When a term has become as universally sanctified as 'democracy' now is, I begin to wonder whether it means anything, in meaning too many things […]. … - T. S. Eliot

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When a term has become as universally sanctified as 'democracy' now is, I begin to wonder whether it means anything, in meaning too many things […]. Some persons have gone so far as to affirm, as something self-evident, that democracy is the only regime compatible with Christianity; on the other hand, the word is not abandoned by sympathisers with the government of Germany. If anybody ever attacked democracy, I might discover what the word means. Certainly there is a sense in which Britain and America are more democratic than Germany; but on the other hand, defenders of the totalitarian system can make out a plausible case for maintaining that what we have is not democracy, but financial oligarchy.