Kakistocracy... A Word You Should Know

"Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens (from the Greek kakistos "worst.")

I heard the word over dinner the other night. It probably describes the current state of the union better than any single term I know of. Its first known appearance was in 1829 in The Misfortunes of Elphin, written by the English satirical writer Thomas Love Peacock. The American poet James Russell Lowell wrote in a letter in 1876: "Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?"

It's certainly a word that should enter our vocabularies and our political discourse, perhaps find its rightful place on the SAT and be scrawled on the walls of colleges and public restrooms.
There's a website getyourkidtovote.com that encourages parents to send kakistocracy tee shirts to their college age kids to remind them and their classmates of the stakes in this election and to encourage them to vote.

I hope the shirts will have a very short shelf life. We wouldn't want to be wearing them for the next four years.

Comments

[jeanrenoir]

Let's try a pun on kakistocracy by adding a reminder of Robert Musil's wonderful designation of the Austro-Hungerian Empire in its final decadence as "Kakania," ie, the land of excrement. This is what the Republican slime machine has hurled at a willing and hungry American mob ever since George C. Wallace taught them how, by winning the Michigan primary in '68 by appealing to the racism and resentment of liberal elites and "pointy-headed intellectuals" among the "hard-working, you know, WHITE" auto-workers who became the prototypes for the Silent Majority and Reagan Democrats whose know-nothing follies have swung every national election for conservatives (certainly including Bill Clinton) for the past forty years.

[tbone99]

is that anythig like a CaCaocrocy?

[bernusdellus]

Also see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI