As the French Revolution ended in the Dreyfus Affair so is the American Revolution ending in the rubble of Lehman Brothers and Fox News. When the people lose their instinct for desert they become tyrannical, and, as Clemenceau wrote, "With the open consent of the people, they have proclaimed before the world the failure of their 'democracy.' Through them a sovereign people shows itself thrust from its throne of justice, shorn of its infallible majesty. For there is no denying that this evil has befallen us with the full complicity of the people itself. ... The people is not God. Anyone could have foreseen that this new divinity would some day topple to his fall. A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced upon his throne." (The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, 1994; page 113).
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