The Rise of American Democracy

♠
Democracy appears when some large number of previously excluded, ordinary persons - what the eighteenth century called "the many" - secure the power not simply to select their governors but to oversee the institutions of government, as office holders and as citizens free to assemble and criticize those in office. Democracy is never a gift bestowed by benevolent, farseeing rulers who seek to reinforce their own legitimacy. It must always be fought for, by political coalitions that cut across distinctions of wealth, power, and interest. It succeeds and survives only when it is rooted in the lives and expectations of its citizens, and continually reinvigorated in each generation. Democratic successes are never irreversible.

-- Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

It's not pop fiction all the time. Thus Monk has been spending his afternoons lately, or at least an hour of it, and he seems to be stuck in the nineteenth century - America in the rough. Though, having given himself over to the back alleys and the red districts of noir fiction, it has become more like work to read even a history like Wilentz's. Reality is for people who cannot handle drugs.

xXx

The Rise of American Democracy

♠
Democracy appears when some large number of previously excluded, ordinary persons - what the eighteenth century called "the many" - secure the power not simply to select their governors but to oversee the institutions of government, as office holders and as citizens free to assemble and criticize those in office. Democracy is never a gift bestowed by benevolent, farseeing rulers who seek to reinforce their own legitimacy. It must always be fought for, by political coalitions that cut across distinctions of wealth, power, and interest. It succeeds and survives only when it is rooted in the lives and expectations of its citizens, and continually reinvigorated in each generation. Democratic successes are never irreversible.

-- Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

It's not pop fiction all the time. Thus Monk has been spending his afternoons lately, or at least an hour of it, and he seems to be stuck in the nineteenth century - America in the rough. Though, having given himself over to the back alleys and the red districts of noir fiction, it has become more like work to read even a history like Wilentz's. Reality is for people who cannot handle drugs.

xXx