LewRockwell.com | Rulers seek to rule. Well, that seems a bit obvious, doesn’t it? And yet, time after time, we elect new leaders, imagining that, “This new group will be better—they’ll represent us as they promised.”
Unfortunately, the democratic system doesn’t really work very well at all. The idea is supposed to be that if old leaders overstep their bounds, new candidates may come forth who promise a reversal of the autocracy of the previous group, and we elect them. They will then proceed to implement that reversal.
Of course, we all know that it’s this last bit that consistently fails to happen. The new group does not fulfill its promises to the electorate—in fact, it almost invariably seeks to increase its power over them. And as each group assumes greater power than the previous one, the country slowly declines, until ultimately, it reaches the state of tyranny.
But what is at the heart of this process? Why on earth does it never seem to happen that the new leaders actually diminish their power and become true representatives of those who elected them? Surely, we must get a few good leaders once in a while.
To answer this question, let’s have another look at that title, at the top of the page…
Rulers seek to rule. Ruling is not a side issue; it is not a by-product. It is their very purpose. It is the reason they ran for elected office.
But then, why do better, less-obsessed people not run? Well, they occasionally do, mostly at the lower levels of public office, where they soon find that politics is a nasty business and that their fellow office-holders detest them for their integrity. Read Entire Article
By Jeff Thomas
