Democratic Erosion Quotes

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

We are in a crisis of political comportment. We are witnessing the rise of the classless. Our politicians are becoming degenerate. This has been happening for a while but gets worse as the country coarsens. We are defining deviancy ever downward.

Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.

All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.

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.

I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.

You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933... Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.

Politicians used to be leaders. Now they follow voters, desperate for a tick in a box.

The ANC party from time to time comes with legislation which, if accepted and if not nullified by the constitution of court, would have the effect of undermining the constitution and eroding its values.

In my view, what really counts here, as our political system falls apart before our very eyes, where voters really feel like they've been thrown under the bus, for good reason, and where they are dropping out of these two corporate-sponsored political parties.

In two years, there were 22 military coups d'etat, essentially in Africa and the third world. The coup d'etat of Algiers, in 1965, is what opened the path.

As a historian, I'm sceptical about conspiracy theories because the world is far too complicated to be managed by a few billionaires drinking scotch behind some closed doors. But I do think that the voters are correct in sensing that they're really losing power. And in reaction, they give the system an angry kick.

Any time you make an analogy to horrific people in history, Mussolini or Hitler, people say, 'Oh, you're exaggerating, you're talking about, it's hyperbole.' Maybe it is. ... But I would say is that if you are not concerned that democracy could produce bad people, I don't think you're really thinking this through too much.

Perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of unholy alliances between government and business. This is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called fascism... .The outward appearances of the democratic process are observed, but the powers of the state are diverted to the benefit of private interests.

We are sliding down into the mire of a democracy ...

Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.

Liberal democracy is in regression all over the world, and it's a dangerous thing.

I think that social media platforms and technology have been the accelerator for the push for the populist-style administrations in democratically elected presidents.

Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

The values and voices of democracy are silent. Either we have lost touch with those values or, no better, believe they need not or cannot be taught.

I think that our own crisis of democracy is in its own way affecting our ability to leverage in the same way that we used to in the world.

The American system is no longer a democracy. Democracy is based on accountability and it's not there now.

In a strange way, I expected Russia to become more like America since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the reverse is true. America has become more like Russia: a kleptocratic society.