prevent abuse by the inevitable &quot;wrong leaders&quot; that will be elected.&lt;p&gt;NDT, like so many others, misses this point completely, even though nearly the entire letter pays lip service to the idea that the leaders are not the problem to focus on.  While he&apos;s right, the solution won&apos;t appear even if he &quot;enlightened the electorate&quot; to Tysonian heights.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bloaf</author><text>Certainly there are no perfect leaders, but if our government&apos;s structure is so perfect, then why does it matter which people are involved at all?  The point is that who we elect matters, because if it didn&apos;t, there would be no point in electing anyone.&lt;p&gt;The real point I believe is closer to George Bernard Shaw&apos;s words &quot;Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.&quot;  Having a good system is irrelevant if no one bothers to implement it, or if the electorate seeks to undermine it.</text></comment>