Gore Vidal Quotes
Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."
Vidal, Gore. Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson. Yale University Press, 2003.
Opposing electronic town meetings and referendums:
formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate
He was commenting on the Constitution that had come out of the 1789 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and did not yet have the Bill of Rights.
This was the first contact between the colonists and the French government. The French agent was very non committal and the parties were just feeling each other out. Franklin made it perfectly clear that the colonists would not trade the English King for a French one and become part of the French empire.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, patrician manner, and polished style of writing. Vidal was openly bisexual and his novels often dealt with LGBT characters, which was unusual at the time. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).