Sow Wind, Reap Trump

[donquixote99]

There was a time, believe it or not, when I used to think paleo-conservative was cool, and I hung in the online company of SF author and conservative commentator Jerry Pournelle. A repeatedly-expressed opinion of Jerry's was that we were 'sowing the wind' through lousy education, and would 'reap the whirlwind.'

I wonder if he expectrd that lover of the uneducated, Donald trump?

Anyway, Kathleen Parker's column from yesterday points out that Plato, also, expected this, and his warnings of the power of rhetoric over those not properly educated are relevant. Here's the first 2 paragraphs from that column, which certainly point up the value of a classical education:

Distilled, Aristotle thought rhetoric good for democracy, though his definition of "by the people" was closer to our Founding Fathers' intent of only certain people than to today's more-the-merrier model. Given this assumption of a narrow, educated, self-governing populace, Aristotle likely envisioned that those practicing rhetoric would be guided by accepted rules of argument and engagement, emphasizing ethos (trust and credibility), pathos (appropriate use of emotion) and logos (logical argument and facts).

Plato, who was Aristotle's mentor, thought otherwise -- that rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, in the wrong hands was dangerous and likely to be abused to appeal to people's base motives. He foresaw the unethical, dishonest uses that a skilled but immoral speaker could put his persuasive powers to, with credulous people eager to believe or buy whatever he was selling.

Which brings us unavoidably to Donald Trump, as if you hadn't guessed.

Access the rest here: http://www.arcamax.com/politics/mod/...rker/s-1823335