Dr. Weeks Comment: remember that our Founding Fathers created, not a democracy, but rather a republic. ( http://www.1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/repvsdem.htm)
____________
Aristophanes wrote:
“You have all the characteristics of a popular politician:
a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.”
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw
MARK TWAIN WROTE:
‘The average person should never watch while sausage is being made or a
law is being passed. ”
“Vote: the only commodity that is peddleable without a license.”
“I have said there that when Europe gets a ruler lodged in her gullet,
there is no help for it but a bloody revolution; here we go and get a
great big, emetical ballot, and heave it up.”
“The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles
artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very
capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or
two.”
“I think it is not wise for an emperor, or a king, or a president, to
come down into the boxing ring, so to speak, and lower the dignity of
his office by meddling in the small affairs of private citizens.”
“That’s the difference between governments and individuals. Governments
don’t care, individuals do.”
“The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely
food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.”
“To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad
government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.”
“The new political gospel: public office is private graft.”
” In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in
almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without
examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the
questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand
from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a
brass farthing.
“…one of the first achievements of the legislature was to institute a
ten-thousand-dollar agricultural fair to show off forty dollars’
worth of pumpkins in- however, the Territorial legislature was usually
spoken of as the “asylum”.”
“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning
religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the
monkey’s.”
“Yes, you are right – I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps
of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions.”
“History has tried hard to teach us that we can’t have good government
under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very
head of the government couldn’t be wise.”
and MY FAVORITE:
“The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private
affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless
trouble, through the rivalry of schools and creeds that are anxious to
obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our
people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the
cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the
helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to
feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to
prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine,
to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the
tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to
paradise.”
AND THIS:
Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance.
– H.L. Mencken