Some Randoms

Writes Mr. Theodore Dalrymple over at Taki's Magazine:

It’s most likely that the 36 percent who did not vote were thoroughly disillusioned with the whole process and refrained from what they saw as wasting their time. The Romanian peasants had a proverb which I love to quote: “A change of rulers is the joy of fools; in other words the next lot will be as bad as the last.”

[...]

The average head of a modern democratic government is more absolute in many ways than a mere Sun King sitting in Versailles.

Says Mr. Michael Anissimov over at his weblog More Right:

In this new land of political theory, we consider critiques of democracy at a deeper level than pithy Churchill quotes. This is unfamiliar territory, I know. The lowest grade of thinking about democracy and its critiques are the Churchill quotes. After we get rid of those and agree to never speak of them again, then we can have an adult conversation about democracy and its merits.

Expressed at Once I Was A Clever Boy:

[T]here are complex issues which intersect around the [Dresden] raid, but I do wonder why, after seventy years, we as a country cannot be allowed to say that maybe, just maybe, we got something wrong on that terrifying February night.

The Chief of Defence of New Zealand notes:

This remarkable 105 year old remembers sitting on her fathers shoulders watching troops go to WW1[.]

My great aunt who would also have been 105 at this time had a recollection of something similar at least well into her 90s.