In 2020, Abraham Lincoln Will Be Controversial

[Amy L.]

Thank you for sharing Gingrich's baffling editorial, Gene.

It hurts to disagree with almost every sentence in the editorial.
Down is up, and up is down.

The 'importance' of not having expertise makes me think of G.K. Chesterton's (1909) The Twelve Men
although Chesterton actually makes a case for his idea - that a layman will serve justice on a jury better than an expert.

This logic DOES NOT APPLY TO A LEGISLATOR OR THOSE WHO IMPLEMENT THE LAW.

"The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards socialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, ... specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge."
...
"Now, one of these four or five paradoxes which should be taught to every infant prattling at his mother’s knee is the following: That the more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it. The Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones."