#democracy

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war. ↗

— Norman Mailer

#common #communism #democracy #philosophy #radical

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it. ↗

— Mark Twain

#government #democracy

People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action. All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right. Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual. ↗

— Terry Goodkind

#human-rights #freedom

There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#government #oligarchy #plutocracy #democracy

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard. ↗

— William F. Buckley

#diversity #political-philosophy #democracy

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#democracy

Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#democracy

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#democracy #elections #government #greed #wall-street

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it. ↗

— Thucydides

#elections #fairness #losing #office #democracy

The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#democracy