Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903 – 1987) was a French philosopher. I have read and marveled at several of his books. One of his themes is that in the name of democracy, or in the name of the people, we will do things to ourselves that we would let no tyrant do. I think we see these actions and the results of these actions everyday in this country. We need to be alarmed. Note the following:
“Though few people seem yet to be aware of it, we are beginning to pay the price for one of the most fateful delusions which have ever guided political evolution. About a hundred years ago political wisdom had learnt to comprehend, as a result of centuries of bitter experience, the essential importance of manifold checks and barriers to the expansion of power. But after power seems to have fallen into the hands of the great mass of the people, it was suddenly thought that no more restrictions on power were necessary. The delusion arose, described by Lord Acton in a phrase less hackneyed but not less profound than that which is now constantly quoted, ‘that absolute power may, by the hypothesis of its popular origin, be as legitimate as constitutional freedom.’** But power has an inherent tendency to expand and where there are no effective limitations it will grow without bounds, whether it is exercised in the name of the people or in the name of a few. Indeed, there is reason to fear that unlimited power in the hands of the people will grow farther and be even more pernicious in its effects than power exercised by few.
This is the tragic theme on which M. de Jouvenel has written a great book.”
*[Review of Bertrand de Jouvenel, Power: The Natural History of its growth (London and New York: Hutchinson, 1948), published as “The Tragedy of ORganised Humanity” in Time and Tide, November 6, 1948, p. 119. -Ed.]
**[The other phrase alluded to is the famous “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” On Acton see this volume, chapters 8 and 9. -Ed.]
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