Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

E.B. White’s definition of democracy

I’ve read a lot of E.B. White, but I’d never before come across his interesting definition of democracy, written in June 1943: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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Wikimedia

I've read a lot of E.B. White, but I'd never before come across his interesting definition of democracy, written in June 1943:

I’ve read a lot of E.B. White, but I’d never before come across his interesting definition of democracy, written in June 1943:

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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