Stalin Didn’t Kill Socrates

Just because something is bad, doesn’t mean that all other bad things are associated with it. Or to put it another way, Hitler did not invent cancer. And yet when there is a bad thing, especially a bad thing we don’t fully understand, we have a tendency to associate all sorts of other bad things with it.

Take gerrymandering, for instance. Gerrymandering is the process by which state legislatures draw state and congressional district lines, in order to maximize partisan gain. It is commonly ass...