{"id":3982,"date":"2019-06-10T16:09:56","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T20:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=3982"},"modified":"2019-06-26T15:48:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T19:48:25","slug":"congress-tech-policy-knowledge-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/congress-tech-policy-knowledge-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress\u2019 tech policy knowledge gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Suppose you were an idiot,\u201d Mark Twain once quipped, \u201cand suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.\u201d Like Twain, libertarians tend not to think highly of elected officials. We view them as corrupt, in cahoots with interest groups, and obsessed with politicking instead of\u00a0governing.<\/p>\n

And, as Twain quipped, dumb. Oh, so, dumb. Who can forget Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.)\u00a0fretting aloud<\/a>\u00a0that an island might tip over if too many soldiers are stationed on one side of it? And how about Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who freaked people out by\u00a0claiming<\/a>\u00a0al Qaeda had camps near the U.S.-Mexico border? Does a week go by without one of the 535 members of our national legislature popping off inanely? Probably\u00a0not.<\/p>\n

Indeed, as Twain\u2019s quote indicated, Congress never has been filled with Solons, to say nothing of\u00a0Erasmuses<\/a>. Even our much revered Founders made some seriously wrongheaded decisions. (See the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, to cite only one example among\u00a0many.)<\/p>\n

But stupidity in our national legislature is a feature of representative democracy….(Read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Suppose you were an idiot,\u201d Mark Twain once quipped, \u201cand suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.\u201d Like Twain, libertarians tend not to think highly of elected officials. We view them as corrupt, in cahoots with interest groups, and obsessed with politicking instead of\u00a0governing. And, as Twain quipped, dumb. Oh, so, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[160,185],"tags":[219],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-government-oversight","tag-cato-unbound"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-12e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3987,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions\/3987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}