From My Notebook: Democracy – 4 –

It is said that power corrupts morals. Many a man has risen from the depths, only for the height to do him wrong, and he has turned from a lamb into a wolf.

For this the democratic principle was devised — the principle that binds the holders of power with restraints, ties leaders to the will of the people, and sets over them, from among their own electors, watchers and overseers who keep them from surrendering to their whims.

But among us the democratic principle is still a word empty of meaning. And the motto of the democratic nations — liberty, equality, fraternity — means nothing in our practical program.

Everyone who climbs into an office, great or small, however cultivated or modern in his upbringing, clings to the mentality of the functionaries of the Turks and their governors: the mentality of puffed-up airs, of despotism, of harnessing the office to his personal advantage. He does as he alone sees fit — raising up and casting down whom he pleases, playing with the affairs of the office in secret and in the dark, with no deterrent to check him.

And guiltier still than he are those who help him run on in his errancy: his colleagues and his subordinates, whose souls have been molded to fear and to flattery, and who have grown used to bowing down before the man in power even while they despise him in their hearts.

This means that the work of administration and government — including the people's relation to the men in charge, the director's to his assistants, and the chief's to his subordinates — is among the many things we simply improvise, practicing them without study or preparation.

And it means that the men of power and the individuals of the people are both in need of lessons in the meaning of democracy!!