I read the following on the bus the other day:
". . . for if a democratic republic, similar to that of the United States, were ever founded in a country where the power of one man had previously established a centralized administration, and had sunk it deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert, that, in such a republic, a more insufferable despotism would prevail than in any of the absolute monarchies in Europe; or, indeed, than any which could be found on this side of Asia."
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
It made me sadly think of Russia.
