Against the Masses
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loginGiventhe vast amount of literature devoted to democracy, we might assumethat the arguments againstplacing our faith in ‘the people’ would, by now, befamiliar territory, explored and re-explored to the point of tedium. But this isnot the case. While individual critics of democracy have received much schol-arly attention, efforts to examine anti-democratic thought as such have beenfew and far between. The need for a systematic and detailed treatment of thetopic is clear and compelling; my aim in what follows is to satisfy that need.To those who say that highlighting criticisms of democracy can underminewhat is obviously a moral imperative, I merely repeat the point made by J. S.Mill. Knowing an opinion to be true presupposes knowing the reasons,not only for, but also against it. Even a true opinion, when protected fromcritical analysis, will become a dead dogma, a set of lifeless phrases, with nocapacity to inspire.
