naivete, democracy and politics

The awesome intro to Mark Slouka's provocative essay in Harpers entitled "Democracy and Deference":

I blame my parents, which is trite but traditional. Six years after stepping onto the troubled shore of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s America they had a son and promptly began to fill his head with nonsense. In America, they taught me, talent and hard work were all; allegiance was automatically owed to no one; respect had to be earned. In America, the president worked for us, and knew it, and the house we allowed him to live in for a time—that great white outie of the Republic—was known as The People’s House.

Would that I had been suckled by wolves.

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