"If a ray of intellectual light is permitted to penetrate the miasma of democratophily, it can plainly be seen that the idea that in democracies we, the people, govern ourselves is a palpable fiction. Having acquired whatever rulers we acquire by whatever means we do in what we are pleased to call our democracies, our rulers rule us every bit as autocratically as if they were devout believers in the divine right of kings. The fact that we have serial rulers doesn't make those that we have at a given time any less our rulers than the kings and tyrants of a more classical vintage, it just makes them careful not to appear tyrannical or regal. And modern technologies extend the reach and the efficiency of their means of coercion further than anything Louis XIV could have dreamed of. A man is a slave if he is ruled by a slavemaster; he is no less a slave if he happens to have a small say in the selection of his slavemaster every few years."
[from my "Démocratie, Populisme et la Crise de la Culture", in Chantal Delsol and Giulio de Ligio (eds), La Démocratie dans l'Adversité (Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 2019, p. 352]
iPadから送信
No comments:
Post a Comment