Thank you for another contribution that just makes me want to lie under a tree on a warm rainy day and think deep thoughts.

I will read it again sometime tomorrow and relate what I think.  :)

P.S.  It looks like the act of cutting and pasting has broken the link in your article, but I know that it goes to http://people.bakersfield.c...

I mostly agree with the view that elections, particularly at the presidential level, have become rites of bestowal and ordination rather than a fully informed exercise of the electorate.  Worse, elites have succeeded in cultivating base constituencies for the respective parties that are convinced that they are fully informed.

Almost everybody here, regardless of their political ideas, would agree that the best qualified candidates get pushed into the shadows by the media and party elites.  They are pushed aside in favor of symbols, theatrically crafted in pageant-like fashion and carefully tuned for the maximum aesthetic and visceral appeal, appearing committed to a set of ideas but in fact not so committed as to have the fortitude to deviate from the behests of the elites.

What made 2008 so noteworthy was how obvious the aesthetic fine-tuning process was.  Sarah Palin was, in my opinion, a purely manufactured symbol for a skillfully made base constituency, and there are quite a few people who believe the same about Barack Obama.

What convinced me that Sarah Palin, whom I believe is a truly good if not deeply convicted person, was manufactured, was the candor that came forth after McCain's election defeat.  Times of candor are usually sources of more truth than usual, yet I did not see in any of her candor that she was truly the person that the manufactured base wanted, or the other manufactured base feared.  Stated simply, a fanatic, if she were one, would have revealed her fanaticism in her post-defeat candor.  She did not.

I also believe, as you seem to believe, that it has been a long time since we have had Washington leadership with any true interest in the good of all Americans.  For the last four election cycles, all we have heard about is "the base, the base, the party base."  And indeed, for the last four election cycles at least, Washington has exclusively served the base, and the rest of the nation got stiffed.

The question that naturally comes to mind under this theory is why would Washington be willing to serve anybody other than themselves?  Washington's willingness to serve the base makes sense if the base has been manufactured by deceit and led into believing that Washington is serving them when in reality, they are willingly doing the bidding of Washington.

On your last section on a neutral state and a pluralistic society, I would slightly refine the argument against a formal state alignment with a specific ideal of public good, since the argument in favor of a neutral state is itself an assertion of a definition of public good, though one with which I fervently agree.

The refinement, I think, is that the sort of definition of "public good" with which the state should avoid favoring are definitions that are built upon a priori assertions that their constituencies are unwilling to reconsider, rather than public good discovered by that uncommon art of dispassionate philosophical inquiry.

State alignment with religion is one of the most well-known examples of such unhealthy alignments, but it isn't the only one.  The common ingredient is a foundation of assertions and premises held unquestionable by the constituency under examination.

In philosophy, as you know, almost nothing is unquestionable.  It seems axiomatic to me that the greatest public good is found not in any one foundation of stipulations, but in the willingness to reconsider absolutely anything, if that is what is needed to really seek the truth.

By the way, I love sitting under this tree.  :)