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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 69658a1 | Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy. For one, constitutions are always incomplete. Like any set of rules, they have countless gaps and ambiguities. No operating manual, no matter how detailed, can anticipate all possible contingencies or prescribe how to behave under all possible circumstances. | perfection | Steven Levitsky | |
| c479fbd | Sin embargo, existe otra manera de hacer quebrar una democracia, un modo menos dramatico pero igual de destructivo. Las democracias pueden fracasar a manos no ya de generales, sino de lideres electos, de presidentes o primeros ministros que subvierten el proceso mismo que los condujo al poder. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| ff9d09b | Beauty stands in the admiration only of weak minds led captive. | Admiration | ||
| f4d2fb6 | la muerte de la democracia es inmediata y resulta evidente para todo el mundo. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| b1f5dba | Despite their vast differences, Hitler, Mussolini, and Chavez followed routes to power that share striking similarities. Not only were they all outsiders with a flair for capturing public attention, but each of them rose to power because establishment politicians overlooked the warning signs and either handed over power to them (Hitler and Mussolini) or opened the door for them (Chavez). | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 7fd5ba8 | To find comparable behavior in this hemisphere one must look at Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela or Rafael Correa in Ecuador. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| fb97432 | In his two-volume masterpiece, The American Commonwealth (1888), British scholar James Bryce wrote that it was not the U.S. Constitution itself that made the American political system work but rather what he called "usages": our unwritten rules." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 676cfc6 | Even if Donald Trump does not break the hard guardrails of our constitutional democracy, he has increased the likelihood that a future president will. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 65e7aeb | Two events were critical in this regard. The first was the infamous Compromise of 1877, which ended the 1876 presidential election dispute and elevated Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to the presidency in exchange for a promise to remove federal troops from the South. The pact effectively ended Reconstruction, which, by stripping away hard-fought federal protections for African Americans, allowed southern Democrats to undo basic democratic r.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| a289868 | It is difficult to overstate the tragic significance of these events. Because civil and voting rights were regarded by many southern Democrats as a fundamental threat, the parties' agreement to abandon those issues provided a basis for restoring mutual toleration. The disenfranchisement of African Americans preserved white supremacy and Democratic Party dominance in the South, which helped maintain the Democrats' national viability. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| e49aa4b | If, twenty-five years ago, someone had described to you a country in which candidates threatened to lock up their rivals, political opponents accused the government of stealing the election or establishing a dictatorship, and parties used their legislative majorities to impeach presidents and steal supreme court seats, you might have thought of Ecuador or Romania. You probably would not have thought of the United States. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 54af181 | If partisan animosity prevails over mutual toleration, those in control of congress may prioritize defense of the president over the performance of their constitutional duties. In an effort to stave off opposition victory, they may abandon their oversight role, enabling the president to get away with abusive, illegal, and even authoritarian acts. Such a transformation from watchdog into lapdog--think of Peron's acquiescent congress in Argen.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| ffb0e48 | Throughout his life, Washington had learned that he "gained power from his readiness to give it up." Thanks to his enormous prestige, this forbearance infused many of the American republic's other nascent political institutions. As historian Gordon Wood put it, "If any single person was responsible for establishing the young Republic on a firm footing, it was Washington." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 32d85ae | Polarization can destroy democratic norms. When socioeconomic, racial, or religious differences give rise to extreme partisanship, in which societies sort themselves into political camps whose worldviews are not just different but mutually exclusive, toleration becomes harder to sustain. Some polarization is healthy - even necessary - for democracy. And indeed, the historical experience of democracies in Western Europe shows us that norms c.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 4c7723a | The strength of the American political system, it has often been said, rests on what Swedish Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal called the American Creed: the principles of individual freedom and egalitarianism. Written into our founding documents and repeated in classrooms, speeches, and editorial pages, freedom and equality are self-justifying values. But they are not self-executing. Mutual toleration and institutional forbearanc.. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 9a39dda | Germany's 1919 Weimar constitution was designed by some of the country's greatest legal minds. Its long-standing and highly regarded Rechtsstaat ("rule of law") was considered by many as sufficient to prevent government abuse. But both the constitution and the Rechtsstaat collapsed rapidly in the face of Adolf Hitler's usurpation of power in 1933." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 004fb3c | Uma coisa que distingue autocratas de lideres democraticos contemporaneos e sua intolerancia a critica e a disposicao de usar seu poder para punir aqueles que - na oposicao, na midia ou na sociedade civil - venham a critica-los. | politics | Steven Levitsky | |
| 825ccd4 | Among the most important figures to emerge during this period was Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Catholic priest whose fiery nationalist radio program reached up to forty million listeners a week. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| f2e808a | The Depression also gave rise to Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long, who called himself "the Kingfish." Long was described by the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. as "the great demagogue of the day, a man who resembled...a Latin American dictator, a Vargas or a Peron." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 1a3d805 | Few men have been admired by their own households. | Admiration | ||
| 72dfca8 | For fools admire, but men of sense approve. | Admiration | ||
| e6cdaaf | Years after Chavez's presidential victory, Rafael Caldera explained his mistakes simply: "Nobody thought that Mr. Chavez had even the remotest chance of becoming president." And merely a day after Hitler became chancellor, a prominent conservative who aided him admitted, "I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world history." | Steven Levitsky | ||
| d154cc6 | The Plot Against America, American novelist Philip Roth builds | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 3e16e90 | American mass-media hero, Charles Lindbergh, | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 6627a01 | Senator Joseph McCarthy, who used the Cold War fear of communist subversion to promote blacklisting, censorship, and book banning, enjoyed wide backing among the American public. At | Steven Levitsky | ||
| 692d19c | decade later, Alabama governor George Wallace's defiant segregationist stance vaulted him to national prominence, leading to surprisingly vigorous bids for the presidency in 1968 and 1972. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| f56fc00 | There is one thing more powerful than the Constitution....That's the will of the people. What is a Constitution anyway? They're the products of the people, the people are the first source of power, and the people can abolish a Constitution if they want to. | Steven Levitsky | ||
| e677a12 | from a bow, and had | J.D. Robb | ||
| fa0a0a6 | Looks like, and sounds like, a hell of a party. | J.D. Robb | ||
| 3de4f7b | confrontation while lounging in bed. | J.D. Robb | ||
| 3a43835 | Your tone can represent the character of your business, the strength of your resolve, and express the depths of your convictions. | communication-skills customer-service-quotes employee-engagement motivational-leadership-speaker motivational-speaker-susan-young positive-first-impression-quotes quotes-by-susan-c-young relationship-quotes susanspeaks-com | Susan C. Young | |
| 31585dd | Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn't look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line--someth.. | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| de41461 | Besides, there are things you have to do for yourself, even if everyone else thinks you're crazy. | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| cc34df9 | akimbo, | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| fe6178f | Her lack of maidenly scruple would have amused me at another moment, but just now her face was so grimly determined that I could only wonder what she had in mind. Nothing could have been less seductive, anyway, than her expression at that moment. | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| 10b8abf | And I always return to the illusion that we are still together, and then -unwillingly- to the knowledge that you have made a hostage of my memory... | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| fffe94f | We went on growing food and eating and sleeping and I cooked for a big crowd here every day, all my family. What else could we do? You just go on, if you have to. | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| df762b9 | The airport in Sofia was a tiny place; I'd expected a palace of modern communism, but we descended to a modest area of tarmac and strolled across it with the other travelers. Nearly all of them were Bulgarian, I decided, trying to catch something of their conversations. They were handsome people, some of them strikingly so, and their faces varied from the dark-eyed pale Slav to a Middle-Eastern bronze, a kaleidoscope of rich hues and shaggy.. | bulgarians | Elizabeth Kostova | |
| cb895da | gracefully | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| 5039b92 | Dracula --" He paused. "Dracula--Vlad Tepes--is still alive." | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| ed3ba49 | Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 blockbuster, The Historian, | Deborah Harkness | ||
| c0defd6 | I wondered again if I might not actually be dead-if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life. | life | Elizabeth Kostova | |
| f0f82f1 | The study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it. | Elizabeth Kostova | ||
| 3b19188 | Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light. Since then I have known this moment | Elizabeth Kostova |