Wednesday, April 02, 2014

George Kennan on democracy

I came across this quote.
 “There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentric than embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts its own vision … Its enemy becomes the embodiment of all evil. Its own side is the centre of all virtue.” 
Google search showed that it is due to George Kennan one of the architects of cold war from a book of his Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin. Apparently, he belonged to the realist school of diplomacy and was deeply suspicious of democracy.

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