Proverbial Democracy

In the Gettysburg Address of 1863, Abraham Lincoln famously declared that ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth’. Since then the phrase has become the proverbial definition of American democracy. In this book, internationally renowned folklorist Wolfgang Mieder explains why and how this happened.

Drawing on a lifetime of studying political rhetoric, Mieder shows how the phrase drew on earlier formulations, and how it was rapidly adopted around the English-speaking world, including by leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. The phrase echoes down the centuries, and continues to reverberate in the most recent political discourse and in the rhetoric of presidents in our own time.

This historical survey of the democratic proverb is, above all, a passionate affirmation that ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ has served the country well, in stating the fundamental premise of a democracy, and that it will continue to do so in turbulent times.