Seth David Radwell

“Those in the Moderate Enlightenment school of thought abjured democracy because they thought manipulators would inevitably prey on the uneducated common citizens.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“But the harsh reality that we have achieved quite unequal success and at times appalling failures in our quest to attain a true meritocracy does not in any way compromise the validity of the principle nor obviate the imperative to strive for its greater realization. The model of a meritocracy can still be a sacrosanct model, a goal to which all societies might strive. I cling to the ideal of a true meritocracy, not because it is the societal model most closely consistent with the French Radical Enlightenment thinkers (which it happens to be), but because I believe it is the only model that aspires to simultaneously establish a just society and preserve the American spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is also the model I would design if given the authority to do so while under Rawls’s compulsory “veil of ignorance.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation