Americans take democracy for granted. That is a mistake. Not all democracies remain democracies -Weimar Germany being the most chilling example. Societies need an unspoken code of conduct and a common secular culture to bind them together. More than 50 years ago, political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset wrote the seminal "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy," acknowledging that, while democracies need vigorous political competition, they have to keep the competition from boiling over into political chaos.
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机译：美国人认为民主是理所当然的。那是一个错误。并非所有民主国家仍然是民主国家-魏玛德国是最令人毛骨悚然的例子。社会需要一种不言而喻的行为准则和共同的世俗文化来将它们捆绑在一起。五十多年前，政治学家西摩·马丁·利普塞特（Seymour Martin Lipset）撰写了开创性的《民主的一些社会要求：经济发展与政治合法性》，他承认，尽管民主制需要激烈的政治竞争，但它们必须防止竞争陷入政治混乱中。
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