In the shift from direct democracy to representational democracy, the printed book became an embodiment of thought for the physica...lly absent author; and so the popular art form of the popular book and the pamphlet re-presented ideas and contributed to the public space of political philosophies of the Enlightenment. Television, however, now brings forth this new kind of public space, and it calls into being this new world, not of the educated citizenry in a republic, but of the electropeasantry in the state of Entertainment. Recall how people stopped singing in pubs when they brought in the TV set, and you will appreciate the new passivity in which people stop voting for their representatives as TV takes over the electoral campaigns.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The liberal sees outer, removable institutions as the ultimate source of evil; sees man's social task as creating a world in which... evil will disappear. His tools for this task are progress and enlightenment. The conservative sees the inner unremovable nature of man as the ultimate source of evil; sees man's social task as coming to terms with a world in which evil is perpetual and in which justice and compassion will both be perpetually necessary. His tools for this task are the maintenance of ethical restraints inside the individual and the maintenance of unbroken, continuous social patterns inside the given culture as a whole. Hence, the conservative distrusts direct democracy, unrestrained and unpatterned.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the cons...titution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The consistent anarchist ... should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and sp...ecialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.... Some sort of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a "vanguard" party, or a State bureaucracy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By the way--about Bolshevism: one has to remember that all that is published in the press is propaganda, that the Bolsheviki are t...he moderate social-revolutionaries, a political party, and the Soviets are a system of government based on the idea of "pure democracy" (Mso called in the textbooks on gov't) that every man shall take direct part in the government of the country--which is arrived at by industrial representation through the heirarchy of soviets, and that much the same system would be in vogue in America--(geographical instead of industrial units) if Hamilton and the rest had taken the New England town-meeting as the unit of government instead of importing Montesquieu's ideas. It's silly to idealize things in Russia, but it is criminal to condemn them unheard.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democr...atic; for democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he should.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and t...alked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »