[DemocracyFTW2]

Or better still, use XeLaTeX. But that's not the point. The point is that (1) sometimes you don't want the literal codepoint but a numerical reference in your source code; a use case for this would be `　` instead of a literal ideographic space which might be useful to prevent it from being accidentally elided when at the end of the line.

(2) irrespective of whether you want to use numerical references or not, the example shows that apparently the authors of (La)TeX are unable to use sane syntaxes for their stuff. It's just a very bad idea to terminate your variable-length commands with a space when a space in the output could possibly follow. Same with identifiers: only letters are allowed, no underscores, no digits. You then get names like `\fooBarBazVI` instead of \foo_bar_baz_6 which many would prefer. These are all trifles to be sure, but they're legion, so you get a software that seemingly takes Death By a Thousand Papercuts as a positive design maxime.