May 7, 2025

The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.

Edward Dowling (1898-1960), American Jesuit priest, editor, in Chicago Daily News, August 28 1941, Seldes p.114

I can understand the terror of the rich, but who slipped the poor a Mickey Finn in the form of a belief that democracy is possible in the U.S.A. without continual struggle?

Educating the poor about democracy—what it is, how it is achieved, and how it can be defended against its enemies—is an infinitely simpler task than ridding the rich of their terror and, on balance, cheaper—given the lobbyists, tax advisers, paid-for politicians employed to defend the interests of the rich. *an incapacitating drug, colloquially “knockout drops”