Joan Westenberg on Nostr: Folks in the 1850s thought of democracy as an unchanging entity that would never get ...
Folks in the 1850s thought of democracy as an unchanging entity that would never get too far off track.
They thought democracy was self-correcting.
That assumption of the guardrails holding feels uncomfortably familiar today.
The dumpster fire of the 1850s shows how far off the rails any democracy can go when contempt for democratic ideals calcifies into a flamethrowing, win-at-all-costs ethos.
https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-how-2024-rhymes-with-thenbsp1850s
They thought democracy was self-correcting.
That assumption of the guardrails holding feels uncomfortably familiar today.
The dumpster fire of the 1850s shows how far off the rails any democracy can go when contempt for democratic ideals calcifies into a flamethrowing, win-at-all-costs ethos.
https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-how-2024-rhymes-with-thenbsp1850s