coromandal

It’s not that the mob or the everymen who collectively make up a citizenry are right and wise, it’s that, by ensuring they decide by their vote who will lead and by what policy, the law will prevail and arbitrary measures will not.  It is the awkwardness of the process that protects us from the vagaries of concentrated power.

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always decide wisely; what he  must believe is that the decision of the majority, whether wise or unwise, must be accepted until such time as the majority decides otherwise. And this he believes not from any mystic conception of the wisdom of the plain man, but as the best practical device for putting the reign of law in place of the reign of arbitrary force.

Bertrand Russell, Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind, Unpopular Essays