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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (cyhmn)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2020-01-23

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-12-18:

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide." -- John Adams, second president of the United States of America. (1735-1826)

(submitted to the mailing list by Kelly Groves)

[I really hope Adams was mistaken.]

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There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
gale_storm: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] gale_storm at 11:15am on 2020-01-24
I hope you’re right, but I’m wondering how he came to that conclusion. (Wondering without reading The Federalist Papers.)
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mneme: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] mneme at 07:14pm on 2020-01-31
There never was any governmental system that didn't die in some fashion.

Democracy is one of the few that has a non-zero chance of committing suicide (others are usually murdered, sometimes literally).

There have been a fair number of democracies that were murdered rather than killing themselves in recent decades. We did it to Iran, frex.

The thing about still existent government is that they haven't ended yet, so they don't count in this statistic.
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