Showing posts with label Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lincoln. Show all posts

Thursday, 20 September 2018

He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly

Not content to deride his intelligence, hostile publications focused on his appearance. "Lincoln is the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and  hatchet-face ever strung upon a single frame. He has most unwarrantably abused the privilege which all politicians have of being ugly."

D.K. Goodwin, Team of Rivals (2005), 257-8

Friday, 27 October 2017

Democracy has never been a single monolithic entity available for export to all parts of the world

Democracy has never been a single monolithic entity available for export to all parts of the world, as George W. Bush and Tony Blair imagined. It is plural, not singular; it depends on tacit understandings of particular cultures as much as on formal rules. ... For Abraham Lincoln, democracy meant 'government of the people, by the people, for the people. For the British High Tory Leo Amery it meant 'government of the people, for the people, with but not by the people'.

D. Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom (2014), 154

I am with Amery, save I do not believe that is democracy, though it is desirable.