Nowhere is man so insignificant as in a democracy.... Powerlessness is never better concealed than when people place themselves in the shadow of a great leader, those momentous personas with whom the people can identify.
... There are almost no limits to the generosity and the hopes but also to the deceptions – that the democratic masses invest in their leaders, their father figures. The self-esteem of the masses is here raised to sublime heights. If the possibilities of identification between the leaders and their followers are sufficiently strong, then every feeling of powerlessness is obliterated.
... In democratic leadership we see manipulation and the psychological phenomenon of projection at the highest level. The leader will be the incarnation of the volonté générale, the bearer and executor of what is said to be the people's inner "will."
... there are no stable points, no supports; the absolute is replaced by the relative, the qualitative is replaced by the quantitative. In the art of governing, man has a new means of administration: statistics; and a means of power: voting. The world is placed, willy-nilly, under a principle of power.More implacable than God's will under a millennial creed is the present domination of the majority over the minority. For God's will was always linked with caritas, with forgiveness, grace, and compassion. The will of the majority, on the contrary, is unconditional; it requires unconditional surrender.
To the pseudo-metaphysical dimension of this "trinity," the City of Man, and to its existential dimension, modernism, we must now add a third: naked political and physical power – democracy. For in this modernistic, democratic City of Man, we must vote on everything, even on virtue [4] and righteousness.
And what then of the righteous minorities?
