Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy.The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien citiesTo make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back.
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About G.K. Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton was a 19th-century English author and christian apologist. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English Christian apologist writer. Chesterton's wit, paradoxical style, and defence of tradition made him a dominant figure in early 20th-century literature. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power