The Stark Differences Between Democracy and Tyranny

The American Spectator ^ | August 16, 2025, 10:16 PM | Shmuel Klatzkin

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Citizens of a democratic state have the ability to part the clouds of lies and propaganda that cloud a lazy, compromised media.

Winston Churchill is famed for his adamant and courageous opposition to appeasement. What is not as well known is that Churchill also praised appeasement in strong terms: “Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble, and might be the surest and perhaps the only way to world peace.”

One must, however, discern the difference between that and appeasement from weakness and fear, which, he declared, “is alike futile and fatal.”

The pride of tyrannies is legendary. They regularly require human sacrifice as evidence of their power.

Deep into his years-long and often lonely efforts to mobilize Parliament and the people to the stark urgency of confronting Hitler, Churchill began a new book project that would eventually fill four volumes and which he would title A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. He made clear the large aim of the work to one of his literary assistants in the project:

In the main, the theme is emerging of the growth of freedom and law, of the rights of the individual, of the subordination of the State to the fundamental and moral conceptions of an ever-comprehending community. Of these ideas the English-speaking peoples were the authors, then the trustees, and must now become the armed champions. Thus I condemn tyranny in whatever guise and from whatever quarter it presents itself. All of this of course has current application.

The dovetailing between that project and his campaign to awaken Britain to rearm and confront Hitler was summarized by Churchill biographer and historian Martin Gilbert:

As Churchill saw it, parliamentary democracy and dictatorship not only stood at opposite poles but had no common ground. Democracy had to defend itself.

And so, when appeasement from weakness led to war, as Churchill...

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TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: appeasement; bloggers; churchill; semanticlosernoexist; semanticlosersonfr; usaklihoyuk

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "The Stark Differences Between Democracy and Tyranny"

Given that we are a Republic, not a Democracy and not a Tyranny, the argument seems odd.

One comment to the article by Ck Michels resonates:

"Please go and educate yourself. The United States of America is not a democracy it is a Republic and it was structured that way in order to supply mechanisms to the PEOPLE to repulse the tyranny of democracy, ie mob rule."

The prose in the article drips with 'something' -- "Douglas Murray, whose words and writing pulse with Churchillian incandescence, describes the conflict precisely: it is being between democracies and death cults."

Personally and "precisely," I see our Republic arrayed against tyrannies and democracies and all. Not so "incandescent" nor "Churchillian" in my prose, but there it is.

[Olog-hai]

A democracy is a political system in which the people periodically, by majority vote at the polls, select their rulers. The rulers then have absolute power to make whatever laws they please, by majority vote among themselves.

In a constitutional Republic, the people also, by majority vote at the polls, select rulers, who make laws by majority vote among themselves; but the rulers cannot make any laws they please because the Constitution severely restricts their lawmaking power.

The ideal of a democracy is universal equality. The ideal of a constitutional Republic is individual liberty.

In this century, great strides have been made toward the goal of subverting our Republic and transforming it into a democracy. One tactic of the subverters is subversion of language. By calling the United States a democracy until people thoughtlessly accept and use the term, totalitarians have obscured the real meaning of our principles of government.

— Dan Smoot Report, 1966

If Shmuel said “republicanism”, he would have been correct, but instead he pushes a false dichotomy. Republicanism is the bulwark against the tyranny of democracy.

[butlerweave]

The democrats democracy is really Tyranny

[BrexitBen]

The United States is a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

It is NOT a democracy. The far-left has repeated the mantra so many times, that they even have conservatives repeating the lie.

[Olog-hai]

If “conservatives” have repeated the lie, then their conservative bona fides need some questioning.

Unfortunately, even Reagan used the phrase “our democracy” very frequently.

[atomic_dog]

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

H.L. Mencken