Democracy's Cultural Ripples, Page to Stage

Beginning of article

Forget "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman!" Now, "it's a book, it's a play, it's an opera, it's Democracy!"

There are reasons to catch the new words and music on the subject, even if one Woodrow Wilson sentence from 1917 says it all for today's US foreign policy: "The world must be made safe for democracy."

It's a book - a current favorite of President Bush, "The Case for Democracy," by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky. The president reportedly told the author he had reached page 221 and used the theme in his second inaugural and State of the Union addresses.

It's a play - Britain's National Theatre production of Michael Frayn's "Democracy," …