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Comment by cpr | Hacker News Reader

The problem with democracy is that you end up with mob rule.

And as soon as the mob realizes it can vote itself bread and circus, it's all over.

The founding fathers said exactly that.

And the mob in general is in thrall to the media, which is pretty much a wholly owned operation of the ruling class.

So, I guess, in the end, you get what your ruling class wants anyway, with the unwitting mob just a means to its own control.

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Just as a fact check, it appears that the saying that I think you are referring to is one commonly misattributed to Benjamin Franklin.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hlaxi/did_b...

Were you thinking of another source?

If a democracy wants authoritarianism Nationalist Party then there is no magic mechanism to stop this, and it might be presumptive to even assume that democracy is most morally harmonious and effective configuration of society. I believe China is seriously contending this assumption, as it races ahead of its Asian and European neighbors with respect to economic optimism.

Also, political parties appear part and parcel with democracy, but that part of the discussion is so often left unloved.

And I would say it also races far ahead of its neighbours on the number of atrocities it commits against its own citizenry.

China is certainly effective. The willingness to simply murder dissidents makes things much simpler. I struggle to see how anyone could consider China "morally harmonious" though. Their effectiveness seems to be directly at the cost of any morality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis

This is 100% a rightwing talking point, pushed by the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter, and I wish it would go away. Look... if we all want to get along, then we need some way of working together despite disagreements. If 51% of people want to do something, we all must agree that that's okay. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.

I’m astonished the National Socialist experiment in Germany is being ignored by this commenter. Indeed your premise is antithetical to Western tradition, which is presumably good because of its endowments to humanity. See: the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus.

You missed one piece - a limited government. The 51% can get what they want, as long as it's within the things that we let government do. If it's outside that, then they need a lot more than 51% - like maybe 3/4 of the states.

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