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Sea Sentry's avatar

In an increasingly complex world, an ideal leader for the United States would be conversant if not fluent in such subjects as history, finance and the sciences. And today's exigencies call for no less. Instead we get career politicians, eloquent but vapid lawyers with good hair, and others generally unsuited to such a demanding job.

How do we upgrade the caliber of our leaders? I invite all to weigh in, but I would start with this: (1) stricter and much reduced limits on campaign financing, (2) term limits for the House and Senate, (3) maximum transparency for everything related to the operation of our government (absent compelling intelligence requirements for secrecy) and (4) a conflicts of interest firewall between politicians, staff and donors that extends for years and reduces the pay to play conflicts that characterize our very corrupt system today.

I'm afraid it goes without saying that our elected officials will be opposed to all of the above. What does that tell us?

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KAM's avatar

HOW do we bring back bourgeois virtues? (And even better, Christian virtues?)

The answer is simple, but not easy. Virtues are a function of our ends, of our vision of the good life. That's how we define them, practically. They are necessary means to those ends, to that vision.

And so we recover the virtues by making sure that our ends in life are the right ones.

Why are our leaders so poor, so inferior to previous eras?

Because they—and we—love wrongly. It's not that we love completely worthless things. It's that we love lesser things more than we should. We do not love the Highest and Best as highest and best.

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