[denydenydeny]

What Tocqueville did not consider was how long such a government would remain in the hands of benevolent despots when it would be so much more easy for any group of ruffians to keep itself indefinitely in power by disregarding all the traditional decencies of political life.

This is the problem with liberalism. It assumes that the enormous mechanisms of governmental power that they wish to set up will remain in the hands of benevolent men. Liberalism regards the free behavior of men with suspicion, but government, as long as there is no religious component to it, gets a pass.

[tophat9000]

will remain in the hands of benevolent men.

But are we eternal children to even allow ourselves to be in the control of even the most benevolent men... that would still create a crippled and stunted populace totally beholden to(and controlled by) their benefactors... a bird in a gilded caged is still caged …life under soft fascism