Perhaps I did not convey my thoughts clearly in my earlier posts. So, let me try again.
While Bogle's idea of index investing is sound, in that it keeps the investor diversified and prevents him from chasing past performance which is often not fruitful, Bogle does not control these indices. Not the Barclay bond index, not even the S&P 500 index that his pioneered fund was based on.
I am not an indexer, but let me ask this. Should an indexing investor allow himself to question if an index is sound? Remember that these indices are created by committees, who often "buy high/sell low". This is often the case with the S&P, as they vote in recent high-flying companies and throw out trailing companies. Is that not an example of performance chasing? Many investors think of these indices as god-sent, and do not know that they are created by committees, who are picking stocks for all indexing investors to buy or sell in lock steps. Good thing not everybody is an indexer, because that lock-step investing would lead to bubbles and crashes far worse than any that we have seen.
In the case of Bogle's opinion of the bond index, perhaps the index has been "wrong" all along, as he said. That's what I like to know.