A Quote by Bill Kristol

The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion. — © Bill Kristol
The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.
Developing and newer democracies are much more susceptible to the tactics of populists and demagogues - they often do not have strong institutions, free press, or the infrastructure required to defend their nascent democracies.
The usual pattern of demagogues is to promise the moon, fail to deliver, and then blame vulnerable others for those failures.
We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness.
Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.
The stakes are geopolitical in nature and I believe that democracies are - people want to live in free societies, democracies are the best way to do that, and that if people see democracies in the neighborhood, they'll demand the same thing.
The notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.
In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.
Samurai culture did exist really, for hundreds of years and the notion of people trying to create some sort of a moral code, the idea that there existed certain behaviors that could be celebrated and that could be operative in a life.
The notion of the single man began in the 1950's. The idea of the bachelor as a separate life was new and obscure.
I always had this romantic notion of living in New York. I just felt like, everyone could be different and weird and whatever they are in New York.
There is an error common to both oligarchies and to democracies: in the latter the demagogues, when the multitude are above the law, are always cutting the city in two by quarrels with the rich, whereas they should always profess to be maintaining their cause; just as in oligarchies the oligarchs should profess to maintain the cause of the people, . .
People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.
Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long-term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable.
If the dominant political expression that we're seeing right now is of nostalgia and we know that nostalgia won't really work out, what happens is, we become depressed as individuals and societies - when we're depressed, we're much more vulnerable to be taken advantage of by demagogues and xenophobes.
Y'know, I think, inherently, when you hear something like a teenage narrative come into play, even the idea that it's being called 'teenage' is a notion that it's being reduced to a problem that's not quite adult. That's a problematic thing to say about a narrative that could actually be dangerous, could be hurtful, could be upsetting.
Until defense of democracy in the digital era is taken up by governments collectively, both in NATO and outside the alliance, liberal democracies will remain vulnerable to the cyberthreats of the 21st century.
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