He begins with a quote from Ronald Reagan: "A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy."

Yesterday I made a rather smart-alecky comment:"If donors are paying Senator Bill Frist $193,105 and the American tax-payers are paying him $175,700, it's not quite clear who he's working for." But really, that's not such a big difference. That's less than $20,000. And for many members of Congress, the difference is probably much less. So why do members of Congress by and large listen to special interest groups more than they listen to voters?

It's because special interest groups, unlike voters, have a clear

A: Your Congressman is working for special interests and elections are the reason.

We Americans are pretty proud of our democracy. While we didn't exactly invent the thing (that would the ancient Greeks and then the French philosophes), we are the first country in the modern world with an elected executive. We are so proud of our democracy that we've even tried to spread it to other countries, usually with mixed results. Still, a lot of what makes Americans patriotic about their country is their democracy, and we don't tend to be too critical of it.

Last Saturday I saw

When considering my career, I've often thought of who I'd like to be like, which public figure I'd like to emulate. The person I come up with most often is Larry Lessig. He's a public intellectual and also an activist. He's no Che Guevara (and neither am I), but he's used his intellectual prowess and energy to change the world in the domain of intellectual property rights. Creative Commons, his "some rights reserved" program, has introduced alternatives to copyright in dozens of nations around the world (including Bligoo). He is a well-respected author. He travels around giving talks.