Democracy Is Fragile Quotes

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.

The future of the world is in my classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad... Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy. I must never forget these same young people could be the thieves and murderers of the future. Only a teacher? Thank God I have a calling to the greatest profession of all! I must be vigilant every day, lest I lose one fragile opportunity to improve tomorrow.

The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phony and fragile as East Germany did thirty years ago.

My father once told me that American democracy is a people’s democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work.

Yesterday's assault on the Capitol was an attack on multiracial American democracy, a fragile experiment younger than most US senators. (1/7/2021)

narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.

we are far more likely to underestimate the fragility of democracy than we are to become unnecessarily alarmist about it.

Within the dream of prosperity and tolerance, nothing remained of fragile democracy but the illusory right to talk shit.

Americans like to think that we're invulnerable, but we are not. Our systems are not. Our democracy may be resilient, but it is also fragile. And that fragility is what is at stake now.

Democracy “Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon? You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it. The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it. It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy. It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.” —Allen Drury, Stanford University (age 19)

As our technological capacities continue to increase and our environment becomes ever more fragile and endangered, we find that changes to the Earth that used to take ten thousand years now take a fraction of that.

In what became known as the decade of lies, truth and trust were falling victim to fear, racism, and hatred. Virginia found herself in a ringside seat as the increasingly fragile ideal of democracy failed to find champions with alternative answers

May 27, 1941 Sunday we encountered specimens of the rarely appearing yellow lady's slipper. This orchis is fragilely beautiful. One tends to think of it almost as a phenomenon, without any roots or place in the natural world. And yet it, too, has had its tough old ancestors which have eluded fires and drought and freezes to pass on in this lovely form the boon of existence. If a plant so delicately lovely can at the same time be so toughly persistent and resistant to all natural enemies, can we doubt that hopes for a better an more rational world may not also withstand all assaults, be bequeathed from generation to generation, and come ultimately to flower? President Roosevelt says he has not lost faith in democracy; nor have I lost faith in the transcendent potentialities of LIFE itself. One has but to look about him to become almost wildly imbued with something of the massive, surging vitality of the earth.

Needless to say, this fragile experiment began by taking for granted the ugly conquest of Amerindians and Mexicans, the exclusion of women, the subordination of European working-class men and the closeting of homosexuals. These realities made many of the words of the revolutionary Declaration of Independence ring a bit hollow. yet the enslavement of Africans -- over 20 percent of the population -- served as the linchpin of American democracy; that is, the much-heralded stability and continuity of American democracy was predicated upon black oppression and degradation. Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white -- they would be only Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.

Trump loyalists quickly began trying to tear down Hutchinson’s credibility. Yet even as some contradicted specific elements in her testimony, she had painted a familiar portrait of Trump, one that dozens of people who worked for his company, political campaigns, and government tried masking over four decades: a narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.

I mean, we assumed that our system was the best. And that had another side effect, which was that, you know, for us, democracy became a little bit like running water, you know? It was just the thing that came out of the tap, and you don't have to do anything in order to get it. And now it turns out that it's not really like that - that, you know, it's not water coming from the tap. It's water from a well, and, you know, everybody has to go and get it. That's a better metaphor. Democracy doesn't work - it becomes fragile and it fails - if there's no participation.

The world has enjoyed a notably long period marked by relative peace and security. Nevertheless, the forecasts of increasing fragile states, mounting conflicts born of natural resource scarcity, and the rising risk in the incidence of terrorism around the world all point to an increasingly politically volatile world, one that is worsened by economic uncertainty. The Horizon 2025: Creative Destruction in the Aid Industry report cautions that within the next decade more than 80 percent of the world’s population will live in fragile states, susceptible to civil wars that could spill into cross-border conflicts.4 The US National Intelligence Council has published a similarly dire forecast of more clashes in decades to come. While this study focuses largely on the prospect of natural resource conflicts, water especially, it underscores the political vulnerability of many economies. A 2016 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace concludes 2014 was the worst year for terrorism in a decade and a half, with attacks in ninety-three countries resulting in 32,765 people killed; 29,376 people died the year before, making 2013 the second worst year.5

If you want to know the real reasons why certain politicians vote the way they do - follow the money. Arch Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg (a.k.a. JackOff Grease-Smug) stands to make billions via his investment firm - Somerset Capital Management - if the UK crashes unceremoniously out of the European Union without a secure future trade deal. Why ? Because proposed EU regulations will give enforcement agencies greater powers to curb the activities adopted by the sort of off-shore tax havens his company employs. Consequently the British electorate get swindled not once, but twice. Firstly because any sort of Brexit - whether hard, soft, or half-baked - will make every man, woman and child in the UK that much poorer than under the status quo currently enjoyed as a fully paid up member of the EU. Secondly because Rees-Mogg's company, if not brought to heel by appropriate EU wide legislation, will deprive Her Majesty's Treasury of millions in taxes, thus leading to more onerous taxes for the rest of us. It begs the question, who else in the obscure but influential European Research Group (ERG) that he chairs and the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) that he subscribes to, have similar vested interests in a no-deal Brexit ? It is high time for infinitely greater parliamentary and public scrutiny into the UK Register of Members' Financial Interests in order to put an end to these nefarious dealings and appalling double standards in public life which only serve to further corrode public trust in an already fragile democracy.

There is no solution for Europe other than deepening the democratic values it invented. It does not need a geographical extension, absurdly drawn out to the ends of the Earth; what it needs is an intensification of its soul, a condensation of its strengths. It is one of the rare places on this planet where something absolutely unprecedented is happening, without its people even knowing it, so much do they take miracles for granted. Beyond imprecation and apology, we have to express our delighted amazement that we live on this continent and not another. Europe, the planet's moral compass, has sobered up after the intoxication of conquest and has acquired a sense of the fragility of human affairs. It has to rediscover its civilizing capabilities, not recover its taste for blood and carnage, chiefly for spiritual advances. But the spirit of penitence must not smother the spirit of resistance. Europe must cherish freedom as its most precious possession and teach it to schoolchildren. It must also celebrate the beauty of discord and divest itself of its sick allergy to confrontation, not be afraid to point out the enemy, and combine firmness with regard to governments and generosity with regard to peoples. In short, it must simply reconnect with the subversive richness of its ideas and the vitality of its founding principles. Naturally, we will continue to speak the double language of fidelity and rupture, to oscillate between being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. That is our mental hygiene: we are forced to be both the knife and the wound, the blade that cuts and the hand that heals. The first duty of a democracy is not to ruminate on old evils, it is to relentlessly denounce its present crimes and failures. This requires reciprocity, with everyone applying the same rule. We must have done with the blackmail of culpability, cease to sacrifice ourselves to our persecutors. A policy of friendship cannot be founded on the false principle: we take the opprobrium, you take the forgiveness. Once we have recognized any faults we have, then the prosecution must turn against the accusers and subject them to constant criticism as well. Let us cease to confuse the necessary evaluation of ourselves with moralizing masochism. There comes a time when remorse becomes a second offence that adds to the first without cancelling it. Let us inject in others a poison that has long gnawed away at us: shame. A little guilty conscience in Tehran, Riyadh, Karachi, Moscow, Beijing, Havana, Caracas, Algiers, Damascus, Yangon, Harare, and Khartoum, to mention them alone, would do these governments, and especially their people, a lot of good. The fines gift Europe could give the world would be to offer it the spirit of critical examination that it has conceived and that has saved it from so many perils. It is a poisoned gift, but one that is indispensable for the survival of humanity.

Is it possible that we ‘hate’ politics because we have forgotten its specifi c and limited nature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it be that our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destined to disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make ‘every sad heart glad’, as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not always getting what you want, an awareness that public governance is often slow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard to understand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterested behaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptance that some people will always take out more from the system than they put in—these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy.

Is it possible that we ‘hate’ politics because we have forgotten its specific and limited nature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it be that our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destined to disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make ‘every sad heart glad’, as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not always getting what you want, an awareness that public governance is often slow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard to understand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterested behaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptance that some people will always take out more from the system than they put in—these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy.

Przeworski and others have shown that although the level of economic development does not predict the installation of democracy, there is a strong relationship between level of per capita income and the survival of democratic regimes. Democracies appear never to die in wealthy countries, whereas poor democracies are fragile, exceedingly so when annual per capita incomes fall below $2,000 (1975 dollars). When annual per capita incomes fall below this threshold, democracies have a one in ten chance of collapsing within a year.

molten rock and a few miles below a vacuum that’d suck the air right out of them. They live in a brief geological period between ice ages, when giant asteroids have temporarily stopped smacking into the surface. As far as they can tell, there’s nowhere else in the universe where they could stay alive for ten seconds. And what do they call their fragile little slice of space and time? They call it real life. In a universe where it’s known that whole galaxies can explode, they think there’s things like “natural justice” and “destiny.” Some of them even believe in democracy.… I’m a fantasy writer, and even I find it all a bit hard to believe.

Democracy has always been a rare and fragile institution in human history...As social conflict tends to become more severe in this country...there will inevitably be a tendency on the part of the authoritarian element- always present in our history- to suppress individual freedoms, to utilize the refined techniques of police surveillance (not excluding torture of course) in order to preserve- not wilderness!- but the status quo, the privileged positions of those who so largely control the economic and governmental institutions of the United States.

The administration often used the analogy of planting the “seeds of democracy” in the Middle East, as if they’d sprout into democratic regimes as nature took its course. Democracy doesn’t sprout like apple trees. Scattering the seeds isn’t enough, no matter how many soldiers do it. To continue with the gardening analogy the Bush administration seemed to love (there were also many “seeds of terror” and “seeds of hope”), democracy is more like a fragile flower that requires constant attention and the right soil. Dictatorships and fascist regimes are hardy weeds that sprout on their own.

Being responsible front of the other. (part1) We live in a historical period which, without too many difficulties, can be defined as a transition period. In many respects, in fact, the world as it appeared a few decades ago has almost completely disappeared. In its place, however, no paradigm that can be said to be truly new has yet materialized. The era to come, which always seems to be on the verge of a future driven by perhaps too naively acclaimed technological development, is as if it were slowed down by ideas, visions and practices that still belong to the past. Take for example the urgent need to convert industrial production, but also individual consumption, through sustainable, ecological, greener and more aware practices. It is our own planet that requires us to make a change in this sense: climate change is there for all to see, but the political institutions that should deal with the issue are unable to be decided and united to stem the problem. We know that the resources we have are limited but we continue to exploit them even though there are already alternatives, so we squander what nature can offer us in a year well before this year is over because we still believe in the mad and blind race of progress. We also take the incredible technological development that information technology has made possible. We can store an incredible amount of information in devices that we can put in our pockets, we have at our fingertips practically much of all the knowledge that humanity has produced throughout its history, but ignorance continues to spread like a river in full. The areas in which it is possible to recognize that much the current historical period is a period of transition are still many others, from the political one, with the crisis of representative democracies but also with the absence of a real alternative, to the economic one, social, with the giants of the web that increasingly impoverish small businesses, thus contributing to widening the gap, now almost unbridgeable, between the few who have too much and the many who have less and less. Or with the appearance of a new precious commodity: our personal data that is exchanged too lightly, as if they were a traditional market product. In this framework, already quite unstable in itself, the Covid-19 pandemic, directly or indirectly, is also radically changing our sociality. In fact, the spread of the virus has highlighted not only the fragility of the world economic-social system, in which if you break a link in the chain it is the whole chain that breaks, but it has also made clear, by difference, how much the our way of relating to others, even the most banal, even the most everyday. Especially in a country like ours, which has made conviviality its distinctive feature. What seemed natural to us, like hugging and greeting each other with a kiss with an acquaintance or going to a concert piled on top of each other, now that we are discouraged - if not forbidden - takes on even more value. Probably a value that we didn't even know, so obvious and taken for granted, was there before. In other words: we only discover what our social freedom was worth now that it is being restricted to us. And we discover it, precisely, by difference, by comparing what we could have done before with what we must do now. In this regard, I would like to ask a question: why should all of us accept that our way of life, our daily habits and our social freedom are limited? The question is deliberately provocative. His answer, quite obvious. In some cases, however, even the question whose answer seems obvious and obvious must still be formulated. It must be formulated in order to attempt to review the question posed in a clearer and more profound way, that is, to better understand the underlying reasons. Therefore, although the answer is evident as well as common sense, I believe that asking this question can help to better understand some intrinsic reasons.

Democracy is fragile. To preserve it requires people of good will, leaders with the courage to stand up, who are devoted not to pursuit of power and personal interest at any cost, but to the common good.

The ascent of strongmen in India, Brazil, Hungary, and Poland reminds us that democracy is fragile, easily crushed. The “illiberal democracies” that have taken over in these countries no longer pretend to seek dialogue or compromise with their political opponents. They’ve embraced tribalism on a national scale and see their opponents not as fellow citizens but as enemies of the state. Ominously, their examples warn free people elsewhere that the fall from a liberal democracy to an illiberal one can be swift and unexpected.

In the Middle East, Iran was trying to fill a power vacuum left by the demise of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi dictatorship. To do that, it needed to keep its neighbor’s fledgling democracy unstable. What better way to accomplish that than by waging a relentless campaign of bloody violence? The hundreds of millions of dollars that Deutsche wired to Iranian banks provided vital funding for the sanctioned country to pay for its terrorism. Soon Iraq was being ripped apart by violence. Roadside bombs detonated all over the country, targeting the country’s fragile government and the U.S. military forces that were trying to keep the peace.

The idea for the musical album began when Rice heard a radio play about Eva Perón in 1973. He tried the idea out on Lloyd Webber. Evita's appeal- a puta with a heart of steel was undeniable "A glamorous sexy super-bitch who swayed the fortunes of an entire nation", To quote Webber's biographer Gerald McKnight. Evita was a sexier, needier Margaret Thatcher. At the time there was a miner's strike in England that paralyzed the country, and Lloyd Webber said, "Things were getting pretty ugly and we found a kind of parallel in the story of Evon Perón... a cautionary tale of how a liberal democracy is a fragile flower that can be overturned by an extremist.

mobilize citizens against elites, inspired democratic leaders, and a good dose of luck. These moments tend not to last. The institutions often turn out to be more fragile than they first appear, and they require continual renewal. In a basically capitalist economy, financial elites, even when constrained, retain an immense amount of residual power. That can be contained only by countervailing democratic power. The Bretton Woods era suggests that a more benign form of globalization is possible. But the postwar brand of globalization, balancing citizenship and market, above all required a politics. Today, a few thinkers could sit in a seminar room and design a thinner globalization and a stronger democratic national polity. Keynes and his generation did just that after World War II. But they had the political winds at their backs. Today’s architects of democratic capitalism face political headwinds. Though ideas do matter, they are no substitute for political movements.

This chapter begins an inquest. The basic finding: the postwar bargain was built more on a convergence of circumstances than on durable, permanent changes. The bargain proved surprisingly fragile, once capitalists regained their normal, temporarily suppressed powers in a still-capitalist economy. This shift occurred both in national politics and in the new globalization.

DiAngelo forces us to see that all politics have rested on identities, and that those identities are critical features of wrestling with how we have gone wrong in the effort to set things right—which too often has meant make them white. We cannot possibly name the nemeses of democracy or truth or justice or equality if we cannot name the identities to which they have been attached. For most of our history, straight white men have been involved in a witness protection program that guards their identities and absolves them of their crimes while offering them a future free of past encumbrances and sins.

Both the alt-right and Christian right claim to be saving “Western civilization” or “the Judeo-Christian West.” But what those slogans really mean is that America and the western European countries that dominate the European Union are already dead, having succumbed to “globalists” and “political correctness.” What both the Christian right and the white nationalist right are looking toward now—with or without Trump—is a new locus of power in the world, one defined by a rejection of the hard-won and fragile American values of democracy and human rights, and by an exaltation of authoritarian natalism, xenophobia, and homophobia.

Examples of ideology in the United States include individualism, the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system, consumerism as a desirable lifestyle, and meritocracy (anyone can succeed if he or she works hard). The racial ideology that circulates

Ideologies are the frameworks through which we are taught to represent, interpret, understand, and make sense of social existence.14 Because these ideas are constantly reinforced, they are very hard to avoid believing and internalizing. Examples of ideology in the United States include individualism, the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system, consumerism as a desirable lifestyle, and meritocracy (anyone can succeed if he or she works hard). The racial ideology that circulates in the United States rationalizes racial hierarchies as the outcome of a natural order resulting from either genetics or individual effort or talent. Those who don’t succeed are just not as naturally capable, deserving, or hardworking. Ideologies that obscure racism as a system of inequality are perhaps the most powerful racial forces because once we accept our positions within racial hierarchies, these positions seem natural and difficult to question, even when we are disadvantaged by them. In this way, very little external pressure needs to be applied to keep people in their places; once the rationalizations for inequality are internalized, both sides will uphold the relationship.

Democracy and the rule of law are much more fragile than most Americans realize.

Examples of ideology in the United States include individualism, the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system, consumerism as a desirable lifestyle, and meritocracy (anyone can succeed if he or she works hard).

Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.

Africa, I believe, is embarking upon an era of sharp divergences in which China will play a huge role in specific national outcomes—for better and for worse, perhaps even dramatically, depending on the country. Places endowed with stable governments, with elites that are accountable and responsive to the needs of their fellow citizens, and with relatively healthy institutions, will put themselves in a position to thrive on the strength of robust Chinese demand for their exports and fast-growing investment from China and from a range of other emerging economic powers, including Brazil, Turkey, India, and Vietnam. Inevitably, most of these African countries will be democracies. Other nations, whether venal dictatorships, states rendered dysfunctional by war, and even some fragile democracies—places where institutions remain too weak or corrupted—will sell off their mineral resources to China and other bidders, and squander what is in effect a one-time chance to convert underground riches into aboveground wealth by investing in their own citizens and creating new kinds of economic activity beyond today’s simple extraction. The proposition at work here couldn’t be more straightforward. The timeline for resource depletion in many African countries is running in tandem with the timeline for the continent’s unprecedented demographic explosion. At current rates, in the next forty years, most African states will have twice the number of people they count now. By that same time, their presently known reserves of minerals like iron, bauxite, copper, cobalt, uranium, gold, and more, will be largely depleted. Those who have diversified their economies and invested in their citizens, particularly in education and health, will have a shot at prosperity. Those that haven’t, stand to become hellish places, barely viable, if viable at all.

The Stillborn God is not a fairy tale. It is a book about the fragility of our world, the world created by the intellectual rebellion against political theology in the West. This may seem an unusual, even perverse, theme, given that Western nations are currently at peace with one another and that the norms of liberal democracy, especially regarding religion, are generally accepted. The West does appear to have passed some kind of historical watershed, making it barely imaginable that theocracies could spring up among us or that armed bands of religious fanatics could set off a civil war. Even so, our world is fragile—not because of the promises our political societies fail to keep, but because of the promises our political thought refuses to make.

Destroying the joint means building a new system in which it is not OK to allow people to be marginalised, exploited and discriminated against, it's not OK to ignore the needs of future generations, it's not OK to wreck this extraordinary, beautiful, fragile planetary environment that sustains us - our Mother Earth.

We used to have this self-centred idea that Western democracies were the end-point of evolution, and we're dealing from a position of strength, and people are becoming like us. It's not that way. Because if you think this thing we have here isn't fragile you are kidding yourself. This, '- and here Jamison takes a breath and waves his hand around to denote Maida Vale, London, the whole of Western civilization, -'this is fragile.

Democracy, as practiced in the United States in the early twenty-first century, has become a resentful, angry business. The fragile egos of narcissistic college students jostle against the outraged, wounded self-identity of talk-radio addicts, all of whom demand to be taken with equal seriousness by everyone else, regardless of how extreme or uninformed their views are. Experts are derided as elitists, one of many groups putatively oppressing “we the people,” a term now used by voters indiscriminately and mostly to mean “me.

Israel’s closest ally, he told his astonished senior staff the following morning, was no longer an example to be emulated. It was a flashing red warning light to the rest of the free world that democracy was never to be taken for granted.

We are standing on the rubble of the world that was, and we must have the foresight and courage to imagine, and create, the world as it should be: more compassionate, more equal, more sustainable. A world that is safe from fascists and tyrants. This is my journey to doing that, but it is also about you, dear reader. 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.

Adult fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of age-based stress can become intolerable and trigger a range of emotional and behavioral reactions intended to restore a sense of age-based comfort.

Occurring in every situation throughout society—including home, school, the community, government, and elsewhere—the adult fragility that leads to adultism can pummel organizations, institutions, communities, and individuals everywhere.

Dictators seizing power across Europe seemed to offer hope. Hitler, until quite recently the butt of complacent laughter by commentators who said he would come to nothing, was now chancellor of Germany and worshipped by millions; Virginia’s host country, Italy, was effectively a one-party fascist state under Mussolini, upheld by gangs of Blackshirt thugs known as squadristi; Stalin ruled by murderous diktat in Russia. Such extremism (on the left and right) seemed to be on the march everywhere, on the back of propaganda, sloganeering, and ruthless media manipulation. In what became known as the decade of lies, truth and trust were falling victim to fear, racism, and hatred. Virginia found herself in a ringside seat as the increasingly fragile ideal of democracy failed to find champions with alternative answers.

Democracy was a fragile thing, stable and steady until it was broken and trampled. A man who didn’t care about shattering every convention, and then found new ways to vandalize the contract that allowed free people to govern themselves, could do unthinkable damage. So now all the world knew what Stephenson had masterminded. There were two governments in Indiana: elected officials going through the motions of a representative democracy, and a dictatorship run by the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

he law is a blunt tool and though it makes tall claims of being objective and neutral, in itself, the law is fragile and will not smash patriarchy. Rather, The courts have always favored the power structure and shielded those who are resourceful. The courtrooms, themselves as a symbol of authority, defend the values of supremacy and protect the oppressive and regressive system. However, those on the margins with their conviction and belief in the values of democracy, justice, and the rule of law, need to shake the system. With individual or through collective action the marginalized are challenging the power structure and are compelling the state and the society to make social and political transformation at a larger level. Angela Davis said that “in a racist society it is not enough to be a non-racist. We must be anti-racist”. Similarly, here it may be derived that `in a patriarchal society, it is not enough to be a non-patriarchal. We must be anti-patriarchy’. The women with their sheer will and conviction are marching ahead to smash patriarchy using law as an instrument of change. However, what is required is the radical interpretation of constitutional values by the courts and this should be strengthened by assuring the equal representation of women within the judiciary at all levels to open up the possibility of nondiscrimination within the patriarchal hostile settings.

design of the Klan’s hold on an American state. Democracy was a fragile thing, stable and steady until it was broken and trampled. A man who didn’t care about shattering every convention, and then found new ways to vandalize the contract that allowed free people to govern themselves, could do unthinkable damage.

Democracy was a fragile thing, stable and steady until it was broken and trampled. A man who didn’t care about shattering every convention, and then found new ways to vandalize the contract that allowed free people to govern themselves, could do unthinkable damage.

Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon? You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it. The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it. It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy. It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.

They broke a basic bond of trust that those handed a role of power in a functioning democracy would treat the gift as both priceless and fragile, what Abraham Lincoln called “the legacy bequeathed to us.

Ideologies are the frameworks through which we are taught to represent, interpret, understand, and make sense of social existence.14 Because these ideas are constantly reinforced, they are very hard to avoid believing and internalizing. Examples of ideology in the United States include individualism, the superiority of capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system, consumerism as a desirable lifestyle, and meritocracy (anyone can succeed if he or she works hard).

In exposing his core theory of democracy, in part 2, Tocqueville largely reiterated the relationship between equality and liberty already proposed in 1835. Tocqueville was concerned about repeating himself, but he could not avoid it; it was the 'necessary result of such a large work done in two stages.' He explained in abstract but carefully reasoned terms: 'One can imagine an extreme point at which liberty and equality touch and become one. Suppose that all citizens take part in government and that each has an equal right to do so. Since no man will then be different from his fellow men, no one will be able to exercise a tyrannical power. Men will be perfectly free, because they will all be entirely equal, and they will al be perfectly equal because they will be entirely free. This is the ideal toward which democratic people tend.' But in the real world, Tocqueville insisted, people desired equality so much that they were willing to sacrifice their political liberty for it. They would rather limit opportunity for all than see some people getting ahead at the expense of others. To combat this degrading form of submissiveness, one had to work constantly at keeping political liberty alive. Tocqueville expressed again his sense that liberty was fragile and all too easily sacrificed to the drive for equality. This was the axiom on which he built his new political science.

Perhaps it was foolhardy to suppose that in real life we could undo what had been done, cancel our knowledge of evil, uninvent our weapons, stow away what remained in some safe hiding place. With the devastation of World War II still grimly visible, its stench hardly gone from the air, the community of nations started to fragment, its members splitting into factions, resorting to threats and, finally, to violence and to war. The certainty of peace had proved little more than a fragile dream. “And so the great democracies triumphed,” Sir Winston Churchill wrote later. “And so were able to resume the follies that had nearly cost them their life.” Prophetic as he was, Churchill did not foresee the awesome extremes to which these follies would extend: diplomacy negotiated within a balance of nuclear terror; resistance tactics translated into guidelines for fanatics and terrorists; intelligence agencies evolving technologically to a level where they could threaten the very principles of the nations they were created to defend. One way or another, such dragon’s teeth were sown in the secret activities of World War II. Questions of utmost gravity emerged: Were crucial events being maneuvered by elite secret power groups? Were self-aggrandizing careerists cynically displacing principle among those entrusted with the stewardship of intelligence? What had happened over three decades to an altruistic force that had played so pivotal a role in saving a free world from annihilation or slavery? In the name of sanity, the past now had to be seen clearly. The time had come to open the books.

I left the summer hearings struck by how fragile our democracy is, and how much we rely on an honor system to keep it operating.

Democracy has always been a rare and fragile institution in human history. . . . As social conflict tends to become more severe in this country . . . there will inevitably be a tendency on the part of the authoritarian element—always present in our history—to suppress individual freedoms, to utilize the refined techniques of police surveillance (not excluding torture of course) in order to preserve—not wilderness!—but the status quo, the privileged positions of those who so largely control the economic and governmental institutions of the United States.

This is far from the only such example. Michael Anti is a Chinese journalist and a former reporter for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times who goes by that name in his offline life. He was awarded fellowships at Harvard and Cambridge, and is well known as a democracy activist. Anti specializes in using new media to write about Chinese censorship.

In a time of constant transformation, beatitude is the joy that comes with belief. The beatific bathe in almighty love, wear smug grins and play their harpsand acoustic guitars. Safe in their cocoon from the storm of metamorphosis, the blessed give thanks for their unchangingness and ignore the leg irons biting into their ankles. It's eternal bliss, but nix nix, you can keep that jailhouse cell. The Beats and their Generation were wrong. Beautitude is the prisoner's surrender to his chains. Happiness, now, that's something else again. Happiness is human, not divine, and the pursuit of happiness is what we might call love. This love, earthly love, is a truce between metamorphs, a temporary agreement not to shape-shift while kissing or holding hands. Love is a beach towel spread over shifting sands. Love is intimate democracy, a compact that insists on renewals and you can be voted out overnight, however big your majority. It's fragile, precarious, and it's all we can get without selling our souls to one party or the other. It's what we can have while remaining free.

The worst scenario can be— a rogue cabal of intelligence boss and ambitious Army officers can subvert the democratic process, especially when the political players are nose dipped in criminalisation of politics. The allurements are many and the opportunities are limitless. The political breed must understand that their pet toys like the IB, CBI and R&AW can misfire and injure them. The nation should be secured by Acts of the Parliament to rein in the intelligence and investigative fraternity. In the interest of our fragile democracy we cannot allow ISI like organisations to take root.

Physical and social insecurity have always been easy targets in fragile democracies, and most dictators rise to power with initial public support. Throughout history, endless cycles of autocrats and military juntas have been empowered by the people’s call for order and “la mano dura” (hard hand) to rein in the excesses of a wobbly civilian regime. Somehow people always forget that it’s much easier to install a dictator than to remove one.

Democracy was a fragile thing, stable and steady until it was broken and trampled