Top all-time · #4177
Richard M. Langworth
Personal blog · richardlangworth.comhistorywriting
Richard M. Langworth's personal blog at richardlangworth.com covers history and writing. Since 2012, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Richard Langworth's posts to trace and debunk misattributed quotes, mainly Churchill's line that democracy is the worst form of government except for the others. Commenters cite them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project, Writer and Historian
Most-linked posts?
- /worst-form-of-government9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-08-14
- /worst-form-of-government2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-14
What Hacker News says?
Public comments are routine in setting administrative law. (The concept is called notice-and-comment.) Congress gives the administering agency authority to make an administrative rule, and that rule can only happen after a public notice period about the proposed rule, during which any member of the public can comment on the proposed rule. Rules are often modified during the public comment period, which will be refle…
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC”Submitted Churchill met Roosevelt naked for a 1941 conference as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI don't see why (or in what) it is misleading. The sentence (which is smart) can be read either as a funny, smart one or taken seriously, if you do the latter, you need to put it in its context, Free-Trade vs. Protectionism in very early 20th century: https://richardlangworth.com/taxprosperity BTW the sentence has been paraphrased from the original one.
Comment linking /taxprosperity
on “What’s wrong with medieval pigs in videogames”Submitted Churchill's Ersatz Meeting with Lincoln's Ghost (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAs you suggest, ancient Athenian democracy bore little resemblance to modern forms of representative democracy and no doubt appears very limited/odd to modern sensibilities. What you wrote doesn’t make what I stated about the derivation of the word any less true though: https://www.etymonline.com/word/democracy All forms of democracy so far have been hefty compromises in one way or another and so will all be in the…
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report”Submitted A Cornucopia of Things Churchill Never Said as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> most voters don't agree with them Replace 'most' with 'a slender majority' if you want to retain the fig-leaf of objectivity and rationality that you seem to covet. Politics is littered with examples of groups who were deceived into voting against their own self-interest. This isn't some kind of bizarre conspiracy - it's business as usual. It strikes me as more bizarre to pretend that democracy is some kind of ide…
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “The great British Brexit robbery”"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Cities don't have to offer huge subsidies to companies like Apple and Amazon”You are aware that, while "Athenian democracy" was for sure a step toward more distributed political power, it was still a city where only a selected few males could pretend to be "citizen". By the way, "what happened to Athens" doesn’t mean much: it’s still a living city, although the age of city-state has long gone. So, as Churchill would quote it: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it…
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Five Eyes and Japan call for Facebook backdoor to monitor crime”>...Constitutional democracy sucks; it's just much better than any alternative. (I think Churchill said that.) He said something like that, but he didn't say he originated the thought. In the house of Commons, he once said: "...Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-gov…
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Tech’s Two Philosophies”He is paraphrasing Winston Churchill, whom apparently was echoing an unattributed aphorism. http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “HSBC, Goldman Rigged Metals’ Prices for Years, Suit Says”The author of the submitted blog post begins with "I’m looking for work right now; and I have looked for work in the past. It’s something everyone does, now and again." There is indeed an ongoing interest in finding paying work among the many participants on Hacker News. That's why I have devoted time and effort (with the kind help of several other HN participants) to writing up a FAQ about company hiring procedures…
Comment linking /when-you-have-to-kill-a-man
on “Non-hiring Practices”https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor (2016)”I think we all agree that open source is not the holy grail but it shines with comparative advantages. It is like democracy: Far from perfect but still the best political system: 'Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those ot…
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Security Through Obscurity Kills People”The linked manifesto doesn't seem to be especially against garbage collection. And on their web site the latest news item is a "Lisp Jam"... The only reference to GC is in this sentencs: "The deadline is approaching or the rent is due or we have taxes to fill out and a manager on our back and someone asking us why we always spend so much time at the office, and we just have to stick the library or virtual machine or…
Comment linking /war-shame
on “Handmade: A Community for Self-Rolled Performant Software (2016)”it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “DraftKings: a $21B SPAC betting it can hide its black market operations”> why not attribute it to Churchill anyhow? Because it isn't true. Was the irony intentional? Apparently [0] it's from Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Cordell Hull. [0] https://richardlangworth.com/galloping-lie , also https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/oct/09...
Comment linking /galloping-lie
on “Why Fiction Beats Truth”For what it's worth, that's not actually Churchill, though it's frequently attributed to him[0]. Nevertheless, it's an appropriate remark. [0] https://richardlangworth.com/democracy
Comment linking /democracy
on “Make School a Democracy”for actions that do not technically breach an existing law Consider the implications of what you've said here. Punishment outside of law breaks all kinds of long-developed social and democratic safeguards. It's one of those "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others"[0] type situations. [0]: https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government
Comment linking /worst-form-of-government
on “Maybe we need a moral panic about Facebook”Probably never said it [0]. Those kinds of quotes are unlikely to be understood in today's cultural lense, because people don't see the world in national identities and the meaning those identities carried, like they used to 1800-1940. [0] https://richardlangworth.com/quotes-churchill-never-said-2
Comment linking /quotes-churchill-never-said-2
on “Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words”
