The late Tom Bethell used to point out in his American Spectator columns how denizens of Washington DC—people we now regard as the shock troops of the administrative state—regarded elections as a nuisance, because the results could interfere with their plans to extend expert control over everyone and everything (though usually not for long). Well, the New York Times has sort of come around the this position, yesterday offering this story:

They thought better of this headline, apparently because it was too candid about the progressive view that the people—the ones who live south of Richmond anyway—are unfit actually to govern themselves. Within a few hours the Times changed it as follows:

The gist of the article is that the wrong people run and are elected to office. The proposed remedy? Choose our government officials by lottery! Gee—why didn’t some ancient writer not think of that? Like, maybe Aristotle, in The Politics, Book IV, 1294be.

On the other hand, it is nice to see the Times start to come around to William F. Buckley Jrs point view that he’d rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston telephone directory than the faculty of Harvard. If the Times keeps this up, eventually they might come around to the obvious corollary, which is that it would be better to be educated by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone directory than the faculty of Harvard.