Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 11 of my friend, co-author, and former professor Randy Holcombe’s excellent 2019 book, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History:

The principles of liberty provided a revolutionary cause but not a blueprint for designing a government that could preserve liberty. The institutions of governance evolved over time, sometimes through deliberate changes and sometimes as unintended consequences that those who advocated institutional changes did not foresee. Often, they were driven by the desires of citizens to have a louder voice in the operation of the government under which they lived. Thus began the transformation of American government from one based on the ideology of liberty to one based on the ideology of democracy.