Tag: Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Deliberative Democracy and the Bad Man
During my talk at GW on Friday, one concern emerged as the dominant theme, and I stumbled a bit in responding to it. Basically, it’s a version of the Platonic anxiety about democracy: if deliberative institutions give demagogues and sophists equal time to peddle their emotive rhetoric alongside earnest activists and critical thinkers honestly seeking…
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Clear and Present Dangers
“It is said that this manifesto was more than a theory, that it was an incitement. Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the…