Summit secrecy among autocrats bodes ill for democracy
The two Trump summits:
John Dalberg-Acton was a late nineteenth-century English writer, historian, and political philosopher. He was active in the early stages of the zenith of the British Empire. He became most famous for one very cogent political observation.
Here is Lord Acton’s immortal response to the infamous, unrecorded, but very widely reported autocratic political summits recently held in Singapore and Helsinki: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Because the summits were deliberately kept secret, we do not know how or when absolute power shall manifest itself. Therefore, democracy is forced to wait to find out what the autocrats truly decided.
Sic Transit Gloria.
John M. Miller
Hilton Head Island
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