Democracy

"Liberalism has the idea that democracy is its invention, that liberalism had to come about for democracy to exist... Democracy is old, very old; it is an attitude of man… Democracy is an imminent attitude, but one that has always been in crisis with authoritarianism. So democracy can never be considered to be finished or perfect, the end of history does not exist, historical steps exist. Maybe today conditions are being created--thanks to digital mass-communication—that are going to foreshadow a kind of democracy that today we cannot imagine."

"Bourgeois democracy: I defend it and I criticise it. What do I criticise? That it promises a degree of equality that it does not fulfill in practice.. If democracy has to represent the majority, as a symbol I understand that those who have the highest responsibilities should live as the majority does, not the minority. We have become feudal and the monarchy has come back in a different form.Bold text Presidents—the red carpet, those who play cornets, vassals on the bridge, all this paraphernalia which is not republican, because republics came into the world to reaffirm this: that men are basically equal."

"The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion."

"Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day."

"Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty over their nation, while in reality the sovereignty at all times resides in and is exercised by other, sometimes irresponsible and secret forces."

"In A Place Among The Nations, I drew a distinction between two kinds of peace: that between democracies and that between democracies and dictatorships. With few exceptions, democracies tend toward peace. You don't get reelected if you continually start wars and send your sons and daughters to die on foreign battlefields. Dictatorships, on the other hand, get to power by practicing aggression against their own people. So what will prevent them from practicing aggression against their neighbors?"

"Democratic institutions are quarantine mechanisms for that old pestilence, tyrannic lust. As such they are very useful and very boring."

"The democratic idea proceeds toward the fabrication of a human type fit for slavery in the most delicate sense of the word. Every democracy is simultaneously an involuntary institution for the breeding of tyrants in every sense of the word, even in the spiritual sense."

"America is the world’s oldest constitutional democracy; that means we’re going to stand up for democracy -- it’s a part of who we are. And we do this not only because we think it’s right, but because it’s been proven to be the most stable and successful form of government. In recent decades, many Asian nations have shown that different nations can realize the promise of self-government in their own way; they have their own path. But we must recognize that democracies don’t stop just with elections; they also depend on strong institutions and a vibrant civil society, and open political space, and tolerance of people who are different than you. We have to create an environment where the rights of every citizen, regardless of race or gender, or religion or sexual orientation are not only protected, but respected."

"Democracy will win -- because a government’s legitimacy can only come from citizens; because in this age of information and empowerment, people want more control over their lives, not less; and because, more than any other form of government ever devised, only democracy, rooted in the sanctity of the individual, can deliver real progress."

"[W]hat I want to focus on tonight [is the] state of our democracy. Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders argued. They quarreled. Eventually they compromised. They expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity - the idea that for all our outward differences, we're all in this together; that we rise or fall as one."

"Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear. So, just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are. [...] Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted. All of us, regardless of party, should be throwing ourselves into the task of rebuilding our democratic institutions. When voting rates in America are some of the lowest among advanced democracies, we should be making it easier, not harder, to vote. When trust in our institutions is low, we should reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics, and insist on the principles of transparency and ethics in public service. When Congress is dysfunctional, we should draw our congressional districts to encourage politicians to cater to common sense and not rigid extremes. But remember, none of this happens on its own. All of this depends on our participation; on each of us accepting the responsibility of citizenship, regardless of which way the pendulum of power happens to be swinging. [...] It falls to each of us to be those those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy; to embrace the joyous task we've been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we, in fact, all share the same proud title, the most important office in a democracy: Citizen. Citizen. So, you see, that's what our democracy demands. It needs you. Not just when there's an election, not just when your own narrow interest is at stake, but over the full span of a lifetime."

"Our democracy is not the buildings, not the monuments. It's you being willing to work to make things better and being willing to listen to each other and argue with each other and come together and knock on doors and make phone calls and treat people with respect."

"As I’ve said many times before, true democracy is a project that’s much bigger than any one of us. It’s bigger than any one person, any one president, any one government. It’s a job for all of us. It requires everyday sustained effort from all of us — the work of perfecting our union is never finished. We look forward to joining you in that effort as fellow citizens."

"When words stop meaning anything, when truth doesn’t matter, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can’t work."

"But when there’s a vacuum in our democracy, when we don’t vote, when we take our basic rights and freedoms for granted, when we turn away and stop paying attention and stop engaging and stop believing and look for the newest diversion, the electronic versions of bread and circuses, then other voices fill the void. A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment takes hold. [...] The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference. The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism – a cynicism that’s led too many people to turn away from politics and stay home on election day. [...] So if you don’t like what’s going on right now – and you shouldn’t – do not complain. Don’t hashtag. Don’t get anxious. Don’t retreat. Don’t binge on whatever it is you’re bingeing on. Don’t lose yourself in ironic detachment. Don’t put your head in the sand. Don’t boo. Vote. You’ve got to vote."

"Democracy is a garden that has to be tended."

"Today we are witnessing the triumph of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure."

"In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different."

"Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible... If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened... And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past... To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies...to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself... That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness..."

"[D]emocracy is something that if you're going to be really up-to-date, you just can't do without–like a compact-disc player."

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadows about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us."

"Much popular belief about the war is illusion. Take, for example, the view that the war represented the triumph of democracy over tyranny. In reality democracy was narrowly confined in 1939 - to Britain, France, the United States, and a handful of smaller European and British Commonwealth states - and was even more restricted once the conflict got under way. Far from being a war fought by a democratic world to bring errant dictators to heel, the war was about the very survival of democracy in its besieged heartlands. Victory in 1945 made democracy more secure in western Europe, America and the British Dominions, but outside these regions this form of government has had at best a chequered career in the half-century since the defeat of the Axis."

"When citizens are relatively equal, politics has tended to be fairly democratic. When a few individuals hold enormous amounts of wealth, democracy suffers. The reason for this pattern is simple. Through campaign contributions, lobbying, influence over public discourse, and other means, wealth can be translated into political power. When wealth is highly concentrated—that is, when a few individuals have enormous amounts of money—political power tends to be highly concentrated, too. The wealthy few tend to rule. Average citizens lose political power. Democracy declines."

"Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U.S. government policy. ... Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power."

"What's happened recently in Pakistan, India and Kuwait only goes to show that it's futile to imitate Western democracy. They've ended up exactly where they started."

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case."

"The practice of democracy has the notorious tendency to become paradoxical. It begins in the name of the "demos" but goes on to construct the demos rather narrowly; oftentimes, sections of the population manage to ensconce themselves as "the people", they count as the public, their ideas masquerade as the people's ideas. This inevitably produces a layered citizenry. Democracy also starts off by investing agency in the individuals but sooner or later divests them of that agency as interference by the ignorant. Democracy inspires ideas of rights but allows the taming of rights for purposes of order. In short, it is these tensions between the elite and the masses, between active citizens and obedient citizens, between rights and order, that mark the life of democracies. This is not merely about the distance between theory and practice, between concept and its concrete life. It is about imagining that the course of democracy is predetermined. Democratic politics needs to be carved out with effort, rather than believing that adopting formal democracy automatically ensures vibrant democratic practice."

"Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth."

"Democracy is only a continually shifting aristocracy of money, impudence, animal energy and cunning, in which the best grub gets the best of the carrion; and the level to which it tends to bring all things is not a mountain tableland, as its promoters would have their victims think, but the unwholesome platitude of the fen and the morass, of which black envy would enjoy the malaria as long as all others share it."

"In 1975 just 46 countries were considered to be electoral democracies; forty years later, according to The Global State of Democracy report 2017, the number had risen to 132, accounting for 68% of nations. The bulk of the increase occurred after 1989 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and what was to be the beginning of the global protest movement. While staging general elections every five years or so is an important step away from the autocratic alternative, unless democratic values are embraced and introduced, true democracy remains little more than a slogan, social injustice and suppression in various forms continue and concentrations of power persist. Although the number of electoral democracies continues to increase, throughout the world democracy is in crisis; governments have become increasingly partisan...Politicians are viewed...as ambitious, ideologically compromised men and women with little concern for the majority, who make policy based on self-interest..."

"Democracy has been hijacked by ‘the economy’ – twinned with capitalism and the ‘free market’, and corrupted thereby. Democracy is, or should be, a living organism, an evolving form that sets the parameters within which society functions, based on principles that are rooted in and cultivate expressions of unity and love. ...Within the evolving democratic environment the role of politicians as co-workers, as collaborators for the common good, becomes ever more important. They need to engage with activists, listen – not to the loudest flag-waving faction, not just to their own supporters, but to the broad consensus, and respond, and not, as has historically been the case, reluctantly and over decades, but swiftly and whole-heartedly."

"Democratic forms need to change, to be allowed to evolve – to be re-imagined. Crucially democracy needs to be unshackled from economics and the socio-economic system reexamined in light of the growing demands for social justice, environmental action and freedom. The principle of sharing is a core democratic ideal that, if incorporated into all areas of life, would allow democratic values to be made manifest: students sharing in the organization of schools and the design of curricula; employees sharing in the management and standards of businesses; sharing animating the socio-economic systems under which we all live and coloring geo-political decisions. Sharing, responsibility and participation are interrelated; they sit together and reinforce one another. An unstoppable movement of change is being created by the growing inculcation and expression of these democratic principles; a momentum that may just be strong enough to save the planet and usher in a new and just way of living."

"We have really put the duh in democracy, creating a perverse equality that entitles everyone to speak to every issue, regardless of how much they know about it."

"Many of our moral and political policies are designed to preempt what we know to be the worst features of human nature. The checks and balances in a democracy, for instance, were invented in explicit recognition of the fact that human leaders will always be tempted to arrogate power to themselves. Likewise, our sensitivity to racism comes from an awareness that groups of humans, left to their own devices, are apt to discriminate and oppress other groups, often in ugly ways. History also tells us that a desire to enforce dogma and suppress heretics is a recurring human weakness, one that has led to recurring waves of gruesome oppression and violence. A recognition that there is a bit of Torquemada in everyone should make us wary of any attempt to enforce a consensus or demonize those who challenge it."

"A charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike."

"Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise?—that it has democratic origin is evident."

"One of the insidious facts about totalitarianism is its seeming "efficiency." …Democracy — with all of its inefficiency — is still the best system we have so far for enhancing the prospects of our mutual survival."

"Money, money, always money — that is the essence of democracy. Democracy is more expensive than monarchy; it is incompatible with liberty."

"Without promoting fraternity, our democracy cannot survive. And the dangerous demonisation of minorities has to be countered, as it is this hate which gets transformed into intense violence."

"The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket."

"It is much to be feared that the last expression of democracy may be a social state with a degenerate populace having no other aim than to indulge in the ignoble appetites of the vulgar."

"What is the story of democracy in our time? Not long ago the Western formula of democracy and free markets seemed unassailable. When the Cold War ended in 1989, the new “great game” played by diplomats, politicians, and intellectuals alike became to promote and report on the further spread of democracy about the globe. The tendency was to assume that democracy was working well still at home. The war on terror and the financial crisis have more recently framed those assumptions in a less comfortable light. By the time of the uprisings that swept across the Arab world in 2011, the dimming status of the liberal democratic formula was clear. Whatever was being demanded on the streets of Cairo it was not Western-style liberal democracy. Nor was a liberal democratic form of government any longer something that could be “built” on behalf of these nations, as the United States had attempted in the previous decade in Iraq. In the aftermath of 2011, as Syria imploded and Islamic State dug in its bloodied claws, the former call to democratic arms of the pundits in Washington was replaced by a faint piccolo whistling about “democracy in retreat.” From the point of view of the West it was not long before the high drama of the Arab Spring was drowned out by a pervasive and growing cacophony of discontent at home. The former narrative of democracy’s historical spread has now been firmly replaced by one of its crisis and decline. “Never has there been such a thin line between a positive outlook for democracy and the chance that it might go off the rails,” wrote the French historian Pierre Rosanvallon in 2008. “What’s gone wrong with democracy?” asked London’s The Economist a few years later in 2014. Neither were looking across the Mediterranean to Tunisia or Algeria, but home to the disaffected banlieus of Paris, to the US Congress and the European Union. The concerns over 4 million British voters, who in 2016 signed a petition demanding repeal of the country’s recent referendum on “Brexit,” or of those dumbfounded by the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House later the same year, revealed that sense of anxiety to be spreading. “Democracy has survived the twentieth century by the skin of its teeth,” observed Arthur Schlesinger Jr. presciently at the end of the millennium. “It will not enjoy a free ride through the century to come.” In recent years Western democracy has indeed come under threat; the basic right of citizens to habeas corpus has been pared back after centuries of struggle to flesh it out. Distrust in politics has grown. Foreign government have been shown to have interfered in national elections. Civil liberties, including the right to privacy in the home, have been openly infringed. The growing power of political lobbies has given moneyed interests undue influence over policymaking, and has endowed a new class of politician with the ability not only to fundamentally misunderstand their constituents but to be rewarded for this. Socioeconomic inequality, which for much of the postwar era had been warded off by the welfare state, has returned."

"Democracy is fragile. You have to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution, every story. You must know how dangerous it is to suffer even the tiniest cut. This is why I say to us all: we must hold the line."

"We should stop pretending that the US is a functioning democracy; Citizens United proves we are not—when the courts grant citizenship powers to corporations, money and greed become the nation’s lifeblood, not the will of the people. The American people have allowed themselves to be dumbed down to the point that their opinions are easily manipulated by corporate-owned and controlled mainstream media. The inability to function as a viable component of government has resulted in the “people” fracturing into competing ideological and socio-economic fiefdoms. American democracy is little more than feudalistic plutocracy. It’s an unsustainable model doomed to collapse in on itself."

"Democracy has, broadly, shifted from a flat-rate one-person-one-vote model to a corporate, buy-as-many-votes-as-you-like model."

"Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority."

"But Lincoln also understood that after such a decision, a democracy should seek peace through a new unity. For a democracy can keep alive only if the settlement of old difficulties clears the ground and transfers energies to face new responsibilities. Never can it have as much ability and purpose as it needs in that striving; the end of battle does not end the infinity of those needs. That is why Lincoln—commander of a people as well as of an army—asked that his battle end "with malice toward none, with charity for all.""

"Citizens of a Jeffersonian democracy can be as religious or irreligious as they please as long as they are not “fanatical.” That is, they must abandon or modify opinion on matters of ultimate importance, the opinions that may hitherto have given sense and point to their lives, if these opinions entail public actions that cannot be justified to most of their fellow citizens."

"Human freedom and true democracy are identical."