Of Princesses and Politicians...

..."The dominant political idea in the modern world is democracy...And where are the political theorists of democracy today? Instead of a rational theory it has become a sort of incantation. It is the open sesame of political treasure hunters everywhere." ..."Liberal democratic principles, evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, dominated the nineteenth century, which however failed to refashion and think out anew, for the benefit of successors, the ideas that it was living on...Meanwhile democracy, for lack of thought, ceased to be a living political idea. It became a shibboleth, and is now not even serviceable as such...Politicians, like the princess in the fairy-tale condemned to the oracular utterances of frogs, seem scarcely able to open their mouths without some platitude about democracy flopping out." Alfred C. Cobban, In search of Humanity: The Role of Enlightenment in Modern Society What exactly is Democracy and how will it solve all our political woes?