Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.
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The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control -- indoctrination, we might say -- exercised through the mass media.
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It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
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Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.
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It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny their figure deformity.
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It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
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There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies against despots -- suspicion.
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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
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As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century.
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Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
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This is a very positive day for the Iraqi people and as well for world peace, ... Democracies are peaceful countries.
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The shortest books: 1) A Guide to Arab Democracies; 2) Everything Men Know About Women; 3) The Amish Phone Book
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Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
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