E.B. White wrote in The New Yorker in 1943, in the middle of World War
II:
"We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking
for a statement on 'The Meaning of Democracy.' It presumably is our
duty to comply with such a request, and it is surely our pleasure ....
Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on
the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the
stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the
dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more
than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is
the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion
in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a
letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the
ninth. It is an idea which has not been disproved yet, a song the
words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and
the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War
Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to
know what democracy is."
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1762921595406803360
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