Self-Election and the Elite

The idea—I think it’s fairly common—that a profession of liberal or social democratic politics implies a profession of faith in the innate and prior goodness of human nature strikes me as a beggarly question. And so does its obverse, that a profound skepticism about the loveliness of human nature compels a conservative political faith. Nonetheless, the ideas carry polemical weight: applying one or the other, one can make one’s opponent seem naive and oneself realistic, or ones...