Sharp on Nostr: Interesting footnote: It is worth going through the literature of the late ...

Interesting footnote:

It is worth going through the literature of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century to see how the words "democracy" and "democrat" appear exclusively as terms of contumely and reprehension.
They served this purpose for a long time both in England and America, much as the terms "bolshevism" and "bolshevist" serve us now. They were subsequently taken over to become what Bentham called "impostor-terms”, in behalf of the existing economic and political order, as synonymous with a purely nominal republicanism. They are now used regularly in this way to describe the political system of the United States, even by persons who should know better-even, curiously, by persons like Bertrand Russell and Mr. Laski, who have little sympathy with the existing order. One sometimes wonders how our revolutionary forefathers would take it if they could hear some flatulent political thimblerigger charge them with having founded "the great and glorious democracy of the West.