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Fan Works
Robyn: I suppose the Queen of Atlas is allowed to be waited upon.
Esper: (sighing) Just the First Citizen. That's all the vote was for.
Robyn: I've read the amendments to the constitution. If it looks like a monarch, acts like a monarch, and wields the power of a monarch, I call it like it is.
Esper: After everything that's happened over the last few months, can you really say having the military be completely subordinate to civilian authority is a bad idea?
Robyn: I'd prefer having it be subordinate to elected authority.
Esper: I was elected. The people cast their votes and made me First Citizen for life. Just as they may cast their votes to put you on the council next week.
Robyn: A council that's now confined to legislative duties. Which you still get the final say on. That's not very democratic.
Whitley: (scoffing) The people spent months nearly starving to death because of democracy. Why anyone would want to be attached to such a flawed political system, forced on the other kingdoms by Vale at the end of the Great War, is beyond me.
Robyn: It's done pretty well over the last few decades.
Whitley: Yes, the Treaty of Vytal has done quite well. At making Vacuo a corrupt hive of scum and villainy, Mistral the same thing but racist and with a better paint job, Vale a bunch of complete isolationists, and enabling Atlas and Mantle to get the largest wealth disparity on the planet.
Robyn: (scowling, yet sighing) It's not perfect. But it's better than a dictatorship.
Esper: In certain aspects, you are correct. But not in others. A democratic system is, even at the best of times, a liability to a swift response. With the Grimm, that is already a grievous weakness, but in our current time of crisis, it is one we cannot afford if we hope to do any good for our people.
Esper: (sighing) Just the First Citizen. That's all the vote was for.
Robyn: I've read the amendments to the constitution. If it looks like a monarch, acts like a monarch, and wields the power of a monarch, I call it like it is.
Esper: After everything that's happened over the last few months, can you really say having the military be completely subordinate to civilian authority is a bad idea?
Robyn: I'd prefer having it be subordinate to elected authority.
Esper: I was elected. The people cast their votes and made me First Citizen for life. Just as they may cast their votes to put you on the council next week.
Robyn: A council that's now confined to legislative duties. Which you still get the final say on. That's not very democratic.
Whitley: (scoffing) The people spent months nearly starving to death because of democracy. Why anyone would want to be attached to such a flawed political system, forced on the other kingdoms by Vale at the end of the Great War, is beyond me.
Robyn: It's done pretty well over the last few decades.
Whitley: Yes, the Treaty of Vytal has done quite well. At making Vacuo a corrupt hive of scum and villainy, Mistral the same thing but racist and with a better paint job, Vale a bunch of complete isolationists, and enabling Atlas and Mantle to get the largest wealth disparity on the planet.
Robyn: (scowling, yet sighing) It's not perfect. But it's better than a dictatorship.
Esper: In certain aspects, you are correct. But not in others. A democratic system is, even at the best of times, a liability to a swift response. With the Grimm, that is already a grievous weakness, but in our current time of crisis, it is one we cannot afford if we hope to do any good for our people.
Literature
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides?
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides?
— Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
— H. L. Mencken, "Bayard vs. Lionhart"
Live-Action TV
Bernard: But even so [MP's] are the people's representatives. Democratically chosen.
Sir Humphrey: MP's aren't chosen by the people, they're chosen by their local party: thirty-five men in grubby raincoats or thirty-five women in silly hats.
Bernard: Then the government are selected from the best of them.
Sir Humphrey: Bernard, there are only 630 MP's. If one party has just over three hundred it forms a government. Of that three hundred, one hundred are too old and too silly, one hundred are too young and too callow, which leaves just about a hundred MP's to fill one hundred governmental posts. There's no choice at all. They've had no selection, no training.
Sir Humphrey: MP's aren't chosen by the people, they're chosen by their local party: thirty-five men in grubby raincoats or thirty-five women in silly hats.
Bernard: Then the government are selected from the best of them.
Sir Humphrey: Bernard, there are only 630 MP's. If one party has just over three hundred it forms a government. Of that three hundred, one hundred are too old and too silly, one hundred are too young and too callow, which leaves just about a hundred MP's to fill one hundred governmental posts. There's no choice at all. They've had no selection, no training.
Theatre
"I guess all governments are crooked, I guess they're all vicious and corrupt, but a democracy has the immense advantage of being incompetent in villainy and clumsy in corruption."
— Brom, Knickerbocker Holiday
Webcomics
Sid (a squirrel): I think democracy is the best possible political system!
Woo (a raccoon): You do?!
Shadow (a fox): That's great!
Woo: Who supports the new law that all present squirrels should be eaten by a fox and a raccoon?
[Woo and Shadow both raise their hands]
Sid: VETO! VETO!
Woo: I'm sorry, but a majority is a majority.
Sid: I think democracy is the worst possible political system...
Woo (a raccoon): You do?!
Shadow (a fox): That's great!
Woo: Who supports the new law that all present squirrels should be eaten by a fox and a raccoon?
[Woo and Shadow both raise their hands]
Sid: VETO! VETO!
Woo: I'm sorry, but a majority is a majority.
Sid: I think democracy is the worst possible political system...
Western Animation
"In a democracy, everybody gets an equal voice, even if nobody ever listens. And if you have a lot of money, you get an even more equal voice, 'cause you can buy airtime. Of course, nobody watches; they're too busy watching game shows. But if they did, they'd see a bunch of candidates who all look alike making promises they can't possibly keep. Not that it matters, since most people don't vote anyway, because they live in a free country and they don't have to. And that, my friends, is a democracy."
— Mike Mazinsky, Mike, Lu & Og
Real Life
"Happily virtue is natural to the people, despite aristocratic prejudices to the contrary. A nation is truly corrupt when, having gradually lost its character and its liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy; this is the death of the body politic through decrepitude. When after four hundred years of glory avarice finally drove from Sparta its morality together with the laws of Lycurgus, Agis died in vain trying to bring them back. Demosthenes thundered in vain against Philip [of Macedon], Philip found more eloquent advocates than Demosthenes among the degenerate inhabitants of Athens. There was still as large a population in Athens as in the times of Miltiades and Aristides, but there were no longer any true Athenians. And what did it matter that Brutus killed a tyrant? Tyranny still lived in every heart, and Rome existed only in Brutus."
In fact, authoritative modern constitutions are rare in the world. Rather than measure societies by this standard, or expect them to evolve or live up to them, we might better reflect on their rarity. Political clans, weak institutions, and personalized politics dominate almost everywhere. Even today, most of the world lacks strong, independent institutions. Most societies are still ruled by persons and patrons more than laws. Indeed, what we take for modernized society, with its representative governments and powerful institutions, began within a few hundred miles either side of the English Channel and exists in the world today mainly there or as transplants from there.
— J. Arch Getty, Practicing Stalinism: Bolsheviks, Boyars and the Persistence of Tradition, Page 289
Democratic systems do not work unless there is a basic consensus among most citizens about the acceptability of their state and social system, or at least a readiness to bargain for compromise settlements. This, in turn, is much facilitated by prosperity.
— Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..."
— Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, 1947
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
— James Bovard, often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin
For monarchy to work, one man must be wise. For democracy to work, a majority of the people must be wise. Which is more likely?
— Charles Maurras
Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Reflections on State and War (2 December 2006)
Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.
— Attributed to Thomas Carlyle in "The Scholar in a Republic", centennial anniversary address to Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts (June 30, 1881)
-Democracy is the power of equal votes for unequal minds.
— Charles I of England
-Democracies that are under threat of destruction face the impossible dilemma of either yielding to that threat by insisting on preserving the democratic niceties, or violating their own principles by curtailing democratic rights.
— Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (2003)
"A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they are not true...I do not deserve a share in governing a hen-roost much less a nation. Nor do most people...The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters."
