Abstract
Most lovers of truth find democratic elections rather hard to stomach. So many words, so much sound, so much fury—so little effort to improve our understanding of who we are and where we stand in the world. Periodic elections ensure that democracy remains, among other things, “an aristocracy of orators,” since they hand the greatest powers to those who have mastered—or purchased—the arts of persuasion rather than to those who make the best arguments.¹ They provide an extraordinarily exciting spectacle for political junkies and journalists, the type of people whom Plato takes pleasure in deriding as “lovers