…the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the …periods between the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Great Depression.…President Theodore Roosevelt …[recounted] …we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy. (Courtesy © Wikipedia)
Our Founders' Warning: “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.” (Thomas Jefferson)