The growth of our Leviathan state in the West has taken place under the auspices of democracy. The words of Ronald Reagan in 1975 come to mind: “If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.” Reagan seemed to intuit the power of the democratic lexicon to disguise totalitarian ambitions. Long ago, in a paradoxical move to welcome popular sovereignty to the table of legitimate governing theories, Jean-Jacques Rousseau conceived of democracy in such a way that it could never be anything but anti-democratic. Rousseau’s democratic ideal, which is paradigmatic of the Western elite’s notion...