Every
democrat feels in his bones that dangerous crises are incompatible
with democracy, because he knows that the inertia of masses is such
that to act quickly a very few must decide and the rest follow rather
blindly. This has not made non-resistants out of democrats, but it has
resulted in all democratic wars being fought for pacifist aims. Even
when the wars are in fact wars of conquest, they are sincerely
believed to be wars in defense of civilization.
These various attempts to enclose a part of the earth's surface were
not inspired by cowardice, apathy, or, what one of Jefferson's critics
called a willingness to live under monkish discipline. The democrats
had caught sight of a dazzling possibility, that every human being
should rise to his full stature, freed from man-made limitations. With
what they knew of the art of government, they could, no more than
Aristotle before them, conceive a society of autonomous individuals,
except an enclosed and simple one. They could, then, select no other
premise if they were to reach the conclusion that all the people could
spontaneously manage their public affairs.
5
Having adopted the premise because it was necessary to their keenest
hope, they drew other conclusions as well. Since in order to have
spontaneous self-government, you had to have a simple self-contained
community, they took it for granted that one man was as competent as
the next to manage these simple and self-contained affairs.
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