Professor
Let me put your mind at rest.
No worries about democracy not surviving, on this score:
"...Yet I also wonder whether effective democracy depended on an educated population which, for whatever reason, took the workings of its institutions seriously and took the time necessary to understand what they were doing--as well as a press that took the time to let them know in some detail. Those ingredients are also lacking, and democracy might not survive without them..." DK
Democracy never was based on these, or on intellectuals, however one defines them; least of all on a free and quite unfettered and shamelessly factional and ideological press.
It really never depended on them (in fact on the opposite), and can survive perfectly well without them, all other things on the political horizon being equal(which they never ever are).
Have no fear.
All the best
Professor
This passage is emblematic:
"Here was Lincoln on March 4, 1861:
"Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left." DK quoting Lincoln
Anarchism is far from secessionism.
Lincoln was a not very good sophist lawyer.
I have seldom read so much nonsensical drivel disguised as political exegesis in my life.
The best place to look for the "real" Lincoln is in the 1850s Lincoln Douglas Debates, The Unexpurgated text, by harold Holzer, taken from both parties' dueling contemporary newspapers.
All the best
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