“The American political system is a remarkable example of the coexistence — sometimes harmonious, more often uncomfortable — of all three dispositions. Americans, we might say, are anarchists in their values (privacy, liberty, individualism, property, and rights); realists in their means (power, law, coercive mediation, and sovereign adjudication); and minimalists in their political temper (tolerance wariness of government, pluralism, and such institutionalizations of caution as the separation of powers and judicial review.”

—  Benjamin R. Barber

Source: Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age (2003), p. 5

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Benjamin R. Barber 15
US political scientist 1939–2017

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