So I guess 2016 claimed its biggest victim yet - America

Would you want the state legislatures, the bastions of tyranny, to elect Senators again?

All systems of government fail, eventually. That’s not particularly insightful. But historically, they often failed due to external factors, such as ten Roman legions or 10,000 Mongols camped outside the capital. In those cases, it hardly makes a difference whether the head of state was democratically elected or ascended by divine right.

John Adams specifically claimed that they “committed suicide”, not that they were murdered by another kingdom. In other words, he claimed that the failure of democracies results from the moral failings of the voters. But that’s BS, just like the apocryphal quote about “voting itself largess out of the public treasury”. It almost never happened before the time of John Adams. His examples were terrible, and I see that you can’t think of three good examples, either.

Even today, the main reason democracy “fails” is that pretty much every nation on earth likes to call itself a democracy, and occasionally nations fail.

Athens committed suicide. There would have been no war against them if they weren’t corrupt and greedy and arrogant. And then they botched the war and alienated their allies along the way.

The fate of Athens was the same as that of all the other Greek city-states, including those that weren’t a democracy. I don’t see how you can blame democracy for its conquest.

All the historical accounts are very clear that Athens committed suicide. They dominated all of Greece and they threw it all away. They had colonies throughout the med and much like the dollar the owl coin of Athens was universal currency. Sparta was an ally before they pissed them off through overweening arrogance. If there were no Peloponnesian war they might well have fought off the Macedonians.

Yes, and if there were no Peloponnesian war then the Spartans might well have fought off the Macedonians. So what?

Democracy is not a superpower. It doesn’t give you the ability to see the future. It doesn’t make your neighbors into allies. It doesn’t give you the ability to win wars against superior forces. And as the British know, it doesn’t grant your empire immortality.

It would be one thing if Athens fell while all their neighbors prospered. But given that the Spartans and all the rest were beaten as soundly as the Athenians, I don’t you can argue that democracy was specifically responsible for the downfall of Athens.

And the Roman Republic died from factors internal, tracing back to a rot started with the Gracchi brothers, continued with Marius and Sulla, and put to the sword at the Rubicon.

Sure, I’ll grant you the Roman Republic. That’s why I asked for three examples. It seems like people want to think that the history of the Roman Republic is the history of all republics. But Rome was the exception, not the rule.

Elle: “We’re not meant to benefit from her; we’re meant to look at her, and think about how we can be more like her.”

This year’s Exceptional Woman is Ivanka Trump, and she’s such a convincing Exceptional Woman that she’s helped make a self-confessed sexual predator who ran the most openly misogynist presidential campaign in modern history palatable to a large number of Americans.

This is a good read, by the mayor of South Bend Indiana.

Only if you consider wars of expansion to be internal.

LOL

Thing is… historically there weren’t that many democracies or even republics of note before the United States.

If that’s what you truly believe, then it’s even more useless to make generalizations.

But anyway it’s not true. By the time John Adams died, there were dozens. Some still exist, most of the rest were conquered by stronger neighbors.

52% of the GOP are idiots.

They’re going to claim those are all the illegals voting… without any proof at all.

Apparently a fake deleted tweet, but what I find funny is all the trumpsters going ape about it being fake news. Fake news kinda sucks, doesn’t it?

I can’t express how terrifying it is that Trump is already lying about how many votes he got in the election, the election that HE WON. It’s going to be scary place four years from now.

But he won by lying. Why would he stop now? Why would he ever stop? Lying yourself to the top, to loan, to other people’s money, to marriages… he gets what he wants by lying.