{"id":35741,"date":"2018-07-04T07:23:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T12:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35741"},"modified":"2018-07-04T07:23:22","modified_gmt":"2018-07-04T12:23:22","slug":"democracy-dies-in-the-blinding-light-of-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35741","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Dies in the Blinding Light of Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Ed Darack\/Science Faction\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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DEMOCRACY DIES IN THE BLINDING LIGHT OF DAY<\/a><\/h3>\n
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DESPITE BEING ONE<\/u> of the United States\u2019s founding statesmen and its second president after independence from Britain, John Adams was quite skeptical of democracy. \u201cDemocracy never lasts long,\u201d Adams reflected in an 1814 letter. \u201cIt soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The United States that existed when Adams wrote the letter was not very worthy of being described as a democracy in any case. Millions of African-Americans held in slavery were denied the most basic human rights, while women were denied any meaningful participation in civic life. Not until the civil rights movement and women\u2019s suffrage in the 20th\u00a0century could the United States start to be considered a full-fledged democracy, despite the country\u2019s founding under the false flag of democracy in 1776. American democracy, in any meaningful sense of the term, is then less than a century old.<\/p>\n

Recent events suggest that, even now, American democracy may be starting to enter a decrepit late-middle age. While many people assume that our current political turbulence is an aberration, long-term trends suggest that undemocratic illiberalism may one day become the norm<\/a> in the United States and elsewhere. Democracy is eroding and may no longer be a plausible means of governance. Technological change, decaying institutions, and populist demagoguery may well make genuine democracy effectively impossible, validating Adams\u2019s prediction that a democratic system could never really endure.<\/p>\n

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Book cover of \u201cHow Democracy Ends.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A new book by Cambridge University professor David Runciman, provocatively titled \u201cHow Democracy Ends,\u201d charts a number of trends in the United States and Europe that he believes foretell the approaching end of democracy as we know it.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: Ed Darack\/Science Faction\/Getty Images DEMOCRACY DIES IN THE BLINDING LIGHT OF DAY DESPITE BEING ONE of the United States\u2019s founding statesmen and its second president after independence from Britain, John Adams was quite skeptical of democracy. \u201cDemocracy never lasts long,\u201d Adams reflected in an 1814 letter. \u201cIt soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[20779,204,20778,13176,5567,827],"class_list":["post-35741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-david-runciman","tag-democracy","tag-how-democracy-ends","tag-murtaza-hussain","tag-the-intercept","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35742,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35741\/revisions\/35742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}