Search https://founders.archives.gov/ for democracy and it's pretty clear they hated democracy, use the word only as a put-down.

But in the 20th century, it was used as a good word.

When did the change happen? Cold War? Civil War?

  • propter_hog [any, any]
    ·
    17 days ago

    It wasn't until Wilson was preparing for the USA to enter the Great War that the perception of Germany as undemocratic really began to take hold. It became a propaganda tool and, given how Wilson was the most influential US president of the 20th century, really stuck around. His foreign policy of "spreading democracies" ie, spawing a bunch of states into eastern Europe and saying "look, they're democracies!" formed the basis for US foreign policy till this day, and his perception of democracy came with it.

    And people wonder why I think his foreign policy was fucking trash. "Gasp!", they say, "But he won the war for us!" Bullshit. Americans didn't "win" anything in WW2 other than kicking off our current catastrophic oligarchy.