Robert Dallek Quotes
Unity is Obama's theme.
Dallek, Robert. Quoted in The Washington Post, 2009.
This is a remarkable quotation. Cixi attributed the great success of the Western nations and their power to their democracy, This was a time that many in England and Europe were still struggling with the degree that democracy was desirable and even in America there were many who thought American success was in spite of democracy, not because of it. Ironically, this view was rejected after Cixi by the rulers of China who concluded that heavy central rule was required to keep China stable, Sun Yat Sen and Chiang Kai Chek gave lip service to the desirability of long range democracy but maintained dictatorial rule and in Chiang’s case a very cruel and corrupt dictatorship as well. When Mao and his Communists ousted Chiang, the too rejected political democracy, and a century after this Chinese Empress pointed the way, China had still not “connected the ruled with the ruling”.
Robert A. Dallek is an American historian specializing in the presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He retired as a history professor at Boston University in 2004 and previously taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Oxford University. He won the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 as well as other awards for scholarship and teaching.
