Sometime during the latter part of the 18th century politics took an unprecedented turn in the English-speaking world: it ceased to be dangerous. Although little appreciated by scholars for its historical consequence, perhaps because it consisted of non-consequences, things that didn’t happen, it was essential to the development of modern democracy. Up to that point, in just about every time and place, politicians who lost high office, or failed in grasping at it, faced the possibility of imprisonment, confiscation, exile or death. Now in Britain and America, then increasingly elsewhere in Europe, and eventually in places even further afield, loss of office, while not pleasant, was no longer lethal.
Read MoreCommentary: Our Republic Endures Only When Political Enemies Can Retire in Peace
