THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE COUNTRY OUGHT TO GOVERN IT

Democracy: a government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other
form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic…
negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of a majority shall regulate, whether
it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudices or impulse, without restraint or
regard to consequences. Result is demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy;
nevertheless The principal advantage of a democracy is a general elevation in the character of the
people… The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all
down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue, its real tendency being to elevate the
depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood.

Democracy restores to man a consciousness of his value, teaches him by the removal of authority
and oppression to listen to the dictates of reason, gives him confidence to treat all other men as
his fellow human beings, and induces him to regard them no longer as enemies against whom to
be upon his guard, but as brethren whom it becomes him to assist

I believe democracy to be of all forms of government the most natural, and the most consonant
with individual liberty. In it no one transfers his natural rights so absolutely that he has no further
voice in affairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit. Thus all
men remain, as they were in the state of nature, equals

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not
copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the
administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the laws secure equal
justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a
citizen is in any way distinguished he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of
privilege, but as the reward of merit. "Neither is poverty a bar, for a man may benefit his country
whatever be the obscurity of his conditions. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in
our private intercourses we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he
does what he likes; we do not give him sour looks which, though harmless, are not pleasant

And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a
pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing...a kind of
painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties
taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to
rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy".
Abraham Lincoln