Democratic Ideals Quotes

“It is up to all of us to fix this. It’s not gonna be because somebody comes and saves ya. You know, the most important office in this democracy is the citizen, the ordinary person, who says “nah, that’s not right.”

And I do think one of the reasons that our commitment to democratic ideals has eroded is that we got pretty comfortable and complacent. It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are progressive, or say you are for social justice, or say you're for free speech, and not have to pay a price for it. And now we're at one of those moments where you know what, it's not enough just to say you’re for something, you may actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a little bit. So yeah, if you're a law firm being threatened, you might have to say, OK, we will lose some business because we’re gonna stand for a principle. If you are a university, you may have to say, figure out, are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion? If not, and you're just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, well, that's why we got this big endowment. We'll stand up for what we believe in and then we'll pay our researchers for a while out of that endowment and we'll give up the extra wing, or the fancy gymnasium, we can delay that for a couple years because, you know, academic freedom might be a little more important.

For most of human history and to this day in most places in the world, there is a cost to challenging the powers that be, particularly if they're abusing that power. And I’ve noticed this among some wealthier folks who, you know, after George Floyd, they were right there and a bunch of companies were talking about how they cared about diversity and they wanted to do this and they were all for that and they are mute right now. But what that tells me is it was OK when it was cool and trendy, and when it’s not, eh, not so much.

And that, I think, is what we have to… each of us has to examine in our own hearts, is, alright, we say we're for equality, are we willing to fight for it, are we gonna risk something for it. We say that we’re for rule of law--are we going to stick to that when it’s tough, not when it’s easy. We believe in freedom of speech. Do we stand up for freedom of speech when the other person talking is saying stuff that infuriates us and is wrong and hurtful. Do we still believe in it?”
― Barack Obama