Respond in 400 words to John Adams (our 2nd president) famous quote about Democracy. The quote is:

“Democracy ... while it lasts, is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Think of it as a free write. You will probably have to have an understanding of what an aristocracy and a monarchy is. The following excerpt from an article I read may help you get the wheels turning.

What is fate of democracy?

To be sure, the random killing of six innocent people and injuring of 14 others, including a sitting congresswoman and a high-ranking federal judge, is not the largest or most dramatic tragedy perpetuated by an American against Americans.

Timothy McVeigh certainly could lay claim to that record with his bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Or Charles Carl Roberts, the shooter who entered an Amish school in Lancaster County, Pa., and methodically murdered 10 innocent little girls in 2006; or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who planned and implemented the Columbine tragedy in 1999. All are in the running for monster of the year, decade or century. What is it about our American democracy that seems to breed the kind of violence we are again trying to collectively digest?

We claim to love our freedoms: the freedom to speak as we wish, the freedom to worship, the freedom of assembling together, the right to bear arms. And we are eager to defend what we consider our freedoms. We hear the calls to “take our country back,” “I want citizens armed and dangerous” and “Don't retreat; Re-Load!” We passively assent to the fringe voices that assert, “If ballots don't work, bullets will.” Are we, indeed, in the words of John Adams, committing national suicide?

Are we abusing the freedoms we claim to cherish just to prove that we are right and anyone who disagrees with us or appears to challenge our belief system deserves the label "enemy" and is therefore deserving of our demonizing or retaliatory action? Are we abdicating self-discipline and a sense of responsibility for our behavior?

It seems to me that we suffer from a collective arrogance problem.

I am reminded of the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which depicts the ruins of a once-mighty ruler whose bold epitaph reads: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” This arrogant challenge is followed immediately by the numbing observation: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Reminiscent of a modern aphorism: “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Today it feels conceivable that John Adams was right about the fate of democracies.