"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power [of democracy] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided… men are seldom forced to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting… Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people… Thus, their spirit is gradually broken… gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves. [People then console themselves at the loss of their liberties] by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians."
I wonder what our many democracy-extolling leaders would say to that!
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