Quote of the Day (Archibald MacLeish, on Why ‘Democracy is Never a Thing Done’)

“Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only, that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, playwright and statesman Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), The American Cause (1941)

When MacLeish wrote these words, Americans would shortly unite in the most dramatic fashion possible: to defend their nation following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in the process take up arms against dictatorships overrunning Europe and Asia.

But democracy depends on quieter moments, too—like voting. (Only, since the turn of the millennium, even this action has become unexpectedly fraught with tension.)

Nevertheless, it remains the case that, if this country desires to remain intact and to preserve what Abraham Lincoln termed “the last best hope of earth," performing this civic, and profoundly patriotic, duty in an informed, non-frivolous manner remains a prerequisite.

(The image accompanying this post, an example of a voting booth in the Old State House in Hartford, CT, was taken Dec. 22, 2023, by Kenneth C. Zirkel.)

Quote of the Day (James Madison, on Voting for ‘Men of Virtue and Wisdom’)

“I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” —Founding Father and 4^th President of the United States James Madison (1752-1836), “Judicial Powers of the National Government,” June 20, 1788, Founders Online, National Archives [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 11, 7 March 1788–1 March 1789, ed. Robert A. Rutland and Charles F. Hobson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977, pp. 158–165.]

Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on the Greatest Danger to America)

“Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn—they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.”—American poet-essayist Walt Whitman (1819–1892), Democratic Vistas (1871)

Quote of the Day (Harry Truman, on How ‘The People Are Responsible for the Government’)

“The country has to awaken every now and then to the fact that the people are responsible for the government they get. And when they elect a man to the presidency who doesn’t take care of the job, they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.”—U.S. President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), in Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman, edited by ‎Margaret Truman (1989)

Quote of the Day (Theodore H. White, on Voting as ‘The Only Substitute for Violence’)

“The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood. Its verdict is to be defended as one defends civilization itself.” —Theodore H. White, The Making of the President: 1960 (1961)

For years, that statement sounded like Civics 101: so simple, so pious. Now, it rings with unexpected eloquence. 

This election, one Presidential candidate, to his eternal shame, has forgotten that lesson because he can’t stand being labeled a loser. With his campaign devalued, he now wants to debase the democracy process itself. For that crowning reason, he needs to be defeated soundly.

Quote of the Day (Alexander Hamilton, on Voters’ ‘Reflection and Choice’)

“[I]t seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” —Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers: No. 1 (1787)

Quote of the Day (Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Indifference and Voting)

“Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference as it is by the most unscrupulous office seeker or by the most powerful foreign threat. The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter. ”— Dwight D. Eisenhower, 18th annual New York Herald Tribune Forum, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, October 24, 1949

Quote of the Day (Chester Bowles, With the Best Reason I’ve Heard For Voting)

“Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.”—Attributed to Chester Bowles, governor of Connecticut and diplomat (1901-1986)