Democracy
September 2, 2022
As your president, I will fight for democracy with every fiber of my being, and I’m asking every American to join me.
— Joe Biden, September 1, 2022
““IS there today in this world a word more widely used, either on this side or the other of the “Iron Curtain”? The word is never defined because no definition can be proved by the reality of concrete facts. However, we venerate this word the most, respect it the most, and offer up the most incense to it. It is the first and last word, the alpha and the omega which encompasses all, which contains all within it. If you live, if you breathe, if you can eat, work, sing, dream, sometimes be happy, if the steam engine works, if electricity serves its purpose, if the microscope enlarges objects, if we have theaters and hospitals, if the sun shines and the wheat grows, if the rivers flow and the wind blows, if you can even believe in something and raise up temples, there is only one explanation for it all: DEMOCRACY! Eliminate democracy, it’s the end of the world, oblivion. Listen to our liberals, our socialists and our communists shout out the word, gargle it with hysterical tremolos, see them roll their ecstatic eyes when they declaim it, their mouths pasty, foaming, and you will understand the importance given to this idol, this fetish of modern times that liberalism makes us adore in place of God whom it has dethroned among men by denying His public rights over men. This idolatry, the most stupid of all since it is based on nothing at all, explains why political partisanship exerts more authority than a religious cult over the ignorant masses and, consequently, that the subject is more prized than things of the Spirit. Here again, we cannot fault the poor multitudes, obedient sheep who have followed the shepherds and who instinctively have begun to desert them in the face of danger. But the leaders, the shepherds who betrayed their mission to lead the flock to green pastures and peaceful fields, cannot be acquitted of launching them onto dangerous precipices and into torrents, exposed to the worst weather and the risk of wild beasts.”
— Adrien Arcand, The Universal Republic (Adrien Arcand Books, 2018 English translation)
