"A political community is properly bounded when congruence and symmetry prevail between the “governors” and the “governed” and when an imagined community of fate connects its envoys directly to a common political project. Or not.
I read that in a paper by Professor David Held, of the London School of Economics, and it may, just possibly, be the wisest observation on politics that I have yet come across. But it also might not be. I can’t be sure because I haven’t got the first clue what the professor is going on about.
...
It is a frustrating feature of much academic political science that reasonably simple points are made in an impossibly complicated way — presumably to make them sound more profound. Straightforward distinctions between people who imprison dissidents and others who think that this is not a very good idea disappear in a mass of verbiage. And everything sounds reasonable. Or not."
So wrote Daniel Finkelstein in a really perceptive column in The Times today entitled "The LSE scandal is intellectual, not financial".
Unfortunately if you follow this link, you won't be allowed in without a subscription, because it's behind Rupert Murdoch's firewall. I don't actually object to paying for news, and contributing to Daniel's salary - I have a subscription. But it's a massive pity not to be able to share gems like this column. So I've torn the article out and shared some of it here.
