Peyton and I start from the first heading of an article in which I first tried to summarise the attractions of random selection or 'sortition' as a means by which we might heal our beleaguered democracies. We go on to discuss an idea of mine which I've begun writing on which is this. The thing we're most proud of about democracy is its egalitarian nature. But a democracy will founder if those within it are not infused with a sense of their own duties to do the right thing. Yet in establishing democracy through elections the norms of democracy ultimately gravitate towards whatever is most effective at securing votes. This leads to a remarkable illustration of these principles on Sept 24 in 2001 when a former captain of the Australian Rugby League team gave his first political interview. As you'll see, he took his own sense of what he was and was not prepared to do into the interview. What happened next made him a minor legend of Australian politics. Right now in Ohio there's someone who feels just as he did, but it's led him to make some different choices.
