A Quote by H. L. Mencken
If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
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Democracy, in the United States rhetoric refers to a system of governance in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification, as in the United States itself. Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formation of public policy is considered a serious threat. It is not a step towards democracy; rather it constitutes a 'crisis of democracy' that must be overcome.
The American Dream has really good PR. It's kind of difficult to live in the United States and not on some level be pulled into the allure of the American Dream. It's in the DNA of the country. So, for a population coming out of slavery, desperate to become part of the full life of the United States, it only makes sense that they would embrace this route to the American Dream.
When the average American consumes 43 times as much as the average African, we've got to think that consumption is an issue. It's not just about population.
The main implication is a remapping of the world in line with American policy and American interests. Natural resources are limited, and the United States wants to make sure that its own population is kept supplied. The principle effect of this will be for the United States to control large parts of the oil which the world possesses.
It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it’s just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.
...there is an optimal balance, depending on the manner of man's life, between the density of human population and the tolerances of nature. This balance, in the case of the United States would seem to me to have been surpassed when the American population reached, at a very maximum, two hundred million people, and perhaps a good deal less.
Today the United States has the highest prison population in the world, over 2.1 million people. ... We lock people up at a rate that is seven to ten times that of any other democracy.
The beauty of our democracy is that the final authority is not the president of the United States, but instead the American public through their duly elected representatives in the United States Congress.
The United States is dangerously close to being a plutocracy. A third of the private wealth is owned by less than 5 percent of the population.
The potential of Mexico, Canada and the United States is enormous. We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world; the prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States; we do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada; an increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.
The average American may not know who his grandfather was. But the American was, however, one degree better off than the average Frenchman who, as a rule, was in considerable doubt as to who his father was.
Democracy can only represent the average if not less than the average.
I think some people have blind faith in American institutions without knowing a whole lot about them and think they will stand up to Donald Trump and are indestructible. I actually think democracy is not a definable and achievable state. Any country is either becoming more democratic or less democratic. I think the United States hasn't tended to its journey toward democracy in a long time. It's been becoming less democratic, and right now it's in danger of becoming drastically less democratic.
The United States has used force abroad more than 130 times, but has only declared war five times - the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II.
We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States. Nowhere. We do have two health care workers who contracted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America. Not one person in the general population in the United States.
I'd say that Holland, Sweden, and Denmark are all better countries politically than the United States. The average person is far better off in one of those countries than he is in the United States and poverty of the sort that we have is absolutely unknown in Northern Europe.
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