A Quote by Heather Cox Richardson
If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump's autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die.
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The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one. Protecting the democracy that we ask our sons and daughters to die for is our responsibility and our trust. Demanding accountability from our leaders is our job as citizens. It's the American way. So may the truth win out.
Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.
I was a Republican before Donald Trump was a Republican. I was a Republican when Donald Trump was a Democrat. I was a Republican when Donald Trump was an independent. And I'm going to be a Republican when Donald Trump gets tired of being a Republican.
The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.
I gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and warned of Trump. America has survived for almost 250 years with its imperfect democracy, but, you know, maybe it's a better democracy than elsewhere. And I am sure American democracy will survive.
Donald Trump is not a Republican. Donald Trump is not a conservative. Donald Trump is trying to pull off the biggest scam in American political history, basically a con job, where he's trying to take over the Republican Party by telling people he's someone who he is not.
Vladimir Putin is the bigger danger than Donald Trump because Trump can be dealt with within American democracy. There is an independent judiciary. He cannot overrule American courts. He will have to play by some rules. He will do damage certainly, but to do real damage I think he is too weak. Putin is aggressive wherever he can be. In Europe, in Germany, Putin will not stop.
You have to understand that to have a revolution when you are 18 years old is completely different from normal political leaders who were born in a democracy and will die in a democracy and never to have experienced that change. I have seen that change.
Republican party leaders have been worrying about the damage a [Donald] Trump nomination could do to the party, but also what might happen if he left the GOP and took his supporters with him. But Trump said he would stay a Republican and do everything in his power to beat Hillary Clinton.
There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.
To pretend that former President Donald Trump's Republican Party will act in good faith to preserve democracy is naive.
But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
Here you have the Republican Party, and they had, what, 16, 15 candidates seek the Republican nomination? And Donald Trump won it. And they have been enraged actually since day one when Trump announced, and his statement did not result in a Trump implosion, and then future Trump statements and appearances did not result in a Trump implosion. But the candidates that the Republican Party...They thought they had the best presidential field ever, and they hated and resented Trump for that.
What destroyed the Republican Party isn't Trump. It's the obedience to Trump from servile leaders like McConnell and Ryan who could have put a check on him. They have gotten their place in political history. They'll be remembered as vile.
Trump's last name is an omen that he'll win the Republican nomination, since "trump" means "triumph." One might suggest that this will constitute the triumph of insanity over reason, except that none of the other Republican candidates make any sense either. Trump just makes them seem less crazy by comparison.
In the Laws it is maintained that the best constitution is made up of democracy and tyranny, which are either not constitutions at all, or are the worst of all. But they are nearer the truth who combine many forms; for the constitution is better which is made up of more numerous elements. The constitution proposed in the Laws has no element of monarchy at all; it is nothing but oligarchy and democracy, leaning rather to oligarchy.
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