My brilliant young colleague Bryan Caplan — now a serious presence in the blogosphere, at EconLog – recently penned a post that reflects much of his professional research. The title of this post is wonderfully descriptive of its content: "Rule By Fools Is the Rule."
Bryan’s post reminds me of one of the many insights offered by Will Durant. This one is from page 1,031 of his 1950 book The Age of Faith:
There are few things in the world so unpopular as truth, and the backbone of men and states is a concatenation of romance.
Very sad; very true.