This includes a great description of how a republic contains democratic impulses.
- Click here for the interview.
Sean Illing: You seem to suggest in your piece that too much democracy is a bad thing.
Andrew Sullivan: It's always been a bad thing. Democracy is only as good as the people who are in it. And people in general are shitty and we are prone to all sorts of ugliness. That's why we have a system designed to make sure that that shittiness is actually constrained by elite institutions, by the rule of law, by separations of powers and federalism, and all the other aspects.
Sean Illing: That’s a classically conservative view of human nature and government.
Andrew Sullivan: Yes, and in this country conservatism hasn’t really been conservative for quite a while. Conservatism is about the restraint of government, not the empowerment of government, and Trump has no interest in restraint. Again, this is a person who has never conceded an error, never admitted a mistake, never taken responsibility for something he's done wrong — even though the examples have been simply extraordinary.
